Steve Bell Pilgrimage
RoseAnna Schick – After 25 years, 17 albums, and multiple major music awards, Winnipeg singer/songwriter Steve Bell just released his most ambitious project to date. Part new and part commemorative, a four-disc project known collectively as Pilgrimage was released this fall, during a 31-stop tour across Canada.
Pilgrimage was originally planned as a single disc of new material. But Bell decided that the timing of it, some 25 years after the release of his debut solo album, Comfort My People, was cause to celebrate the career he feels fortunate to still maintain after a quarter century.
“Twenty-five years is fun for me. I’m just surprised I’m still here,” he says with a laugh.
Reflective, insightful, and unmistakably Steve Bell, the eponymous first disc of all-new music features tracks that may be among his best work produced to date – though Bell himself is reluctant to concur.
“One hopes to be getting better… I’ve had several folks tell me that certain songs on my new project are my ‘best yet.’ Who knows?” he says.
Accompanying the new album are three bonus discs. The first, entitled Unadorned, features a set of fan-chosen favourites, re-recorded to feature only Bell and his guitar, unaccompanied by the otherwise wide swath of musicians featured throughout the rest of the project.
The second, Good Company, a tribute disc featuring cover songs done by some of Bell’s friends and colleagues in the music industry, is one that Bell says he’s particularly excited for fans to hear, and just might be the “sleeper hit” of the whole project. Bell says that hearing his friends’ interpretations has led him to love his own work in ways he’s never loved it before.
“A tribute album is great because it allows people to see that one version of a song is not definitive. I think that’s a really important thing.”
Last comesLandscapes, a collection of instrumental and atmospheric remixes often featured before concerts and requested by fans.
Above all, Bell says he’s ever-grateful for the community that continues to support him after all these years: “I owe it to my fans to do good work. Artists have to see themselves as public servants. And I think when they do, community will reward them.”
“It’s not a ‘me’ thing but a ‘we’ thing.”
Pilgrimage is available from SteveBell.com, select stores, and on iTunes.
