Armes, Robert - CBC Comp 423 comp

Tracks

Side 2

		Track Name	Length
	1	Every Step of the Way	03:31
	2	Nicotine	02:49
	3	Reach for the Sky	03:57
	4	Slippin' Away	03:08
	5	Can't Keep a Good Women Down	02:07

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Information/Write-up

Robert Armes was born in 1953 and raised in Toronto, where his musical life began at an early age. He started piano lessons around age four or five, and by his teens had added guitar, eventually studying classical piano, guitar, and jazz keyboard improvisation—disciplines that would shape his melodic and harmonic approach for decades. Like so many musicians of his generation, his direction was sealed the night he saw the Beatles on The Ed Sullivan Show in 1964. In a later interview, he recalled being eleven years old, watching with his sister, and realizing on the spot that he wanted to be a songwriter. On a family trip to Myrtle Beach not long after, he sat in the back seat of the car with a borrowed guitar, teaching himself the Beatles’ “Ticket to Ride.” “My sister still remembers me bapping her in the head with the guitar neck,” he laughed years later, “but that’s when it all began.”

Armes attended university in Ontario, where he played in a small folk group performing on campus and in local clubs around Toronto and Peterborough. His first public recordings appeared in 1972 on his self-penned folk-psych album Songs for Icarus, privately issued on the Stony Creek label (ST 57293). Recorded at 212 Studios in Peterborough and produced by Phil Mathewson, the album featured Armes on guitar, vocals, harmonica, and piano, joined by George Bertok (piano, vocals), Jamie Crammond (guitar, vocals, artwork, and poetry), and Nancy Perkins (vocals). Only about 500 copies were pressed, each registered under Sugarloaf Music, and the record has since become one of the most collectible of its kind, often compared in tone to Nick Drake’s early work.

In 1975, the CBC included five of his songs—“Every Step of the Way,” “Nicotine,” “Reach for the Sky,” “Slippin’ Away,” and “Can’t Keep a Good Woman Down”—on the CBC Radio Canada album LM 423. The liner notes described him as a 22-year-old Toronto songwriter “attacking the pop style by instrumenting backup to lyric,” and noted that his songs had already been recorded by Raffi and broadcast on The Entertainers. This early recognition introduced Armes to the CBC’s national network of producers and marked his transition from campus folk performer to professional songwriter.

Through the late 1970s he continued performing in clubs and writing songs, and by 1980 RPM Magazine referred to him as “a veteran singer and writer” who had “written, arranged, and produced hundreds of jingles.” By then, he was active in Toronto’s thriving studio scene, writing music for commercials and corporate clients while pursuing his own pop material. His first single of the new decade, Nearly Out of Control b/w Radio Active (Change Records CP 1001, 1982), showed him moving confidently into new wave and synth-pop.

In 1984 Armes launched Cruise Records with a small team of Toronto studio musicians, releasing the label’s inaugural single Claim to Fame b/w Goodbye to Love (CRS-001). The recording featured Pepe Francis on guitar, Mark Hukezalie on Fender Rhodes, Moe Koffman on alto sax, Tom Szczesniak on bass, Barry Keane on drums, and percussion by Dick Smith, with background vocals by Shawn Jackson, Colina Phillips, and John Rutledge. It was produced by Armes and engineered by Kevin Doyle at Sounds Interchange, Studio 1. A follow-up single, Lessons in Love b/w Claim to Fame (CRS-003, 1985), featured the same core team with Tim Tickner on synthesizer programming and vibes. Kevin Doyle’s engineering on the session won him the 1985 Juno Award for Recording Engineer of the Year.

Armes’s next Cruise release, Before We Say Goodnight, continued his sophisticated pop direction and was accompanied by a promotional campaign highlighting the success of “Claim to Fame,” which had reached #2 on the RPM Canadian Adult Contemporary chart. In 1987 he released his full-length LP Part of the Family (Cruise CRS-LP 111), a warm and polished collection blending funk, soul, pop, and children’s themes. The record featured an impressive ensemble including Tim Tickner (co-producer, synthesizers, programming), Mike Francis (electric guitar, dobro), Kevan MacKenzie (drums), Mark Hukezalie (keyboards), and background vocals by John Rutledge, Sheree Jaecocke, Cree Summer Franks, Cal Dodd, Becky Fleming, Colina Phillips, and Bill Carpenter. Engineered and mixed by Kevin Doyle, Part of the Family represented the culmination of Armes’s pop career and the foundation for his future in broadcast and production music.

By the late 1980s, Armes had become one of Canada’s busiest commercial and television composers. Working out of Sounds Interchange, he co-wrote, arranged, and produced award-winning jingles for Labatt’s (“Call for the Blue”), “Blacks Is Photography,” and “Thank You Very Much, Milk.” In the early 1990s he co-founded Shurman Armes Crawford, which evolved into Pirate Radio and Television—then Canada’s largest independent producer of music and sound for television, film, and advertising. The company grew to include multiple recording studios, a casting division, a sound-design house, and a team of writers.

Parallel to his commercial work, Armes continued to write music for television and sports broadcasting. His compositions have been used by Hockey Night in Canada, SportCentral, The World Figure Skating Championships, The Golf Channel, Raptors TV, Leafs TV, Blue Jays Baseball, Molstar Leaf Hockey, and several Olympic Games, including Albertville, Lillehammer, and Atlanta. He has described the union of music and sports as “one of my true pleasures in life—two of my greatest passions coming together.” His piece Hockey Tonight became one of the broadcast staples of Hockey Night in Canada, and years later, his son Tyler’s band, Down with Webster, contributed music to the same program—a full-circle moment for the family.

A lifelong musician and arranger, Armes has written or produced close to 10,000 tracks for broadcast, commercials, and recording artists. His craftsmanship earned numerous national and international advertising awards and established him as one of the key figures in Canada’s modern studio era. Despite his success behind the scenes, he has continued to compose and record independently, maintaining his website robertarmesmusic.com and occasionally releasing new work to streaming platforms.

Armes is also an avid golfer and traveler, often combining his musical and sporting interests. He has recorded songs inspired by courses in Scotland and Ireland and is a longtime member of Lake Nona Golf and Country Club in Florida. As of the 2010s he divided his time between Toronto and Florida, still writing daily in his home studio—now shared with his sons, who have taken over the family garage space for Down with Webster’s rehearsals. Reflecting on his career in a 2013 interview, he said, “I really miss rooms full of live musicians and singers, but those days are gone. I’ve been lucky in my life and career. I’m just looking for people and things that inspire me and teach me to grow.”

Today, Robert Armes remains respected as one of the great craftsmen of Canadian pop and commercial music—a writer of melodic precision and emotional warmth, whose career bridges the folk underground of the 1970s, the studio sophistication of the 1980s, and the broadcast soundtracks that have defined Canadian media for over forty years.
-Robert Williston

Liner notes:
Robert Armes is a 22 year old songwriter working out of Toronto professionally for the last two years. Before turning 'pro', he played with a folk group in university. His training is in classical piano and guitar and currently he is studying jazz keyboard improvisation, which has become one of the strongest influences in his lyric. As a popular songwriter, Robert attacks the pop style by instrumenting backup to lyric. As a popular songwriter, Robert attacks the pop style by instrumenting backup to lyric. As a popular songwriter, Robert attacks the pop style by instrumenting backup to lyric. (Repeated in original text.)

Since performing on Toronto coffee houses he has recently been recorded by Troubadour Record artist, Raffi. Robert has been heard on CBC Radio’s The Entertainers and we are sure you will enjoy this recording he has done for us.

Recorded in Toronto by Ann Hunter
Recording Engineer Larry Morey

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