This is two pictures I took of the same house, superimposed and mixed together. The house is gone now. I caught the process of the trees coming down.
I had a few idea for what to call the album but none were sticking. One day I was looking through my photos and saw the earlier of the two that would make up the cover. Then I walked down the street to the same spot where I took it, and I took another while I still could.
About a year ago my partner and I moved to Kingston, next door to the future foot of the Third Crossing Bridge. It brought a new relevance to "Four Walls", inspired by a story in the news about the demolition of the Indian Road neighbourhood in west Windsor, just below the Ambassador Bridge. The first of nearly a hundred houses to come down in late 2017 to make room for a new Ambassador Bridge was the centre of a big news day, as a crowd of people formed to watch the show.
There's something always sad about a house coming down. People used to live there, maybe somebody grew up there, and people could live there again. In "Four Walls" I tried to capture the idea of grieving a house that's no longer there, but most of the songs on the album share a similar theme: "Here We Are" is about appreciating where you came from. "Wasted" and "Winter Hours" are about leaving Montreal, my home for 5 years. "No Service" is about finding home in another person.
So if "Four Walls" inspired the cover, then I decided the name of the album should finish the phrase. Four Walls and a Roof.
I hope you like it.