Angel of Truth began a long time ago (mid-1970’s?) as a chord riff on my old acoustic. For you musicians, It was 1/4 back and forth in E, then 5/1, with muting and slides up the neck between riffs. At that time I wanted to write a Ledbelly type acoustic blues, but (as usual) it went where it wanted to. For years I had jut the verse chords and melody. In the 1980’s some time or other I put a chorus/bridge to it. It wasn’t very good, but the words to the chorus/bridge helped flesh out the theme. As some of my older friends might remember, they were:

Spell binder, moonshiner
Give it up now
Give it up now

The chords were still major, and still a spin on 1/4/5

The theme was basically - You lie, you die.

I put the song aside (wherever that is!) except to play it once in awhile to practice a certain kind of strumming pattern. My friend Brian Hughes used to like it, and he’s a roots blues fan, so I kept it on the back-burner. Fast forward to late 2007 and I started jamming with some old high school buddies. Doug Anderson and I were working up some of our originals. (Aside to Doug: We have got to get in the studio!) We didn’t use Angel, but it was one of the ones that went over good with him and our sometime bass player, Dave Milne. In another setting I was jamming with another friend, Tony Buchner. Out of all the originals I showed him, he liked Angel the most.

Soon thereafter, I negotiated an arrangement with my son Paul for him to produce a CD of my originals. We chose six, not originally including Angel of Truth. Soon, as I wrote earlier, the novel became intertwined with the songs. We re-thought the CD selections. Amazingly, five of them fit like a glove, but one was way out. What to do? Immediately it came to us that Angel of Truth would fit in very well with certain aspects of the book’s plot and theme - so close it seemed to have been tailor made for the job. But nobody was satisfied with the bridge. I read and listened until it came to me that we had to go minor/major in the bridge. I brought back a melody over F#minor, C#minor, G#major, C#major. As musicians will note, that C#major shouldn’t work. Except that it does when it leads to A7, G#7, C#major. Try it, you’ll like it!

Anyway, Paul’s brilliant production leadership took the joint band arrangement (John Hodgert; vocal and rhythm guitar; Paul Hodgert: bass and ‘angel’ choir; Luke Bergen, drums and ‘devil’ choir; Tony Buchner; ‘Can I be the devil?’ lead guitar, and ‘devil’ chorus) to a HNL (hole nutha lebel) The song had gone where it wanted, into hard rock but still dragging its roots with it. Oh great! Now we’re supposed to do all the songs real good! We’ll try.

This of course is the title song, so to speak, for the novel. When exactly it was written is a bit of a mystery. Very unusually for me, I can’t find a record of its date of original composition. The copy I have is dated August, 2001. At that time the song was titled ‘I’m Losing Everything’ (ILE). It formed part of what I called ‘a poetry musical’. The poetry musical consisted of six poems and six songs. Although each song or poem was supposed to stand on its own, together they were to tell a story. The musical was called ‘Forever and Now’ (FAN). All the poems were ‘purpose written’ for the musical, and all but two of the songs. One of the pre-existing songs was ‘Hopelessly Lost on Love’ (HLIL), which also features in the novel. It was written a long time ago in unusual circumstances. But I’ll talk about that in a later entry. Anyway, HLIL is a straightforward song about undying love, so it fit perfectly into the middle of the FAN story-line. In FAN the hero guy meets a girl, falls for her, marries her and wallows in joy, but then screws up and loses his lover/wife. When he realizes where he’s at, he understands and sings the other pre-existing song, ILE, because that he is in fact Losing Everything.

The first draft of my first novel was called ‘Meadowlark’, for reasons that will be clear to those that read the novel. The draft also contained poems placed at the end of certain chapters. Again, these poems were to stand on their own, but were also to advance understanding of the book. Also, here and there in the text, reference was made to old popular songs rolling around in the heads of the characters. Several people, including my wife Pat, pointed out a few things:

1. Be the verse good or bad, novel reader soften just skim over occasional poems, or skip them entirely. Besides, poetry is a different read than prose, so unless the poems are (prosaically) overly straightforward, they are counter-productive in the modern world, and
2. You need to get permission to mention or quote from published song lyrics. This is a lot of bother and costs money, and
3. ‘Meadowlark’ is a lame title.

So, as part of the high level aesthetic editing process overseen by author Wayne Tefs, I decided to re-tool by replacing the poems with the lyrics of songs written by one of the character, Jack Lovell, who was already drawn as a musician. Song lyrics are, rightfully, usually simpler than serious poetry - so more inclined to be read and absorbed. This change led to re-writing the book so that the characters remember words and music written by Jack and performed, back in the day, by his garage band. That construction worked way better! By co-incidence only explainable by sublime intervention, I was at that very time in the midst of an originally unrelated project to record a CD of six or seven songs, with the arranging and performance assistance of the CD’s producer, my son Paul Hodgert, and a few of his and my friends. I consulted all the editors and the publisher with the idea of adapting the CD project so that we would record the songs referred to in the book - and in some way relate the book and the music to one another. They displayed the imagination and flexibility (a big part of why I signed with Bendecido) to see that this was not only a neat new artistic idea, but could really power the marketing (oh, oh, business!).

Last and most, what new title now worked for the novel? The song ‘I’m Losing Everything’ was renamed ‘Except My Love For You’ to more perfectly reflect the theme of the book. This became the title of the novel. It’s unusual, but we think in a neat Hodgert/Bendecido way. I hope you agree and that you enjoy the book and the music. Ciao for now.

My record producer, Paul Hodgert, has set me free for the day - after tracking the three readings that will be performed live at the May 27 show at the Park Theatre (http:www.parktheatervideo.com). We will put the readings together with the three songs already recorded (and posted on this site) The three songs will also be performed live at the Park. After Paul’s mixing and mastering, we will have a souvenir CD of the Park “Show” manufactured. These CD’s will be given out as souvenirs to everyone attending the May 27 gig. Some time soon we will also post the Show on this and on the book publisher’s website (http://www.bendecidobooks.ca). If you can’t be at the Park event (or at any of the events to follow where the CD will also be distributed) contact me and I’ll see if I can get one out to you.

Anyway, back to the story: Ray was a partner in a Winnipeg and Toronto based company that did graphics work for selected clients, and published a number of very successful specialty magazines. Ray also was a literary agent for a few people. Ray’s new idea was to expand his publishing interests to include books. If he did that, the effort that Ray was accustomed to putting into marketing on behalf on clients of his literary agency (like Sabrina Bernardo) could be expended fully on behalf of himself (i. e. his book publishing company) and his clients (i.e. me and some other folk) I thought it was a great idea, and spit in my hand, shook hands with Ray and said I’d be honoured to be the first adult fiction author for the new concern - and I promised that I would work full out to help support the launch in every way.

Long story short (too late?), Ray put his money where his mouth was and took over majority ownership and complete control of a new company, We Communication West Inc. Bendecido Books Inc. is the book publishing arm of the new group. Ray’s old partners are happy to still be involved, as are some new investors. That’s more than a lot of you want to know about business, so I promise to post about the book from now on! Or anything else that takes my fancy, or you want to hear about. Let me know.

I just finished lunch with my friend Darren Fast, where for the price of a lunch I got about $5K worth of advise on how to have the songs on my website play properly. He has been so helpful all along that I now owe him (by my estimate, not his - he’s generous) a Godfather type favour. Like the undertaker in Godfather I, I said he could call me at any time if he needed anything - no questions asked. Time will tell what it will be! Darren is really Dr. Fast, scientist and businessman, but you can relate to him in his artistic guise as a photographer by visiting: http://solaltaphoto.com. You’ll enjoy it.

This AM I’m remote from the Ellice Theatre and Cafe, home of the cheap and good breakfast - and living memorial to the late great Harry Lehotsky. Free plug; http://www.ellicetheatre.com. The mail list for invitations to the May 27 launch is almost done. Today, I understand, the galleys go back to the printers. That’s it, now we’re stuck! To pick up the back story. Ray B. agreed to act as my literary agent in 2007. He approached Harper Collins, who Ray had recently prevailed upon to publish Sabrina Bernardo’s ‘Inner City Girl Like Me’. Again to my shock, the first editor liked it enough to push it along the chain. Over the course of the next year (yes, year) it moved along, finding favour at each step. At what I am told is the last stage, the commercial decision stage, it was determined that it was not needed for the fall(?) program, but how about we pick it up again in the spring (2008)? In the meantime, Ray tried Simon & Schuster, but they were lukewarm to any unpublished author. Remember mes amis, I had done nothing yet to get the book publlshed - besides show it to a few friends, one of whom luckily showed to Ray! Anyway, Ray asked me if I wanted to expand the search. After the initial excitement of Harper’s interest, I had become disenchanted with the process. It seemed like brokerage - smilin’ an dailin’ - and that’s what I had retired from. Ray felt the same, but he had another idea. Later.

I’m taking the morning off to do income tax, except to tweak the colours of the website to match the book cover. I hope to be able shortly to put the music links on the lyrics pages, so you can look at them while the songs play. Also, I hope to have the title song, Except My Love For You play each time someone goes to the Home page. In the next little while I’ll relate how Ray Blumenfeld http://bendecidobooks.ca became my literary agent and his adventures with international publishers.

It’s late Sunday morning, and I’ve just finished what I expect will be the last session at A & W, at least for this novel. Starting in late 2006 and ending in May of 2007, I composed the first draft of the manuscript (then called Meadowork) by typing for a few hours every weekday morning at the Dubs. The coffee and toast were good and cheap and the background music was oldies. It all fit the project - work at it like job, with daily targets (500 upped to 1,000 words a day) and with weekends and holidays off. People laughed (who can blame them) but it worked. When my excel spreadsheet showed 100,000 words, I was done. Originally that was to be that, just another item ticked off from my retirement To Do list. But after a few rounds of editing, I gave the draft to a friend of mine, Liz Barron, to review for accuracy and sensitivity concerning one of the characters. And...she liked i! And...she gave it to her friend, Ray Blumenfeld. And...he liked it! But the rest is a story for another day. Now, I will be leaving the Dubs and going home to finish reviewing the last hundred pages of the galleys we just got back from the printer. As Ray e-mailed me yesterday - “OMG its really happening!”