Mike Trask continues to solidify his place in our cultural cornucopia as a folk legend. His latest single, awash with all the hallmarks of a Trask song, “My My, Bye Bye” comes with a video that gives a closer look at Trask’s life and yet, somehow, only reinforces the mythology of this quirky and enigmatic figure.
Naturally, in his habitual style, Trask has recorded “My My, Bye Bye” on tape at his Memramcook Recording Company. It’s all part of the ethos swirling around Trask that has us wondering what year he’s living in, but the view of his wood-paneled basement combined with the ’70s jumpsuit fill in a lot of the blanks. His brand of rock and roll is strictly organic and homegrown; none of this filter-tipped nonsense.
He describes his creative process as “finding things by carving away,” and recounts a Tom Waits quote, saying “you want soldiers who, when they get to a river after a long march, don’t start rooting for their canteen in their pack, but just dive right in.”
The song itself is a bit about shooting for the moon (quite literally, as it turns out) as a means of escapism, but learning to recognize the merits of what’s at hand as more than simply a consolation prize. It’s a little bit about a bird in the hand being worth more than the two in the bush, let alone on another planetary body.
“Well it ain’t raining out, the circus is in town, you’ve got something to live for,” Trask sings as he wrenches away on a Honda Super Sport that matches the era of everything else in the video before taking off on a John Deere. As usual, Trask pulls it off in a style that only he is capable of.
The single is the latest to be released from Mike Trask’s upcoming album TV Dinner which was written, performed, recorded to tape, and produced by Trask over the last three years at his MRC Studio. TV Dinner is set for release (both digitally and vinyly) on Saturday, May 15th, 2021.