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After six years out of the public eye, ex-Bootsauce frontman Drew Ling wants to return to the music business.
Unlike the kitchen-sink, sample-laden funky rock of his former band, his solo material is in a pure dance vein, funny considering the only Juno Award Bootsauce ever won was for best dance recording for its remix of Hot Chocolate's "Everyone's A Winner."
"At the time, it was very strange thing for us because we were a rock outfit," notes Ling. "The irony is this new stuff could very easily be remixed for clubs."
Still present is his trademark melodic growl, like Louis Armstrong in a not so wonderful world, but the music is "more European, along the lines of Groove Armada, Massive Attack or Air," says Ling.
Self-produced on his digital LogicAudio set up, former Bootsauce bassist Al Baculis collaborated on most of the songs and plays live bass on "My Lucky Number 2" and "The Death Of Sexy." Ling also recorded a lounge track called "Forgiven," and a house version of Depeche Mode's "Everything Counts."
"If you're into the club scene or the lounge scene or the ambient scene, it draws on a lot of those characteristics," says Ling. "The good and the bad of it is it's a very international sounding record."
Bootsauce was signed to Vertigo/PolyGram in 1989 by Mountain drummer Corky Laing and Bob Ansell. Its 1990 debut, "The Brown Album," went gold in Canada and earned the eclectic rock band the 1991 Juno Award for best dance recording, as well as a MuchMusic Video Award for "Play With Me," and various CASBY and SOCAN awards.
The band hit the road in Canada constantly and after seeing the band perform at a College Street club Ian Astbury asked Bootsauce to tour the U.K. with the Cult, including a show at London's Wembley Arena. In the U.S., "The Brown Album" was released on dance indie Next Plateau, and the band backed it up with touring.
The follow-up, 1991's "Bull," also achieved gold in Canada and was released in the U.S. on Island. 1993's "Sleeping Bootie" and 1995's "Bootsauce" didn't fair as well, and the band was disintegrating amid member problems and disputes with PolyGram, which was undergoing staff restructuring. The 1996 greatest hits compilation, "Bootism: The Best Of Bootsauce," was the band's swan song.
"It was never really a solid ending point," Ling says, but concedes Bootsauce was no longer in 1996. The band's last show was a benefit for UNICEF at Toronto's Opera House. "I was quite happy with that ending point."
He left Montreal with his wife that year and moved to Toronto, where he claims he didn't listen to music for the next four or five years. Over the next few years, his wife gave birth to two children, and Ling, whose real name is Drew Thorpe, got into the computer export business. Of late, he worked on some projects with the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) putting computers into schools in South Asia.
"The work in South Asia was very therapeutic in a way, but it wasn't getting rid of the noises in my head," says Ling. "It's very difficult to suppress when you hear music in your head and you can't get it out of your head."
Ling has about an album's worth of material, eight tracks that are in a finished or near-to-finished condition and a couple more that need post-production.
"I'm looking for somebody with some creative ideas as far as marketing it," Ling says. "It doesn't necessarily have to be a major label, just somebody with some creative ideas, whether we take it to the web, whether we license it for commercials, movies and clubs."