WE WERE THE FUTURE

We Were The Future –
– is Mike Amo (yours truly) and Rick Fathers.  I write the words and music.  Rick writes the music and then performs it.
We met as kids in Collingwood, Ontario when I was walking up our street carrying a Hot Wheels Hot Curve and Rick was on his front steps dropping cars down a length of straight track.  The collaboration has continued ever since.
These days, I make my living as a screenwriter so, whether it’s in script or song form, I love to put myself inside the skin of another character, then experience the world through their senses, their obsessions, their desires.  Among the pantheon of songwriters who’ve inspired me are the usual suspects (Ray Davies, Randy Newman, Kate Bush, Bruce Cockburn, Ron Sexsmith, Pete Townshend, the Beatles) plus some who didn’t need to channel other voices — larger-than-life characters all by themselves (i.e. Ian Dury, Shane McGowan).
Rick’s influences started with the Beatles and went supernova from there – everything from Debussy to Charlie Christian to Jeff Buckley to Frank Zappa to Toad the Wet Sprocket just to name a few.  Musical complexity is not a problem for Rick but he believes that if it can’t be played on an acoustic guitar and sung in a loud voice under a railway bridge,  then it probably needs a re-write.  Rick sometimes recruits friends to play on our recordings.  He works in a music store so he knows a lot of terrific musicians.  However, on most of the tunes you’ll hear on this site, Rick does everything himself.
Thanks for listening.
Our friend Avard Woolaver took all the amazing pictures on the site.
Check him out!
All photos © Avard Woolaver: http://avardwoolaver.wordpress.com