Information/Write-up
April Wine’s debut album documents a young band arriving at a crossroads, still shaped by the experimental instincts of the late 1960s while already pointing toward the sharper, song-centered approach that would make them one of Canada’s defining rock acts of the next two decades. Recorded at RCA Studios and Glen Studios shortly after the band uprooted from Nova Scotia to Montréal, the album captures the original lineup of Jim Henman, Richie Henman, David Henman, and Myles Goodwyn in their most exploratory form — four musicians learning how to work together while navigating a rapidly changing Canadian music landscape.
Montreal in 1970 was a far more competitive environment than anything the members had known in Halifax. The city’s studio scene was growing quickly, Aquarius Records was positioning itself as a new national force, and FM radio — led by CHOM-FM — was beginning to shape a new kind of Canadian rock culture. April Wine arrived in the middle of all this, still carrying the psychedelic and folk-rock influences that dominated their formative years but suddenly in the orbit of a professional studio system eager to find the next Guess Who or Mashmakhan. Their debut reflects that tension. It is a record made by a band discovering how to fit into a larger industry without sacrificing the idiosyncratic writing that defined their early work.
The album is also the moment where Myles Goodwyn began to step forward creatively. While songwriting is distributed among the members, Goodwyn’s contributions — especially “Fast Train” and “Listen Mister” — suggested a clarity of structure and melodic instinct that differed from the more fluid, suite-like pieces written by the Henman brothers. “Fast Train” would become the band’s first national hit, driven by a focused arrangement and a vocal performance that hinted at the frontman Goodwyn would soon become. Its success gave Aquarius the confidence to continue investing in April Wine, allowing the band to record a second album at a time when many Canadian groups struggled to make it past their debut.
By contrast, the Henman-penned material embodies the group’s earlier worldview. David Henman, writing largely from intuition and personal mood, approached composition as a series of interconnected fragments — ideas linked together more by feeling than by formal structure. “Oceana,” “Page Five,” and “Wench” are examples of this style, songs that drift and reshape themselves as they go, reflecting the psychedelic vocabulary still present in the band’s live sets of the time. He later described these pieces as “stream of consciousness,” ideas strung together in a way that made sense to him even if they resisted conventional pop logic. That quality gives the album its dreamlike character and makes it stand apart from April Wine’s later, more commercially oriented work.
Richie Henman’s drumming and early keyboard textures also play an important role in defining the album’s atmosphere. His rhythms are less rigid than in later eras, weaving in and out of the arrangements in ways that reflect the band’s roots in East Coast club environments, where improvisation and feel were emphasized over precision. The recording itself — warm, analog, slightly rough around the edges — preserves that looseness and gives the album a charm that remained unique in their catalogue.
The sessions included small but telling contributions from others in the Montréal scene. Backing vocals on “Listen Mister” were provided by Frank Hart, while engineer Gaetan Desforges was acknowledged for going “above and beyond the call,” suggesting the kind of long studio hours typical of low-budget Canadian rock productions of the period. These are the details of a young band relying on goodwill, shared labour, and the collaborative energy of a small but rapidly growing Québec recording industry.
Although “Fast Train” would later appear in the soundtrack of the film Natural Enemy, its importance lies less in its later rediscovery than in what it meant at the time: proof that April Wine could write a concise, accessible single capable of breaking on both AM and FM radio. It is the track that justified further investment, provided the first foothold outside the Maritimes, and signaled to Aquarius that the band might find a national audience.
Viewed decades later, the debut album stands as more than a starting point. It is a rare portrait of April Wine before they streamlined their sound, before the lineup changes that reshaped their future, and before Goodwyn emerged fully as the band’s primary voice. The record captures four Maritime musicians stepping into the Montréal studios for the first time, learning rapidly, taking risks, and slowly realizing what April Wine could become. It remains one of the most unusual albums in their catalogue — atmospheric, searching, and deeply tied to the moment in which it was made.
-Robert Williston
Musicians
Jim Henman: vocals, bass, acoustic guitar
Richie Henman: drums, percussion, keyboards
David Henman: vocals, guitar
Myles Goodwyn: vocals, guitar
Songwriting
‘Oceana’ written by D. Henman
‘Can’t Find the Town’ written by J. Henman
‘Fast Train’ written by M. Goodwyn
‘Listen Mister’ written by M. Goodwyn
‘Page Five’ written by D. Henman
‘Song for Mary Ann’ written by J. Henman
‘Wench’ written by J. Henman
‘Time’ written by J. Henman
Production
Produced by Bill Hill (MICM Productions)
Engineered by Graeme Dersion
Recorded at RCA Studios, Montréal; and Glen Studios
Artwork
Design and art by Proshcanitis Inc.
Photography by Ian Dickson
Notes
Special thanks to Gaetan Desforges for engineering above and beyond the call
Special thanks to Frank Hart for backing vocals on ‘Listen Mister’
Special thanks to George Mack for a great job of handling the equipment
Direction by Terry Flood Management, Montréal
All compositions published by Summella Music Ltd. (BMI)
Band bio:
April Wine emerged at the end of the 1960s out of the fertile east-coast music community that stretched between Halifax and St. John’s. Brothers David and Ritchie Henman had played together since their teens in Newfoundland, eventually regrouping in Nova Scotia with their cousin Jim Henman in various lineups. Around the same time, Myles Goodwyn — born in Woodstock, New Brunswick and raised in a tough working-class household — was working through his own bands in the Halifax scene, including Woody’s Termites, Squirrel, and East Gate Sanctuary. When those projects dissolved in late 1969, the four musicians brought their strengths together under a new name that simply sounded right: April Wine.
Real opportunity lay outside the Maritimes. The group made a demo and sent it to Montréal’s fast-rising Aquarius Records; a polite rejection was misread as an invitation. On April 1, 1970, with little money and plenty of nerve, April Wine arrived unannounced in Montréal. Aquarius partners Donald K. Tarlton and Terry Flood heard something promising and signed them, putting the young band up in a rural chalet to write and rehearse while touring the region opening for Mashmakhan.
Their debut album April Wine (1971) introduced Goodwyn’s songwriting voice, and its standout track “Fast Train” became a Canadian Top 40 hit. With momentum building, April Wine returned to the studio with a new bassist — Montréal musician Jim Clench, who had replaced the departing Jim Henman — and English-born producer Ralph Murphy to craft On Record (1972). It became their first breakthrough: a muscular reworking of Hot Chocolate’s “You Could Have Been a Lady” shot to No. 2 in Canada and cracked the U.S. charts, while their cover of Elton John’s “Bad Side of the Moon” became a fixture at rock radio. The band quickly graduated from bars to theatres and arenas, opening for The Guess Who, Jethro Tull, Badfinger, Stevie Wonder, and Ike & Tina Turner, gaining the road experience that would define their next decade.
During the making of their third album Electric Jewels (1973), the Henman brothers exited the group; Goodwyn and Clench rebuilt the lineup with two crucial arrivals: drummer Jerry Mercer, already nationally known from Mashmakhan, and guitarist Gary Moffet. The chemistry was immediate. Electric Jewels became a formative record, showcasing songwriting depth in tracks such as “Weeping Widow,” “Just Like That,” and “Lady Run, Lady Hide,” and solidifying the band’s dramatic stage show, complete with lights and pyrotechnics, on their ambitious Electric Adventure tour.
Through the mid-1970s, April Wine became one of Canada’s most reliable and inventive rock bands. Stand Back (1975) pushed them into double-platinum territory with “Tonight Is a Wonderful Time to Fall in Love” and “I Wouldn’t Want to Lose Your Love,” while harder-edged tracks like “Oowatanite” turned into signature concert moments. When bassist Steve Lang replaced Jim Clench in 1976, the band entered its most commercially dominant phase. The Whole World’s Goin’ Crazy arrived with unprecedented platinum advance orders, followed in 1977 by the ballad-driven Forever for Now, whose single “You Won’t Dance with Me” became their best-selling Canadian record of the era.
In March 1977, April Wine unwittingly stepped into one of the most famous episodes in Canadian rock. Booked as headliners for a pair of Toronto charity concerts at the El Mocambo, they discovered that their “opening act,” listed as The Cockroaches, was in fact The Rolling Stones, secretly recording material for Love You Live. April Wine’s own set was captured and released as Live at the El Mocambo, a raw snapshot of a band hitting its stride just as guitarist-vocalist Brian Greenway joined the lineup. With Goodwyn, Moffet, and Greenway, April Wine became a formidable three-guitar outfit; Goodwyn could now move between guitar, keys, and vocals without leaving gaps in the band’s sound.
Their U.S. breakthrough came with First Glance (1978), recorded at Montréal’s Studio Tempo and Québec’s famed Le Studio in Morin-Heights. “Roller” unexpectedly surged on FM rock stations in Michigan, spreading across the U.S. and giving April Wine their first gold album outside Canada. The band was soon touring American arenas with Rush, Journey, Styx, and other major acts, no longer an opening act from the north but a rising international name.
They entered the 1980s at full strength. April Wine performed at the inaugural Monsters of Rock festival at Castle Donington in August 1980 before tens of thousands of fans, signalling their arrival onto the global hard-rock stage. Their next studio album, The Nature of the Beast (1981), recorded partly again at Le Studio, became the pinnacle of their international success. The soaring ballad “Just Between You and Me” broke the U.S. Top 20, while their explosive reimagining of Lorence Hud’s “Sign of the Gypsy Queen” became a defining FM rock staple. The album went multi-platinum in Canada, platinum abroad, and spent months on the Billboard 200, cementing April Wine’s presence across North America and Europe.
The follow-up, Power Play (1982), produced additional airplay with “Enough Is Enough” and “If You See Kay,” but the workload of back-to-back touring and recording cycles took its toll. Animal Grace (1984) and the more fragmented Walking Through Fire (1985) revealed a band under strain, and by the mid-1980s April Wine quietly dissolved. Goodwyn released a solo album on Aquarius and Atlantic; Greenway issued Serious Business; Mercer moved into session work and new collaborations.
By the end of the decade, however, classic-rock radio had revived interest. Goodwyn returned to Montréal in 1988 and began discussing a reunion with Greenway, Mercer, and Jim Clench. A renewed April Wine debuted live in 1992, playing to sold-out crowds across Canada and the United States. Their 1993 studio return, Attitude, went gold in Canada with the single “If You Believe in Me,” followed by Frigate (1994). The band spent much of the 1990s and early 2000s touring widely, sharing stages with Def Leppard, Foreigner, Meat Loaf, Nazareth, Blue Öyster Cult, and other cornerstone classic-rock acts.
Goodwyn brought the group back to its roots for Back to the Mansion (2001) and later the analog-leaning Roughly Speaking (2006). Lineups shifted as the years passed: Clench left and later passed away in 2010; beloved long-time bassist Steve Lang died in 2017; drummer Jerry Mercer retired after more than three decades. Their successors — notably bassist Richard Lanthier and drummer Roy “Nip” Nichol — kept the group’s live power intact alongside Greenway’s enduring presence.
Goodwyn’s 2016 memoir Just Between You and Me shed new light on his early life and the band’s long arc, and in 2018 he was inducted into the Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame. April Wine themselves received the Canadian Music Industry Hall of Fame’s Lifetime Achievement Award in 2009 and entered the Canadian Music Hall of Fame at the 2010 Juno Awards.
In late 2022, facing ongoing health issues, Goodwyn announced his retirement from touring, but remained involved in writing and guiding the band. He performed one final live concert with April Wine in March 2023, joined by original bassist Jim Henman for a poignant reunion. Myles Goodwyn died in Halifax on December 3, 2023, at the age of 75.
April Wine continues to tour into the present with Brian Greenway, Richard Lanthier, Roy Nichol, and Marc Parent, carrying a legacy built on powerhouse guitars, durable songwriting, and more than fifty years of Canadian rock history — a catalogue that never left the airwaves, and a name that remains synonymous with the rise of Canadian rock on the international stage.
-Robert Williston
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