BREAK OF DAY, SONGS FOR COLIN
RELEASING: Nov. 1, 2024; copyright Sandra Bell 2024
Sandy Bell’s new album, Break of Day, Songs for Colin, produced by Andrew Collins (5 JUNO nominations/7 Canadian Folk Music Awards; Foggy Hogtown Boys/Creaking Tree String Quartet) was born out of heart-wrenching grief after losing her only son Colin Bell in a tragic train accident at age 20.
While Sandy has sung and written music as a self-described “naive songwriter” for much of her life and co-founded a successful country roots band, The Wanted, for decades she was devoted to raising her boy and professionally promoting other music artists dreams. But she kept her own dream alive to someday release a solo album.
While it took retiring and moving to Nova Scotia for Sandy to finally release her debut solo record, Break of Day, Songs For Colin, at age 63, this was never the album she imagined recording.
Her new collection of songs charts a journey none should ever have to take of recovery and preservation – recovering memories of the life she shared with Colin and preserving some of these in song – and Break of Day, Songs For Colin delivers this. With most of the songs written after Colin passed away, we find an outpouring of love through loss, parental adoration, and acquiescence from despair. Sandy says they helped her emerge from “an abyss of grief.”
Sandy Bell may be best known for her pioneering fight to protect her natural garden which she grew on behalf of her son in The Beaches, Toronto, and her oft-cited precedent-setting court victory under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms that equated freedom of expression with religious freedom for the first time.
Her debut solo album offers 10 original songs and a plaintive version of Hank Williams’ I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry. On the bluesy title track Break of Day, she sings: “I don’t know how to be here without you; I don’t know how to be here alone. Everything I had you took it all with you. This house is no home, just some walls I don’t own. And in the song By Heart she sings: “I love you like a river loves rain; I need you like blind men need vision and beggars have something to gain. I know you, I know you, I know you by heart.” Her tender song We Praise the Day recounts her gratitude for “the day our lives came together…” and ironically praises “the time we had to come undone.”
Break of Day, Songs for Colin, was released to major streaming platforms on November 1, 2024, and features some of Canada’s finest alt rock, roots, country, and bluegrass musicians: the fiery and charismatic Champagne James Robertson (Moonriivr, The Liberty Choir) on lead electric guitar, virtuoso John Showman on fiddle (New Country Rehab; Foggy Hogtown Boys; Lonesome Ace Stringband), Blair MacKay on drums (April Wine; The Array Ensemble), Burke Carroll (The Brothers Cosmoline; Bebop Cowboys) on pedal steel guitar, and Richard Henderson (The Wanted) on lap steel.
Sandy wants people to know that her son, Colin Bell Pimentel – who received treatment for a mental health illness that struck when he was 17 and which doctors declared resolved by the time of his death – was a gifted drummer, tennis pro, poet, and grafitti artist. “He shone a light everywhere he went. Colin was caring, kind, wise and fun. Everyone loved him – especially the girls, elderly people and children”, but none more so than his parents. “His heart was wide open, and he’d always say “peace out” when leaving. He had a quick wit, and an enduring innate sense of justice that we should all just do the right thing by ourselves and by others. He remains an inspiration to us all.”
Sandy hopes that her songs will bring comfort to others who have lost someone they love and help them through their darkest hours.
MEDIA CONTACT:
Beverly Kreller
Publicist | SPEAK Music
o: 416-922-3620
ALBUM CREDITS
Sandy Bell - lead vocals
John Showman - fiddle
James Robertson - electric guitar
Richard Henderson - lap steel
Burke Carroll - pedal steel
Blair Mackay - drums
Paul Mathew - bass
Andrew Collins - mando, cello, guitar
Kristin Cavoukian - backup vocals
Max Heineman - backup vocals
Sofia Harwell - backup vocals
Darin Perise - banjo
All songs written by Sandy Bell *except I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry, written by Hank Williams
Produced, engineered, mixed & mastered by Andrew Collins
Dedicated in loving memory to Colin Earl Bell (1987-2007)
Released Nov. 1 2024; copyright Sandra Bell
