Merritt, Scott - The Detour Home

Tracks

		Track Name	Length
	1	Homedale Bus
	2	Temporary Tattoo
	3	Dragonfly
	4	Beautiful Mess
	5	Stoplight
	6	Swallowin' The Key
	7	August Tailight
	8	Give It A Name
	9	Supply Exceedin'
	10	Thimbleful

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Information/Write-up

If 'The Detour Home' sounds at times like a grown man's recollection of one of his favorite spots in the world, it's because Scott Merritt's first album in more than a decade is often that.

"I was trying to catch the feeling of a place like Port Dover or Long Point, Ontario, around the last day of August," explains Merritt. "A short, beat-up beach, everyone gone home, only a couple people left on the sand, kind of savoring the last of the day."

Juxtaposing the snapshots of a fish bowl town are forward, experimental beats. In the spirit of Beck or David Grey, this accomplished multi-instrumentalist binds folk and technology with wonderful results. "Temporary Tattoo," Merritt's poetic spin on the detour home from the summer midway, is anchored by the purr of a beat box. The midway reappears on "Swallowin' the Key" which, when set to a fuzz guitar, becomes as surreal as a meander through the House of Mirrors, while an overdriven vocal mic gives the road-trip song "Dragonfly" a more futuristic, psychedelic vibe. A sense of resigned optimism underscores many of the tracks.

Long Point and Dover are beach resort towns that sit on Lake Erie, visible across the water from Ohio. Merritt grew up in Brantford, just 30 miles away, and after three decades of making music, hasn't strayed particularly far. While still a kid in the 70's, he began working out his musical kinks with various garage bands around town.

When the desire to exercise his nascent songwriting abilities took over, Merritt struck out on his own. By the early 80's he had two independent releases under his belt. His first, Desperate Cosmetics (1979), was recorded with the help of a then unknown Hamilton engineer named Daniel Lanois. It was the subsequent Serious Interference though, in 1982, that brought him the attention of Canada's Duke Street Records, which also released the Juno nominated follow up Gravity is Mutual (produced by Roma Baran of Laurie Anderson fame) in 1986. In 1990 Merritt moved to the American label IRS for his last studio release, Violet and Black produced by Frank Zappa alumnus Arthur Barrow. From there, Merritt took a step back to concentrate on family life and his growing interest in production and engineering.

"I write as often as I can between the recording projects at The Cottage" explains Merritt, making reference to his studio in Guelph. Some of the artists drawn to Merritt's environs have included Stephen Fearing, Ian Tamblyn, The Grievous Angels, Garnet Rogers and Juno award winner Fred Eaglesmith.

For 'The Detour Home', Merritt has enlisted an impressive array of musical guests: drummers Peter Von Althen (The Cash Brothers, Starling) and Gary Craig (Bruce Cockburn), guitarists Ian Lefeuvre (Starling) and Bill Dillon (Robbie Robertson) as well as keyboard player Richard Bell (The Band, Janis Joplin) and multi instrumentalist Jeff Bird (The Cowboy Junkies) among others.

"All this great stuff can happen if you hit a detour along the way, " says Merritt when asked about the album title, "including the roof at the end of it."

"...it's always a treat when Scott Merritt emerges from his self- imposed performing exile, but there was something particularly magical about this solo set...(he) brought the sleepy afternoon to life with the aid of a guitar, a second-hand skeletal Wurlitzer, and his remarkable, inspirational songs."
Echo Magazine "Best Concert of 2004"
Waterloo

"...'The Detour Home' is a complex mix of beautiful songwriting and organic and electronic instruments, all woven together by Merritt's knack for manipulating sound in the studio..."
Entertainment Weekly Aug 2004
Calgary, Alta

"...An awful lot has been written about the horrors and evils of the music industry. The industry designation itself seems to be at direct odds with the human creative spark and process that fuels and fires its machinery. For mor than 20 years Scott Merritt has worked in and around that industrial-park wasteland without ever compromising his personal integrity or losing site of his widescreen creative vision"
Fast Forward 2004
Calgary, Alta

"...an impressive return... it is Merrittt’s imagistic lyrical style that firmly distances him from anyone else out there... "
Globe and Mail Sept. 2002
Toronto

"...For the price of a CD, aspiring entertainers and established artists alike will be treated to a crash course in how to write interesting, evocative words, how to frame them in complex, dramatic arrangements, and how to make the whole package sound so good that anyone who hears it will end up playing it over and over...fresh subtleties every time they’re heard and nuanced, layered accompaniment full of real imagination...
The Georgia Straight - Jul. 2003
Vancouver

"...a master of audio texture, but the emphasis is firmly on his songwriting, which is deeply rooted in folk while retaining strong pop sensibilities...An endlessly rewarding listening experience and proof oh how far ahead Merritt always was in the development of this CanRock thing.
Exclaim - Oct. 2002

"...Merritt’s unique voice, pained humour and hoser - Zen poetics intact...
Globe and Mail - Mar. 3003
Toronto

"...a fine return to form...syncopated instrumentation and imagistic lyrics....
Merritt delivers a series of textured, observational tunes in which his vaguely regretful and world - weary singing draws attention to bingo halls, carnivals and other representations of faded relevance...a uniformly solid set.
The Toronto Star - Sept. 12 2002

"an act of surrealistic time-defying creative affirmation...Merritt’s music is firmly grounded in acoustic instrumentation, but veers off into the techno stratosphere. It’s openly experimental, but it’s never experimentation for experimentations sake...poetic lyrics, eschewing narrative, he relies on image, metaphor and allegory to evoke dreamy (sometimes nightmarish) atmospheres simultaneously familiar and unfamiliar, ordinary extraordinary, mundane and strange. Home is exotic because of the imaginative detours Merritt takes.
Kitchener - Waterloo Record - Aug 2002

"Merritt’s works always veer into the unexpected. He has a rare ability of switching musical styles, naturally...a tasteful treat outside the cookie cutter format....
Metro Daily - Aug 2002
Toronto

"an album of folk - plus technology that holds your complete attention. Unpretentious, contemporary, and real are probably the best words to describe it...
Encore - Sept 2002

"...songs that celebrate the fragile delights and small miracles that emerge from the most familiar of situations. Brimming with Merritt’s characteristic sense of mystery and wonder, the songs here, as always, manifest ever the right touch and turn of phrase, delighting in the insistence that anointed truths be confronted, perhaps even turned on their head...
Off The Shelf - Dec. 2002
Guelph

"He doesn’t write up to you or down to you. It is all eyeball to eyeball. If it were a younger voice it might be called punk. Down the road a few years it sounds more like experience. Years ago someone referred to his music as "hallucinations with strings attached." There is still a dream like quality to it, like the clarity that comes in the late afternoon light, as the sun and the shadows get a little longer.
Vancouver Folk Festival Program - Jul. 2003
Dugg Simpson

"...to his credit, Merritt never lets the song get lost beneath the weight of production, and when played live, with only woodheads bass to fill out the space, the material sounds just as strong as it does on the album. Clearly the studio noodling has not stripped away Merritt’s folksinger roots; Merritt, the producer, has not eclipsed Merritt, the musician.
Echo - Nov. 2002
Cambridge

"...Now here's a songwriter for the nineties...(characters in) Merritt's songs are generally face on and more or less at the edge, full of detailed and often unsettling images, some of them wholly scrutable. Merritt's arrangements captures their disquiet clearly... ( He) avoids the obvious almost religiously and he has a fascinating album from start to finish for his dedication."
Globe and Mail

"...For the uninitiated, (he) is a Canadian-born recording artist... He first cut his teeth years ago in the Lanois brothers' Grant Avenue Studio, a lineage that is reflected in the intrigue and depth created by the atmospheric intensity of ... seething with polyrhythmic energy and an epochal lyrical presence...dovetailing the small and personal with the large and abstract (dulcimers nestle beside synthesizers for example), Merritt's vision is a compelling, riveting one that has finally begun to reach full fruition and maturity..." -
CMJ New Music Report
USA

"...listening to Merritt is like hearing something you've never quite heard but have always known. On the surface the musical structures, sounds and vocal phrasing are accessible enough, but closer listening reveals surprisingly potent, disturbing and pleasant layers of musical and lyrical complexities..."
Georgia Straight ,Vancouver

"...One gets the impression that if he wanted to aim mainstream in the rock or pop world, success would follow. It appears, and I say more power to him, that he is content for now to churn out these gems and wait for his time to come. As long as he keeps the quality at this level, I'll be more than happy to wait with him..."
Canadian Musician Magazine

"...outstanding... dreamy allegorical tales..."
The Pacific Sun, San Francisco

"...one of Canada's finest exports... a thoughtful, heartfelt album which creates folklore of its own..."
Flare Magazine, ,Canada

"...Scott Merritt of 8 Fleet Street reported the theft of thirty cassette tapes from his car while it was parked in front of
his house..."
The Brantford Expositor ,,Canada

"...On first hearing it sounds simple and smooth, typical hit material. When you start hearing some of the things the synth and percussion are getting up to, you are not so sure. When you listen to the loop the loop lyrics, you really start to wonder. And when you see Scott on stage, staggering around like a drunk on a tightrope and delivering absurdist monologues between numbers, you realize that this music has, quietly but irrevocably, lost its mind..."
The Varsity, Toronto

"...conveying a real braininess and a deep distress..."
Edmonton Journal, Canada

"...his storytelling is masterful...highly melodic tunes with solid guitars and great production..."
Album Network,, USA

"...He's an original. His are folk sensibilities perhaps, but so severely skewed that politics, poly rhythmic roots, deconstruction, mixed media, other worlds and certainly hard edged urban rock all inform his perspective - a delicious mystery..."
Montreal Gazette, Canada

"...the packed house of Dawson's cold damp arena signaled Scott Merritt back to the stage - his axe still breathing bent and heated notes. With speed befitting the licks on his guitars, he took the stage again. It would be "The Well" by popular demand, that would end his two encore set. Merritt, with new discoveries of his own, was screwing the lid on a cauldron of weekend music that was unlike any other this reviewer has seen in the Yukon..."
Yukon News, Canada

"...coming off like a surfer from Owen Sound...the singer songwriter cruised through a variety of genres with skill and panache...not to indicate this is a novelty act - no Merritt is clearly aiming for music of substance... Merritt understands the value of different textures in presenting his material. The fact that he actually (does it) well throughout is a delightful bonus."
Edmonton Journal ,Canada

"...intriguing allegories, full of recognizable characters in not quite familiar situations, songs full of oblique yet logical angles, songs capable of believable surprise and small delights..."
Stratford Beacon Harold, Canada

"...there's a basic conflict of opinions as to how to judge if a musician's career is successful. We're judging in longitude, Scott's traveling latitude. He's polite when you bump into him at the intersect point, but he knows where he is going..."
The Forum, Hamilton Canada

"...from all accounts, he was the hit of the Festival. The talented singer-songwriter sizzled the stage with his warm personable mannerisms and received a standing ovation from the crowd...his music has an honesty about it that is almost compelling..."
Hamilton Spectator ,Canada

"...glittering sensual songs..."
The Mirror, Montreal

"...It wasn't just the variety of sounds Merritt produced that made him special, it was his astonishing guitar work and the unusual timing and rhythmic patterns...before the evening had ended the audience had sung, snapped their fingers, drummed on tables and laughed along..."
The Gazette
London, Canada

"...His voice was clear and strong, but it was his guitar playing that held his audience spellbound. His six and twelve string guitar work is impeccable..."
The Phoenix, Hamilton

"...an accomplished combination of pop and quirky folk melodies held together by Merritt's strong, versatile voice..."
The Entertainment Network, USA

"...balanced by spacey abstract visual imagery - boyscouts and lemmings and closets blending in oneric swirl; words bouncing off people and stickmen learning to climb symbolic shirts and hats all over the place...(the music) dares to care without being wimpy or pretentious...(it) rocks like the dickens at times and boasts rich textures..."
Graffiti Magazine,, Canada

"...a humorous and humane collection of tone poems..."
The Star, Toronto

"...visceral, cerebral, down to earth, yet filled with whimsy..."
Flare Magazine, Canada

"...a journey...a landscape where mysterious things lurk beneath a gentle tangle of strings and a gossamer veil of keyboards...Gratification can be found in Merritt's far reaching scope of topics, in his wily, clever bits of realism, and in his simple but stirring arrangements that are committed to melody and mood..."
Now, Toronto

"...Merritt comes off like a rock and roller with a brain and a bit of an albatross slung around his neck...a weird and offbeat power..."
The Varsity,, ,Toronto

"...worthy of your close attention. Merritt is a stunning guitar player who creates textural tracks that range from pop to experimental and from rock to new age to folk. His voice can be gruff or have a soft pop feel. But ultimately it is the sophistication that puts (it) over the top..."
JACKPOT , CMJ New Music Report, USA

"...the guy has a definite tendency of marching to a different drummer, and for that we shall be grateful..."
Metropolis, Toronto

"... monumental, ear opening work..."
Hamilton Spectator, Canada

"...ingenue, idiot savant, comedian, unrepentant punster, sage observer of the human condition...may his songs go forth and multiply..."
Music Express, Canada

"...Madonna, I'm not talking about your prefab shlock. Merritt is all over you like a boot on a cockroach. His arrangements are superlative, his guitar, crisp, his lyrics incisive. The band kicks and whispers...a precision team...baby he's got more vision than a million Madonnas. He creates beautiful sounds with his dulcimer, mandolin and guitar - and it all has soul! Up against him you're 'Lassie come home with a lobotomy', to use his phrase..."
The Nerve,, Toronto

"...If all this sounds wearisome, it isn't..." - The Brantford Expositor, Canada

Produced by Scott Merritt
Engineered by Lurch, Chris Marks, Nick Tjelios, John Switzer, Linda Duemo & S.M.at The Cottage in Guelph, Ontario
Mixed by Brad Haehnel at Can-Am Recorders in Tarzana, California, USA
Mixed by Joe Chiccarelli at Scream in Los Angeles, California, USA
Mastered by Greg Calbi at Sterling Sound, Chelsea, NYC, USA

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