WELCOME

After spending the better part of two decades crisscrossing the country in search of musical fame and fortune, C. Montgomery “Charlie” Stuart left the club circuit behind for a quiet life with his wife and cats. But the bug was always there, and with the encouragement of friends and family, he eventually returned to making music, albeit on a more personal level. The result, crafted in his home studio, is a trove of original songs which are now ready to be released into the world.Combining elements of classic rock, pop and rhythm & blues with a dash of country thrown in for good measure, C. Montgomery Stuart's music is a labour of love liberally seasoned with lessons learned from a life well lived.

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My Story

I thought I'd take a moment or two and properly introduce myself so you know what kind of lunatic you're dealing with. My friends call me Charlie and I share the middle name Montgomery with my late father, so my artist name is an homage to him.

I live in the Rocky Mountains of Alberta, Canada, with my wife and cats. I also have a daughter who has three daughters of her own. I was a proud grandpa three times over before I was forty-five and a great-grandpa by sixty.I spent many years running as fast as I could away from certain aspects of my youth and have never looked back. Okay, maybe I have, which could explain why I continually trip over things I would have noticed had I kept my eyes focused in front instead of behind. Seriously though, it would be hard to figure out where you want to go if you don't know where you came from.

Which brings me to rock and roll...

...which I discovered while still in elementary school. As with many of my contemporaries, on February 9th 1964 I was planted in front of the TV when The Beatles blew my mind and triggered my musical aspirations. I was eight years old and that was it. From that moment on, I knew what I wanted to do with my life.

I would run home from school every day to listen to the Beatles Hour on the local radio station. I even cut a piece of cardboard into the shape of a guitar and danced around the living room, dreaming of what it would be like to be on stage with a real instrument, playing my own songs and basking in the adulation of my adoring fans.

By the summer of 1970...

...I was fourteen. Over the intervening five or six years I'd sung in choirs and performed with two of my brothers with our mom on piano in the gym of our school, but now I had finally joined my first band with some of my schoolmates.

Not long after, my parents bought me my first guitar and I spent the next few years trying to learn how to wrestle pleasing noises out of it. I even did a six-month stint playing bass, which gave me a first-hand appreciation for that instrument's fundamental place in popular music.Speaking of my parents; though I'm sure they had their doubts about my desire to be a rock star, they showed me a lot of support. My dad even went as far as to build me a guitar amplifier! Every budding musician should be so fortunate.

From there things progressed...

...until just after my rather ignominious exit from high school, when I found myself on the road for real in an honest-to-goodness professional band touring the bar circuit throughout central and eastern Canada. I was on my way!Or so I thought.

For the better part of two decades, in nearly a dozen different groups, I crisscrossed the country from coast to coast to coast while pursuing my goal of a career as a recording artist. Yet every time I thought I might be getting close to that elusive goal, something got in the way.As often as not, that something was me.I finally decided to call it a day when in my early thirties I found the courage to sober up and discovered that the way I was going, the odds of my becoming the Next Big Thing were not much better than the chances of finding an open-air flea market on the surface of Mars.

By then I had met my soon-to-be wife...

...and we decided to set out on our own road trip to build a life together in Alberta.Once settled in Banff, a place I'd fallen in love with while performing there often during my time on the road, I played for fun with a few friends for a while. But music soon drifted into the background as I pursued the day to day business of earning a living and eventually buying a home in neighbouring Canmore, where we have lived ever since.

It would be more than a decade away from music being the central part of my life before the itch would consume me again, thanks to an invitation to jam from a pair of friends. This time I took to it with a far clearer mind, and before long I once again felt that desire to write and record my own music. I contributed my share to recordings I and my friends made over the next few years, which led to me deciding to try to put together my own collection of songs and see how far they would take me.

Well, they have taken me here.

From shortly before Covid hit and through the lockdown and beyond, I wrote and recorded roughly two dozen songs.This was the most prolific explosion of creativity I'd ever experienced. The ideas just kept coming. I would wake up in the middle of the night with melodies and snatches of lyrics bouncing around in my head and scramble to jot them down and hum them into my phone so that I wouldn't lose them.I initially recorded some of the vocal and guitar tracks in the rehearsal space where my band mates and I got together to make 'pleasing noises', with thoughts of recording them as a group. However, after sharing with them the initial demos I'd put together, it quickly became apparent that this was a very personal collection of songs. With their encouragement, I gave it a lot of thought and came to the conclusion that what I was really looking at was a solo project.

Then Covid 19 hit, along with the resulting lockdown. Which meant that I had to continue the process in what I rather sheepishly like to call my home studio, since it's just a spare bedroom with my guitars, a microphone and a computer.I found this prospect both exhilarating and frightening. Never before had I been in a position where I had nobody to prop me up if I faltered. This was all on me, come what may. So I girded my loins, got down to work and for once in my life, completed what I'd started.The end result is not just one, but two albums worth of music.And now it is time – some might say well beyond time – for me to truly complete what I started and set them free to find their way in the world.

As the old adage goes, better late than never.

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My Music

Full Disclosure

All of the songs were written, performed, recorded, mixed and mastered by me, myself and I. Therefore, if anything sucks, I have no one else to blame.Note that the guitars, bass and my voice are the real thing. The remainder, such as the drums and keyboards etc., are virtual instruments that I 'played' in the computer. I made a concerted effort to ensure that these songs could be performed by actual human beings playing the actual instruments 'for realz'.

I hope I succeeded.

• Deeds of Old

• Shades of You

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Special thanks to:Darryl, Rick, Drew and Bryan (r.i.p.) of The Catfish Riot, for your friendship, encouragement and musical brotherhood.To every musician whose paths have crossed mine, especially Sten and Harry who were there at the beginning. Your influence has stayed with me to this day.To my family, who despite whatever misgivings you might had harboured about the choices I made in my youth, have always allowed me the space to forge my own path in life. I love you all more than words can say.And finally to my wife Sue, who has stood by me through thick and thin from the day we figured out we should be together. You are the ground upon which I stand.

- CMS, 2023