With Oldies 93, Mowery takes a nostalgic look back to the soundtrack of his youth as curated by one specific Saint John radio station.
Matt Carter
The 1990s changed popular music forever. After decades of underground existence, an entire culture of music suddenly found itself propelled into the mainstream. Parallel to this rise in new sounds – and perhaps in reaction to it – oldies radio stations started popping up all over North America. So if you were a kid just beginning to discover your own musical tastes at that time, you most likely found yourself in this weird limbo between what was new and what was old, but attempting to be new again. It was a weird time, to say the least.
With his latest single, Saint John musician Adam Mowery reflects back on this unique dichotomy with his song, Oldies 93, a title that references the local radio station Oldies 93 CFBC.
“A lot of the song lyrically concerns growing up, being bored, being restless, and having that Oldies radio soundtrack in the back, sort of helping time march on,” said Mowery. “Musically, it’s a more muscular version of the style I used for my 2012 album St. Joseph’s Mechanical Penthouse, a return to power pop and guitar rock. Lots of hooks, lyrical and musical, and even a coda. At just under five minutes, I believe it to be one of the longest songs in my catalog.”
Mowery’s power-pop approach exemplifies the song’s theme using a sound rooted in the 90s to sing about a radio station rooted in the 50s and 60s. It’s a great contrast that works surprisingly well.
Aided by his backing band The Worry Warts, which includes Adam Keirstead on bass, Jason Ogden on guitar and Corey Bonnevie on drums, Oldies 93 is further proof of Mowery’s admirable songwriting skills and another reason so many consider him one of the city’s finest songwriters.
Oldies 93 will be featured on the upcoming Adam Mowery retrospective Brick by Brick arriving this fall on Monopolized Records. The collection will feature remastered songs from Mowery’s catalog of releases spanning 2007-2022.
