So you're settling back in your favorite piece of enveloping furniture. Comfortable and cool late night bean bag chair. Sliding the play button on your remote forward so that the new disc by your favorite independent artist is winding up in the earphones on your head. The music starts your face nodding. Great words. Great melodies but what keeps moving your temporal lobes backwards and forwards. That would be the bass.

Now if your listening to some great Toronto indie music ala Kurt Swinghammer, Tori Cassis, Mia Sheard, Starling, or others, those popping tasty bass strings belong to none other than Maury Lefoy. Journey man bass player of extraordinaire. And not only does this man session and gig with all these luminaries but he also heads his own pop rock ensemble known as the Supers.

I have to admit that at the time I met with Maury over pad thai at the Greenroom (back alley behind the Poor Alex Theatre at Brunswick and Bloor), that I had seen him play about a dozen times but never with the Supers. Well sports fans since that illustrious day I have remedied that situation and was treated to music that not only tasted good but was good for you.

So there we were at the Greenroom. Try to imagine if you will the fragrant aroma of the stale beer and the wafting spice of the noodles...

G.F. Kim Hughes, when she was reviewing your album for Now Magazine, alluded to the fact that over the last few years you've been journey man bass player of choice for the independent music scene. What's that like?

M.L. It's great. Just like Lego, it's a new toy everyday. (pause) It's been great for me because I've been able to learn a lot of songwriting skill by being so close to it. I've been able to put my hand in the arrangement machine almost daily in terms of thinking about that stuff. Which is great. And because a lot of these people aren't trying to live up to anything in regards to the industry of music, there is a lot of experimenting. Which is what I love.

G.F. Because your training was in jazz?

M.L. Yes, but I've always been a Pop music fan. It's been great for me to just try stuff. I mean your listening to music all the time and soaking up all of these influences. Like on Andy Stochansky's record which is atmospheric with folk stuff or repetitive stuff. Lots of different influences grooving with each other.

G.F. What was it like working with Andy Stochansky?

M.L. It was great. He was piecing stuff together for the record. That's kind of the way he works. In fragments. Little pieces of tissue paper and he'll say I've got this chord...and he has no context for anything. We sat around this piano and he sang me what he had and then we started to arrange the song that I worked on. And right away I heard this weird bass line that would hook everything together. He's great too because he gets really excited by ideas. He likes looking at things from eight angles and then we'd end up with this cool complementary chaining of ideas.

G.F. How would you describe yourself in the creative process with these people?

M.L. I like to think of myself as the catalyst enabler guy. From my theory head, as poorly developed as it is, I know the nuts and bolts of the music. A lot of people that I'm meeting with who don't have any of that and are just going with their gut and their ear, I can kind of gently help them get to the music they're hearing a little faster. And then we try to make it original sounding on some level.

G.F. Is that always the challenge?

M.L. I think so. For the past three years it has been about hybrids for me. It's about trying to maximize the sound of a couple of styles at the same time. I mean it's not always possible because the melody is the governing source. Some things you just can't glue together, but everybody is a product of Canadian radio and Canadian culture we're all multileveled and we can bring that stuff out and sound legitimate. Instead of you know, coming out with another Patsy Cline sounding record...unless the songwriting is offering some kind of stellar observation. That doesn't excite me. Maybe a reggae band playing with Patsy Cline.

G.F. How did you start playing with all these people?

M.L. It kind of stemmed from a little death of a band. Fracturing.

G.F. When Fall Down Go Boom became the Supers?

M.L. Yah that's the hole where the drummer from Fall Down Go Boom... we decided to part ways. So Graham and I were writing songs at home but we weren't really actively performing. So coupled with getting used to the economics of Toronto and stuff and getting jobs because the initial stardom thing didn't pan out. (haha) Yes.

G.F. How do you choose which projects you want to work on?

M.L. I never hustled for gigs. It always seemed to stem from people who had seen me play. Then they would ask me if I was busy...and that's how I got into Arlene Bishop's gig and Tori's gig.

G.F. What would you be looking for right now to work with?

M.L. Some sort of originality. I don't know. It's a weird thing. I love stuff that's done well. It could be anything as long as it's interesting. There's still something that's interesting to me about rock that is not chugchugchug power chords.

G.F. Kind of a sideline observation is that even though you work with all of these different people with very different music, they all still seem to be accessible.

M.L. That's true.

G.F. I mean you're not doing any atonal...

M.L. Or free jazz . Yah that's a good point. I mean I like to play that stuff too even though I don't consider myself to be a player. It probably stems from being in Jazz school and getting burnt out on the density of some music. I lean towards something that has a clearer melodic chord output. When you get into jazz harmonies and atonal things some people get lost and it ends up being a musicians' experience instead of an everybody experience. (With a rather good English Accent) Well observed Dr. Watson!

G.F. (English accent) Why thank you Holmes.

M.L. (leans into the mike on the tape recorder) Watson send in the dogs. You know how I love the dogs.

G.F. The thing that intrigues me is that they are all really good songwriters. I've always loved Tori's songwriting. It's really rootsy. And Arlene is a great storyteller. I mean all of them. There's not really a weak one in the bunch. What was it like working with Kurt Swinghammer?

M.L. Kurt is fantastic...all about ideas and information. He has a great sense of history. He's a great guy when you're getting into arranging. He has this huge encyclopedic mind when you're grappling with something and then he finds the missing piece in the Curtis Mayfield book. Or I don't know...from wherever. Look here comes John Cage. He's not only a musical guy he's also a visual guy and he also always wants to go for the dramatic choice. I remember recording with Jessica Shoenberg and there was this glaring mistake in the bed track and Kurt said that he though it was kind of cool. I listened to it a few times and I started hearing what he was talking about. Ultimately I think the producer went soft on it but that's the thing about Kurt, I think in the right environment he'll always produce something original.

G.F. What was it like working with Arlene Bishop?

M.L. Arlene is really interesting. I think she would be the first person to tell you that she's not the most proficient guitar player in the world. She's got this great thing by starting wherever on the fretboard. Again she's one of those people who's really original. I think we've yet to hear her voice recorded well the way it is...

G.F. Yah when she plays live it's amazing.

M.L. Exactly. Arlene and Blair have helped me out so much and looking out for me. Helping me find other gigs when we weren't gigging so much with them. They knew they weren't exactly providing me with a princely income so they connected me with the rest of the community. That's what I learned from them the most is the importance of helping everybody out. Sharing information and being giving, you know fostering that community. Everybody doing the do to help people make their music.

G.F. What was it like working with Tori?

M.L. Tori's great. We call Tori the turtle. He's the slowest songwriter known to man but by god the songs are worth it, aren't they? He's funny. He's a very patient guy. He just slowly gets the song together and slowly gets the rehearsal together and everything is going to work out. And you'll be on stage and waiting for the next song and he'll meander over to the mike and then the next song. He's got his own pace. What I really respect him for is how he almost to a fault he considers his lyrical content. Like the excellent songwriting schools. Every 'to', every 'the'... everything has got to add to the song. He's like a highly motivated fiction writer. Writing a song top to bottom. Ron Sexsmith is also like that. Springsteen, Randy Newman. I mean there's an economy there. The mood and the music match. I mean the song can be twelve minutes long, but the music matches the mood perfectly. Yah that's what I learned from him. Whether he knows it or not.

G.F. What's it like recording with Mia Sheared?

M.L. Mia's hilarious. She flits around. She's wonderfully scattered. I remember we were recording and I turned to her and I said. 'Mia, no flaky musician shit, okay? We got to get this done.' Because she would be considering everything...the temperature of the air. Well maybe not that but pretty much everything else. Again I think she has sort of found a place where she is really comfortable in. I think Radiohead was a huge influence on her. And that you can hold a note in a song and you don't need more words. I don't know. She's another person who's aware of a lot of possibilities and a physicality that's working. So right away you have this clear picture. There's not a lot of excess. They're not about the brick wall of their technique. Yah, very original with great singing that some people just don't get it like with Macy Gray. A lot of her songs do these great things where she slows down and gets quicker...a great dynamic wave.

G.F. And then there's the accompaniment of her partner and great producer around town Micheal Philip Wojewoda.

M.L. He's a really good producer because he's a multi-instrumentalist so he hears everything. He hears the whole song and not just the little things.

G.F. You can lose the song in the minutiae.

M.L. Exactly. They create little pieces that when you throw them together they sound neat and clean and cold. Not really music. Too much about the click track and the compressors. That's what I would say with people at least half the time. Is put the machine away. Anyway that's what amazes me about Michael is that even though he's a gear head he can just hear everything and he knows when to work something and when to just let something be.

At this point the creator of IndieVoice and my musical partner Janine Stoll came and joined us. She sat down and we all laughed ourselves stupid and decided the fate of the free world. Talked a little bit about the Supers. Which Maury invited me to check out and I did. It was nice to see where he's going with music and see the sum of his influences.

A rainy Thursday night. Pitifully small crowd considering how good the music was. The Supers followed by rock romantic Neil Layton. And I'm looking around and watching all of these people singing everything and their heads are bobbing back and forth. Some people even have little digital camcorders capturing this event. I don't know how they're filming it considering that their heads are bobbing at the same time. And then of course the blurring of my own vision as I tapped my feet and bobbed my head. As Maury said, it's all about the melody. That's the ground zero. The rest of the song obeys that, and then it's about the exploration of interesting hybrids.

So if you get a chance, look up in the sky. No birds or planes, just the Supers. A quartet of very talented players tempting your taste buds with great songs that taste good and are good for you.