Orphan plugged in to New York City’s Power Station to record new Lonely at Night album

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED ON OCT. 28, 1983

By Steve Newton

“It’s been really good,” says Orphan singer-bassist Chris Burke-Gaffney of the response his band has received on their current tour with Toronto.

“But,” he explains over the phone from Prince George, “in a place like this, where they only have an AM station, I doubt if the kids recognize many of the songs–which makes it harder. So we just go out there and have fun.”

Radio airplay is certainly the be-all and end-all to new bands like Orphan. No matter how impressive their debut album might be–and as mainstream rock goes, I’d rate Orphan’s Lonely at Night pretty good–if the radio stations don’t play it, it’s tits up.

But Prince George is definitely an exception, for in their home base of Winnipeg one station, CITI-FM, has, according to Burke-Gaffney, “played it so much everybody got sick of it.” And on the strength of the single “Hello”, Lonely at Night has hit number three on the charts in Buffalo, New York.

So it would appear that some people are willing to adopt Orphan, a band made up of Burke-Gaffney, guitarist Steve McGovern, keyboardist Brent Diamond, and drummer Ron Boisvenue. All the members, except McGovern, who’s 23, are 26 years of age. And though Burke-Gaffney is the lead singer, all the others provide background vocals–always a plus in concert.

Guitarist McGovern, a native of Kelowna, B.C., is the only Orphan who didn’t also play in the Pumps, a popular Winnipeg band that released an album, Gotta Move, in 1979. The group, which Burke-Gaffney describes as “a combination of heavy rock and new wave”, sold 35,000 copies of its debut album on PolyGram, and performed in Vancouver at both the Outlaws cabaret and Gary Taylor’s Rock Room.

But then things started to go stale.

“We wanted to start something new,” says Chris, “and go in a little heavier direction. We had a couple of personnel changes, and then we saw Steve in a band out in Winnipeg called the Orphans. We thought he was really good, so we got together, and it was magic!”

Magic might be a little too strong a word to describe Orphan, for nothing they concoct on Lonely at Night hasn’t been similarly done by a thousand bands before them. But perhaps what McGovern did bring to the band was inspiration and drive, for his flashy guitarwork is surely a major asset.

Lonely at Night was recorded at the Power Station in New York City, but one wonders whether a Winnipeg band would have had to go all the way to the Big Apple to make a record. Wouldn’t there be ample studio cites in Toronto or Montreal? Or Vancouver, for that matter?

“The American parent of the record company, Portrait, wanted to be really close to the project,” explains Burke-Gaffney. “And the producer, Tony Bongiovi, he owns the Power Station.”

Bongiovi also turned out to be somewhat of a dictator in the studio.

“If you want to change something you have to know a couple of All Star Wrestling holds,” says Chris with a laugh.

So what inspired Burke-Gaffney, who wrote or cowrote all of the songs on Lonely at Night, to put pen to paper?

“Royalty cheques,” he says straightaway. But there is actually a little more to it than that. One of the songs, “Miracle”, is a plea for compassion in the nuclear age.

“What I was trying to say in that song is ‘Look around at how everything that’s natural is so perfect–let’s not ruin it.’ ”

A nice message. And one that rock songs too rarely deal with. Maybe there is something magic about Orphan after all.