KIM MITCHELL - Max'ed Out On Amazement Page 2
by Martin Popoff

"Well, obviously, radio is just so focused and scared to do anything with anything, so for now it's just 'Ain't Life Amazing'. I would like to see them go with 'Got A Line' or 'Love Overtime' after this. Who knows? I can't figure anything out anymore; not many people can. So the fun for me and the high for me of making music was putting the thing together. It was all the dynamic of, you know, being at the studio and playing like shit and then going to have a beer after and being depressed and wanting to quit the business, to where you're playing great and you feel great about it, and the song is turning out. All those dynamics you go through recording. That's the high for me. It's the jokes, it's the hanging with the dudes, it's all that stuff to me. As soon as it was done, I did really feel like I took it out back and shot it, like an old dog or something. 'Okay, well, my fun is over.' Now I don't know what's going to happen. It's kind of like you're not guaranteed anything... it's nothing. Other than you're guaranteed the enjoyment of making it. I enjoy the process, I can listen back to these tunes... I listened to it when I recorded it and I hope people dig it - that's all."

Ain't Life Amazing is the follow-up, in recent history - Kim Mitchell time anyway - to Itch and Kimosabe. Itch rules - it's the great undiscovered Kim Mitchell album, and pertinently the reunion record with legendary lyricist Pye Dubois. Kimosabe, on the other hand, blew.

"Well, Kimosabe, I was just in a horrible place, divorce-wise and all that stuff," muses Kim. "I just think I was in a really good space for this one. I just wanted to... first of all, I guess the interaction between musicians. Actually, interaction between people. When people do things in life, and they have that laugh that says this is fantastic. When you pull something off at work and you have that sort of laugh - HA!, 'This is great, this is fantastic.' We wanted to do that to each other as musicians. The drummer wanted to do that for Joe Hardy and myself. I wanted to do it for Joe Hardy and the drummer. So we wanted to seriously just get each other off. And I don't mean that to sound in a dirty way, but just buzz each other up. And that was sort of what we wanted to do. And we wanted to make an album that was good songs, but yet, as it was rolling down the street, it was like a bus with pieces falling off of it. So there's a bit of racket, there's a bit of noise. Joe wanted to bring that up in my guitar playing. He says, 'You're a wacky guitar player. Not only do you play notes, but you have all these wacky sounds you do on the guitar, that most engineers would go "Oh man, can you do this again without that noise?" I like that stuff!' So he wanted to showcase me as a guitar player; he said 'Hey, you've got nothing to lose. People always want you to play guitar so let's have you rip on this album.'"

KIM MITCHELL - Max'ed Out On Amazement Page 3