Two years ago, Ben Cottrill had the seat every songwriter says they want: musical director and main writing partner behind the launch of one of Canada's breakout artists. His fingerprints are on a platinum record. His name isn't on the marquee. Steady pay, real cred, his best friends on the bus — and at twenty-eight, he gave his notice. Not because it went wrong. Because every year spent building someone else's thing was a year gone from his own.

He'd earned the choice. Cottrill was five hundred songs deep before he ever heard one click. At twenty-three his life caved in and his guitars paid for it — most of them scrap by morning. The survivor was a mahogany Martin bought at sixteen with his first prize money: carved up, never finished off, still perfectly playable. So is he.

Now he makes records in the woods on Vancouver Island, and the songs are funny the way funerals sometimes are. A joke, then a knife — that's the house style. The new music is Cottrill going and getting himself back. His name's on this one.