The Guess Who's Burton Cummings is currently in Toronto working on his first new studio album in 15 years. He initially planned to call it "Double Nickel" because he started it when he was 55. "I am no longer double nickel," laughs the 57-year-old. "But I might still call it that."

The singer and composer of such classics as "Stand Tall" and "Break It To Them Gently" has about a dozen solo tracks that are half finished. He wrote the songs at his homes in Los Angeles and Vancouver Island and began tracking them at Blue Moon Studio, owned by Joe Vannelli (Gino's brother), in Agoura Hills, CA.

"It's a beautiful place and they've got all the latest toys and technology and gizmos and I went in there and I finished all my own vocals and all my piano," says Cummings, who has since finished a few more songs and is at an undisclosed Toronto studio cutting vocals and piano, and other bits and pieces.

"We're working on this new album in reverse. In the old days, it used to be the last thing we would do is put the vocals on.

"We like all the songs, so now I'm just waiting to get Omar Hakim on drums, and a couple of pretty hot bass players are available to me and various guitar players. Jeff Healey may play on it and Randy Bachman and Donnie McDougall from the Guess Who. It's just a matter of scheduling everybody."

Among the new material is "Kurt's Song," written in memory of Guess Who guitarist Kurt Winter who played with the band from 1970 to '74 and again in '78. He died in 1997.

Others songs include "Dream," which Cummings' says his manager, Lorne Saifer, is "in love with;" "A Touch Of Morning," which the singer describes as "very catchy," and "Invisible," which "everybody likes very much."

In 2004, BMG Music Canada (now Song BMG) released a limited-edition CD single featuring Cummings' cover of Bob Dylan's "With God On Our Side" (recorded in 1998) with an original, "Brycer" (recorded in 2000).

The tentatively-titled "Double Nickel" will be his first full-length release since 1997's "Up Close And Alone," a live recording featuring just voice and piano. Cummings hasn't released an all-new studio album since 1990's "Plus Signs." Since his solo debut in 1976, he has released seven original albums, two compilations and one live album.

"With radio being as fragmented as it is right now, I don't know where I fit in anymore in the grand picture of things, but I'll put it out and see what happens," he says of the new album.

"I was weaned on three-minute songs on AM radio so I write with catchy hooks in mind, so this is pretty commercial stuff. It may catch on. You never know. I don't have the same burning ambition that I had when I was 21 because I'll be 60 before you know it, but I'll finish this (album) this year for sure."

Sony BMG Music Canada will likely put it out, according to Cummings. "I know (president) Lisa (Zbitnew) quite well and they have the whole Guess Who catalogue and my solo stuff because it's all one now -- BMG and Sony have merged -- so I'm about 99 percent sure it will end up on Sony BMG."

Cummings would also like to get back into radio. In 1999, he co-hosted the drive-home show on the now defunct All Oldies station KY58 with Gary MacLean, who has since passed away. The stint lasted for three years.

"I loved it," Cummings says. "We made it like old-time radio, a lot of fun. It was all live. It wasn't looped or dubbed or voice tracked as they say, and I was doing about seven or eight different characters -- a British guy, a Mexican guy -- for all the commercials. It was a lot of fun.

"Radio is the theatre of the mind and I really enjoy radio very much and the funny thing is radio is making an unbelievable comeback because of satellite radio and because there's just too much bloody reality television right now, and I would like to be one of the guys who is on satellite radio. You can really take a format and be adventures with it so I'm really hoping to end up there."

His manager, Saifer, says they are also talking with terrestrial radio.

"I have 27,000 cuts in my hard drive," says Cummings, "and I have a fairly good knowledge of the history of music and it would be a show where we would cover all the bases from 50 Cent to Debbie Gibson to Beatles, Stones, Kinks, Zombies, Dave Clark Five, Prince, everybody that I like. Anything that's done well."

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