Suede reimagined by The Michael Boguski Trio as A Newer Morning (For John)

To quote a well known UK comedy troupe, “And Now For Something Completely Different”. Mike Boguski is probably best known as the keyboardist for Blue Rodeo, a position he’s held since 2008. Blue Rodeo are not that well known in the UK, but in Canada, they’re musical royalty with sixteen studio albums under their belts since their debut in 1987. Mike also has an acoustic jazz trio as a side project to fill the downtime from his day job. During the pandemic, Mike had, like so many of us, plenty of time on his hands and found himself rediscovering UK act Suede initially via Brett Anderson’s memoir. This has resulted in Mike reimagining songs from Suede’s 2002 album in the style of Jazz great Bill Evans. The Michael Boguski Trio’s A Newer Morning (For John) will be released July 8 on Goliard Records and all proceeds will be donated to John Brandham and Stroke Association UK. Please read on to learn more about the charitable nature of this release, and check out the video where Mike explains the reasoning behind the album in more depth.

How’s this for a concept? The keyboardist for Canada’s most successful roots rock group takes songs from the most contentious album by a British cult band and records them as instrumentals with his acoustic jazz combo.

That’s likely the simplest way to describe The Michael Boguski Trio’s latest album A Newer Morning (For John), on which the Blue Rodeo mainstay reimagines much of Suede’s 2002 album A New Morning, their final collection prior to a seven-year hiatus, which did not even receive an official North American release at the time.

After recently falling into a Suede rabbit hole, Boguski learned of a fundraising campaign for longtime Suede stage tech John Brandham, who suffered a severe stroke in 2019. Boguski was immediately moved to help, and was able to contact one of Suede’s managers, who subsequently arranged for any publishing royalties generated from Boguski’s efforts to be donated to Brandham’s recovery fund.

Boguski first recorded the track “Positivity” from A New Morning in a Bill Evans Trio style, which prompted Brett Anderson to send word that he now preferred Boguski’s version to the one his own band recorded. From there, Boguski set about tackling the rest of A New Morning in a similarly impressionistic way.

Michael Boguski / piano

Chris Adriaanse / bass

Justin McHugh / drums

https://michaelboguski.com/

“The die hard Suede fan will immediately recognize that the arrangements don’t sound anything like the originals, and that was deliberate on my part. I didn’t want to redo what has already been done. That said, very careful attention was paid to each arrangement. For each track I carefully quote the melody in a specific way so as to anchor the piece and allow my trio to improvise. Anyone familiar with my previous releases like Blues For The Penitent and my collaborations with Michael Timmins [“December”, “Message From Mars”] will know that improvisation remains at the heart of my keyboard playing.”

— Mike Boguski