Aurora
May 20, 2008
Tuned in
By: Patrick Mangion, Staff Writer
Original Post Here

Pete Swann is more than just your typical guitar teacher or music producer. With raven black shoulder-length hair and a guitar collection that would rival any legendary rock star’s, the Aurora resident certainly looks the part.

Sure, his resume reads like a laundry list of musical rhapsody, which includes a past win in a contest sponsored by rock radio station Q107 and a co-written song for Nelson Mandela’s birthday party. He can strum a toe-tapping melody out of just about anything with strings one moment and use his dimly lit basement studio to meld a series of disjointed performances into a hit song.

But when the conversation turns to politics and conspiracy theory, his eyes widen and the son of a Syrian-born novelist orates at a frenetic pace. He is a hybrid; one part impresario, one part political wag.

If you’ve always wanted to learn how to hit that distortion in a Peter Frampton track or duplicate a mind-bending solo by Jimi Hendrix, Mr. Swann is your man. But he will gladly indulge you in passionate dialogue on the new world order, the ruling elite and an encyclopedic knowledge of theories supporting the idea Sept. 11 was an inside job. He shuns nearly all things mainstream following what he referred to as a “paradigm shift” two years ago.

A staunch supporter of alternative media, he has become a YouTube enthusiast, using the popular medium to create clever commentaries poking fun at the status quo. “I like the idea of saying what is never said. That’s the problem: everyone is too afraid to say there’s an elephant in the room,” he said, seated in a large leather captain’s chair, surrounded by stacks of audio recording equipment. A short video, produced with the help of friends, called “Top 10 Signs Your Country Is Going Fascist” was viewed by 40,000 sets of eyes in its first week. All told, he has had a hand in 20 short videos, each sharing a common theme: a high production value and debunking the popular held beliefs about 9/11. He acknowledges his views are not wholly embraced by the rest of society.

“It’s becoming less taboo. Generally speaking, the people who think you’re crazy are the same ones who thought Saddam (Hussein) had weapons of mass destruction,” he said with a chuckle. Aside from a rubber wristband and small black sign in his home studio bearing the same “9/11 Was an Inside Job” mantra, his political views are kept separate from his music.

Primarily working as a writer/producer, Mr. Swann started out as a rock guitarist in the 1980s, touring with rock and progressive rock bands, including State of The Art, Bratt and Dayjob Orchestra. With a jazz degree from Humber College and an engineering background from Trebas Institute, he set up a studio and recorded local musicians while offering guitar lessons on the side. His students have included Rush guitarist Alex Lifeson’s two sons.

He was eight when he first picked up a guitar, a beat-up axe his late father left lying around their Winnipeg home he simply “tried to make noise on.” It wasn’t long before his mother, Ann, enrolled him and his older sister in music lessons. He conceded his sister, now an accomplished economist and graduate of the London School of Economics, was a quicker study. But that soon changed.

In 1990, Mr. Swann won Toronto’s Fender Guitar Warz contest. He won a grant to record a guitar solo project at MetalWorks Studio in Toronto, where he recorded a track called Friction Burn, featured on the 1990 Q107 Homegrown CD. Friction Burn became the theme for Q107’s Six O’clock Rock Report and landed Mr. Swann a job at the station creating rock production music. About 200 tracks were eventually recorded to become the Rock Radio Network music library, used by all flagship stations across Canada from 1991 through 1995. You can still hear some of Mr. Swann’s productions on radio stations in the Greater Toronto Area. He has produced artists since 1988 from his studio Attitude Production, nicknamed the bat cave at his home in Aurora’s downtown historic district.

Artists include Lucia Berta, Jesse Jordan, Glenn Marais, Kate Todd, Jaclyn and Cassandra and a solo CD from Glass Tiger’s Alan Connelly.

His commercial clients include Harley-Davidson, Bombardier, Molson, Piper Aircraft, Country Style Donuts, Magna International, the Government of Ontario, Larter Advertising, City TV and Q107 FM. Several of his jingles have earned industry awards.

Today, his list of projects includes Glenn Marais’ Alive in the Mud CD. Mr. Marais is a Juno-winning Canadian songwriter and an activist for AIDS awareness.
The Like a Child video, filmed in Africa, was featured at the 2006 World AIDS Conference and appears in the AIDS conference documentary movie. The video hit the No. 1 position on Much More Music’s Clip Trip chart.

Another Pete & Glenn collaboration is Don’t Let Your Love Go, which won the 2005 Mix 99.9 song contest. Alive in the Mud is expected to be released in November 2008.

Musician/actress Kate Todd is now in production of her debut CD with Mr. Swann, expected to be released in August.

“I’m so busy. Whenever I stop for a minute, I say to myself, ‘Oh man, I still have 40 gigabytes of music to edit,’” he said with a chuckle.

Pete Swann finishes our sentences:

If I could have dinner with any historical figure, living or dead, it would be ... Alex Jones, documentary filmmaker of Terror Storm.

The three things I’d take to a desert island are ... a guitar, drums and CDs.

My favourite film is ... Terror Storm.

Few people know that I ... write instrumental Baroque-style music.

I could stand to work on my ... time management.

The thing I’d most like to do before the end of my days is ... have an orchestra perfom my music.