We said goodbye to Richard Laviolette today.

Richard was in touch with a deep magic, a deep, brave, river of song. He was a beautiful, kind, funny person. I don’t separate those things. He was my friend.

Richard was the first artist we worked with at YC, outside of our immediate founding circle. I had played shows a few times with Richard and loved his “A Little Less Like A Rock…” CD. It was beautiful and mysterious and intimate, in its hand sewn sleeve, its depiction of ants and universes and neighbourhoods and alphabets. When he gave me a CDR of All Of Your Raw Materials at a house show in Guelph, I loved it instantly. This is a defining album for me, a lesson in love and courage and community. It is an album for life.

Everything I can think to say today about love and loss and the way to celebrate life through music, Richard has said in one of his songs. They burst with life and mortality, with guts and glory, with love, justice, honesty, and a beautiful mischief. These songs were expressions of the particularities of Richard’s life and his voice, and they were songs that found embodiment in that particular body, and in his voice, but they always, magically, transcended these specifics. It’s been beautiful to hear his songs picked up by other voices. At the tribute show in Guelph last week Cormac thanked Richard for sharing his living with us and for sharing his dying with us. This is a profound gift.

Thank you for sharing your songs with us Richard, thank you for your voice. Thank you for your joy and your grace. Thank you for your friendship.

We had the great honour of releasing two of Richard’s albums on YC, All Of Your Raw Materials in 2010 and Taking The Long Way Home in 2017. There is another, final record forthcoming, a last record Richard worked to complete in these past months: All Wild Things Are Shy. Much of Richards other work has recently been uploaded to his Bandcamp Page. Hollow Hooves, Soundtrack To The Life of A Car, A Little Less Like A Rock A Little More Like A Home, and more. Here’s the link.

Our love to all who loved him. Sing loud. Sing together. That’s how we do it, i think, that’s how we can do it.

We love you Ricky.

– Steve

“Following the onset of Huntington’s Disease symptoms this past fall and their rapid worsening since May, Richard chose to receive MAiD (Medical Assistance in Dying), and he died peacefully this evening on September 5.”

Photograph by Colin Medley.

In 2010 You’ve Changed Records released a record called All Of Your Raw Materials by Richard Laviolette and The Oil Spills. It’s a very special record, a rare, raw bit of truth telling, elegant in it’s melodic structure, elevated by warm and worn-in acoustic arrangements and plenty of space to sing along. (It’s out of print now but remains available on our Bandcamp page). All Of Your Raw Materials never won any awards and never topped any charts that I know of, but it’s a record that has been loved deeply by the people that have heard it; it’s attracted artists to our door, artists we’ve since worked with who loved Richard’s beautiful, honest songs and then saw a place for themselves in our community. And in the years that have passed, as much as I’ve been asked anything, I’ve been asked when Richard would be releasing another record.

So, it’s with great pleasure that I can announce the release, on March 10, 2017, of Taking The Long Way Home by Richard Laviolette. Following in the musical footsteps of his earlier, beloved album, Richard has delivered an open, graceful, powerful collection of songs, stark in their acceptance of illness and death, and profound in their celebration of family resilience, generational knowledge, and communion.

Taking The Long Way Home was conceived as a collaboration between Richard and his guitar playing father, Darrell Laviolette. Darrell was ultimately unable to participate in the recording due to his responsibilities as a caretaker for Richard’s mother, Marie (who had Huntington’s Disease), but this initial concept set the tone for the rest of the album: intimate, personal stories, marked by remarkably observed details and deeply compassionate understanding: songs “full of grief and praise; a story we all know”, as he sings on ‘Yesterday’s Gospel.’

Credit Richard’s natural grace as a person and skill as a songwriter that the album is so full of life and so uplifting. “Whether it takes guts or glory, I won’t die here feeling sorry” he sings on ‘Someone To Tell My Story When I’m Gone.’ And credit his collaborators that the album is so rich and rough and ready. Produced with Andy Magoffin, Taking The Long Way Home features Lisa Bozikovic on piano, Matthew Reeves on lead guitar, Jessy Bell Smith (Skydiggers) on vocal harmonies, Julia Narveson (Ever Lovin’ Jug Band, Lake of Stew) on fiddle and double bass, Aaron Goldstein (Cowboy Junkies, Bry Webb, Daniel Romano) on pedal steel, Heather Kirby (Ohbijou, Vag Halen) on electric bass, and Aaron Curtis (Two-minute Miracles) on drums.

Please listen to the title track ‘Taking The Long Way Home:’

Richard Laviolette – Taking The Long Way Home
(YC-029 LP/CD/Digital)

Grey Rain
Two Guitars
Someone To Tell My Story When I’m Gone
Louella Austella
Old Country Music
Taking The Long Way Home
Red-winged Blackbird
The Rock and The Moss
My Grandma’s More Punk (Than Most Punks I Know)
Yesterday’s Gospel
You’ve Really Got Me On The Run

Preorders of are available in our mail-order shop. (And if you’ve already pre-ordered our other March 10th release, Jon Mckiel – Memorial Ten Count, and would like to add Taking The Long Way Home to your shipment please contact us and we will assist you in reducing shipping costs.)