Music veteran releases new CD

July 14, 2016

Noah Zacharin played at the Arlington on Saturday, July 9. Over 65 members of the community came out to see the local music scene veteran preform old hits and new music from his seventh CD Strange Rider.

By Sarah Sobanski

Noah Zacharin took to the Arlington stage last Saturday to debut his new album Strange Rider. The Arlington was packed with over 65 people.

“The show was excellent. It was, in fact, a full house, a great night,” said Zacharin.

He first found the venue while participating in the Bancroft Jazz and Blues Festival. He’s been coming back ever since.

“I love the community. I started going up to the Bancroft area in 2010. I just like the warmth of the people and the sincerity and openness of them,” he said. “Ever since I got there, being a participant has been high on the agenda for me.”

Zacharin has been a singer, songwriter and musician for many years. His previous albums were written while he worked part-time as a dentist. Strange Rider comes now that Zacharin has retired from dentistry to focus on his true love, his music.

“I ended up being a dentist, it was never of great interest to me. My dad was a dentist until he retired so that was part of the reason why it got put in my head. It was always clear to me that it was always meant to serve my music and enable me to work part time and have my own schedule,” he explained.

Zacharin first picked up a guitar when he was nine years old. He said he came home from camp one day and asked for a guitar – the rest is history, even though his parents were not as musically inclined as he was. Zacharin noted that he had thought musical talent skipped at least one generation in his family.

“They were beautiful parents, so whatever interests they had outside of being parents besides making a living were put on hold,” he said. “My dad, 10 or 15 years before he retired, started taking piano lessons on Wednesday afternoons. I went to see one of his recitals. He was technically not the best, but by far he had the most feel of all the students of his teacher at the recital. He was by far the most emotional and I just loved hearing the way he played, the way he touched the keys.”
When asked if his father’s revealed taste for music inspired him, Zacharin said it did.

“It inspired me to love him more, but I started playing when I was nine years old and I never looked back. I was called a musical baby. I always played music when I was a baby,” he said.

Though he is Montreal-born and Toronto-based as an artist, Zacharin has found a new home in Bancroft and surrounding area communities. He’s invested his time and music in the Baptiste Lake Festival, Mineral Capital Concert, Canada Day in Millennium Park, Arts Fair, as well as appearances at the Granite, Algonquin, Porterville Diner, Arlington, Place for the Arts, and the Playhouse.

“I like the vibe and I like the place, so I chose there,” Zacharin explained his reasoning for bringing the release of his album to the Arlington.

Strange Rider features collaborations with many Canadian artists. The record features Ralph Carney known for his work with Tom Waits and Ken Pearson who worked with Janis Joplin.

“There’s a fella named Ken Pearson who’s a piano player, a keyboard player. He is one of my favourite musicians that I knew from Montreal. He came in from Woodstock, Ont., to record with us. I really love Ken, and I was really, really happy that he came on board. He provided some really beautiful stuff on the record,” praised Zacharin. “Ralph Carney [too], he’s a wonderful horn player. He provided some good, beautiful parts.”

Zacharin said the 10-song CD is recorded to feel murky and swampy. Where in the past he has tracked many of his songs via acoustic guitar, this time around Zacharin favoured his electric guitars.

“We tracked a lot of it originally with a lot of acoustic guitar and then realized that the acoustic guitar didn’t work in the context of having all of those other musicians. So we stripped it down and built it back up again, and I used a lot of electric guitar – a lot of guitars that I have here that have been neglected had a chance to speak out and sing out for me,” he explained.

Zacharin now spends time in a quiet cabin off the grid in the area. He escapes to it when Toronto becomes too much, or when he misses the beauty of the area. He describes his home away from home as a partnership that was meant to be.

“The listing didn’t have very much information on it, it only had four photographs, two of which were of the inside of the freezer. It had frozen fish in it, presumably to show how the fishing was good in the area. There were no photographs who showed how beautiful the setting was. It said [it was] ideal for a writer,” said Zacharin. “I thought the whole nature of how it was presented was odd. I think it was meant to discourage most people who would come to see it except for me, because the second I got there, I took off my shoes and I walked down and I sat down by the water and I knew I had to have the place.”

Strange Rider is available on iTunes or through contacting Zacharin at noahsong@hotmail.com.