For Toronto-based singer-songwriter Dylan MacDonald, who performs under the moniker Field Guide, a well-written song is limitless.
“A song has infinite possibilities of where it can go,” says MacDonald.
It’s something further instilled in his mind while working on his latest album Field Guide (Tape Redux), which came out earlier this year. For the album, he revisited, stripped down and reimagined songs from Field Guide’s 2022 self-titled album.
Likewise, MacDonald took a similar approach for the filming of a session featuring songs from the album, performing amidst a reddish, warmly lit room.
“Song to song we were visually changing things, changing lighting and stuff and trying to set the mood song to song. We definitely put in effort into that,” he says.
Today, for Scummy Water Tower, he’s sharing the session video for his song “For Sure.” It’s a song he really loves and says wasn’t a single on either album. It’s one of the first songs he wrote on electric guitar.
“I bought this guitar in Vancouver, this old jazz guy’s guitar with thick, flat, wild strings on it,” MacDonald says. “It felt kind of like the first foray into like a little bit more electric and playing in a little bit of a different way than I normally do. It felt like a bit of a different way for a song to come about for me.”
The version of the song on the album and in the session is drastically different from the original. However, it maintains the core of the song.”
“The significant change for ‘For Sure’ was the simple process of stripping away every element aside from the guitar and vocal,” he says. “This bare bones arrangement really lets the lyric and melody take the spotlight without any other texture getting in the way.”
The session was filmed at producer Kris Ulrich’s home studio in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, at the same time that the album’s creation, making it a natural extension of his vision.
“The audience on those is the same as the record,” he says. “A videographer friend came for those two days that we recorded and every take except for the first song, ‘Remember When.’ We captured every single song on video.”
“It was so quick. It’s two days, like, not even 12-hour days, but just for maybe nine hours for two days and then another half day just mixing it together with Chris. It just felt like a reminder that it doesn’t always have to be complicated. Just set up the mics, and it can turn out great.”
Reimagined Vision
After releasing Field Guide and playing a string of solo shows, MacDonald had a revelation – he really enjoyed playing songs by himself. “I was initially a little sad to be on the road too much just by myself in a van. But I really ended up loving it,” he says.
It made him want to get back into the studio and document the freedom he felt in playing the songs.
“I just wanted to document that time and I’m glad I did,” says MacDonald. “I just wanted to tie a bow on that that time. I know I’ll do more solo playing again for sure, but that was sort of a special time of it.
The resulting album encapsulates that, finding him create reimagined, alternate takes on his songs. He didn’t place many restrictions on how he could experiment and change the songs.
“Some of the chords and the melody has definitely changed and certainly arrangements on a few of them. I played all the songs down in a new order on the record and that’s the order I played them,” he says. “It sort of was just whatever guitar or bass or whatever instrument was nearby, I just kind of grabbed and whatever sort of felt good in the moment.”
“There was a tiny bit stress going into it just cause I am often a pretty big planner and overthinker at times and I didn’t do that this time and I think it really came out cool because of that.”
For example, on “Remember When” he altered the song’s melody and the chords in the chorus. “In a way it feels quite different than the original,” says MacDonald.
Another example is “Goddess.” For that song, he played a banjo guitar, which was half banjo, half guitar.
“I had drum machine on that one, so it kind of made it sort of like a more fun, upbeat beat sort of vibe,” he says. “Whereas the original song was a little more serious. It was kind of a cool change to that one.”
With the help of Ulrich, he found total freedom in being able to experiment without limitations.
“We made a lot of music together and we got a great space and a cool tape machine,” he says. “Being an alternate version too, it sort of seems like all the pressure’s off of making the main record. It just felt so easy to do it like that.”
Lyrically, the album’s lyrics find him reflecting on life challenges and processing his emotions. He says they’re the truest and rawest he’s written. Many of them were written during the pandemic, and he encapsulates that “odd and fairly dark time for everyone in different ways and different degrees” in his lyrics.
He also found his time off the road to be a blessing in disguise as he didn’t have his typical distractions during his songwriting process.
“It felt like an emotional time was sort of extra that way,” he says. “The new album was a way to play those songs again, but not being out of the pandemic, still have the same lyrics, still the same songs, but in some of them I sort of hear a bit of a different energy behind them, which I think is kind of cool.”
Musical Growth
With prolific proficiency the past few years, MacDonald feels he’s grown considerably as a songwriter. He’s excited to continue work on his next album, which he says is fairly far along but that he’ll probably write some songs for that.
“I’ve have written so many songs, cause of course there’s so many other songs in between the records and stuff that don’t get recorded or don’t get released,” he says. “I think a lot of the things are hard to sort of speak on just sort of subconscious things, but I think I’m ready to trust myself more and yet challenge myself in some ways, but kind of push for something better too when necessary. And I think more than anything I’ve just written a bunch of songs and I think that’s the best thing you can do.”
The experience has aided him in the midst of his first full band headlining tour. After many gigs in Europe, Canada, and a few in the U.S., he’s excited to headline more shows especially in the States.
“It’s been pretty wild, honestly,” he says. “I really haven’t played here very much at all. I really didn’t know what to expect. We’ve just been finding that there’s people in the rooms and they love the songs. It’s definitely a reminder that wow, that was missing and getting to play these songs for people. But to come and get to headline and for people to show up is pretty amazing.”
“I’m really enjoying the time on tour…I’m just feeling really grateful to be out here and playing. I’m just trying to live in that as much as I can.”
Joshua is co-founder of Scummy Water Tower. He’s freelanced for a variety of newspapers, magazines, and websites, including: Rolling Stone, The Boston Globe, Chicago Sun-Times, Guitar World, MTV News, Grammy.com, Chicago Magazine, Milwaukee Magazine, MKE Lifestyle, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, A.V. Club, SPIN, Alternative Press, Under the Radar, Paste, PopMatters, American Songwriter, and Relix. You can email him at josh@scummywatertower.com.
