Cam Salay is no stranger to the business of making music.
The Brackendale resident and musician has spent the past 25 years making music for the masses, touring folk festivals across the country with acclaimed folk band The Paperboys - winning a Juno Award along the way, touring Europe, and settling down locally to play all along the Sea to Sky Corridor with various acts and musical incarnations.
But the talented singer/songwriter and multi-instrumentalist has never released a solo offering of his own songs until now. Salay launches his new six-song, solo CD EP at the Brackendale Art Gallery (BAG) on Saturday, Feb. 23 at 8 p.m.
"A good friend of mine - Steve Mitchell from The Paperboys - is also a producer in Nashville," Salay said. "I go and visit him occasionally and he was the one who planted the seed about a solo CD a couple of years ago."
So Salay packed up some tunes he'd been working on, and headed to Tennessee.
"I had a couple of songs I had hanging around from a CD I produced with my wife sort of a friends-and-family project," he said. "I also had a couple songs that I wrote more recently."
Salay said he enjoyed having other professional musicians working on his tunes.
"It was a great experience," he said. "I really wanted to hear the songs without me playing them. I did play banjo, but it was fun to hear other people playing my songs their interpretations. Sometimes it was like 'Oh, I wouldn't have played it like that,' but in a positive way."
Salay said having such talented players working on the songs meant the EP was finished in record time.
"It was pretty efficient," he said. "We did all the songs in three hours. We had lots of players."
Salay said he plans to take the songs on tour around B.C. and the rest of Canada in the summer, when he's not subbing in for The Paperboys, or playing as a duo with the band's fiddle player, Shannon Saunders.
"We regularly play at the Dubh Linn Gate in Whistler," he said. "Maybe I'll tour the new songs as a duo, or I may get a band. I'm still not sure."
Salay debuts the new songs from the CD EP, titled "Wishbone," on Saturday, Feb. 23 at 8 p.m. at the BAG.
Singer/songwriter Dean Reorda opens the night with an "eclectic set."
"Wishbone" is available at the Eclectic Circle on Cleveland Avenue, cdbaby.com, iTunes or at the BAG during the CD release night.
For more info, go to www.camsalaymusic.com.
