Singled Out: Original Pairs' Star Guitar

07-22-2025

Toronto rockers Original Pairs recently released their new single "Star Guitar" and to celebrate we asked Andrew Frontini to tell us the story behind the song.

Here is the story: Original Pairs have been playing around Toronto for sometime now. We've met a lot of other bands, and seen the live venues come and go. I guess we're on a really slow burn, but the dream is still there motivating us to rock out again and again. The song star guitar is a kind of Proto punk anthem dedicated to all of those guitar slingers like myself who just won't give up that dream.

The song has been kicking around as a riff for at least 10 years. We always thought "wouldn't it be cool to do a real garage rocker in the spirit of MC5 or The Stooges Motorhead or even early KISS?" Something with a real Neanderthal repetitive riff that just pummels you over the head . In late 2024, I dusted off this old riff and brought it before the band. As far as lyrics, I just had this chorus "play my guitar play my guitar ". Drummer Lisa Logan was emphatic that the riff was already protean, the lyrics would have to try a little harder - Tell a story perhaps.

Around this time the band was playing the Dakota Tavern in Toronto fairly regularly, working up new material and building a nice crowd, but it was clear that the club was not doing well. The first sign was that they got rid of their full-time door person. Then they stopped comping beers to the band. The bartender and waitress went from being jaded to downright surly. The only ray of light was the sound tech Raquel, who, along with the bartender is now immortalized in the lyrics. The dream of rockstardom and the death of live music venues became the foundation for a story and the first verse. The chorus took the original ode to " playing my guitar " and gave it a twist. " playing my guitar at the back of the bar, hearing the sound echo around " A touch of delusion mixed with creeping despair. The second verse gets real as I decided to reflect on my career in music and ended up creating a hyper condensed version of my rock'n'roll CV , all the venues and all of the bands I've played in and with, including The Slinks and the Filters with Gord Downie and Sean Penitentiary with High Dillon. If you've watched the Hip Documentary, " No Dress Rehearsal," you've seen me - the a**hole who fired Downie from the Slinks because " we didn't think he had what it took". Well I've reaped my rewards - the inspiration for a rock'n'roll loser's anthem - "Star Guitar."

While it took a decade to write, recording the song was another story altogether. It happened in a mad frenzy! We had recorded our last album OPLP at Lincoln County Social Club with John Dinsmore engineering, and co producing. We were super happy with the sound. Live off the floor, crunchy rock 'n' roll sound. We got word that Dinsmore was closing shop , just as we were preparing new tracks and planning to go into the studio. Booking a last-minute session on the last day, the LCSC planned to be open, we came in with three tracks that we thought were ready. Beds for three tracks plus vocal overdubs all in one day is ambitious by anyone's standards, especially when one of those tracks is "Star Guitar". I don't mind saying it's a beast and it nearly killed us. Late in the day we were really getting bagged so we decided to put a four count of silence right before the middle guitar solo. We thought it would add a little drama, but also give us a tidy place to splice 2 two takes together, should we need to. You see we don't record with a click. It's just not our style. We like the groove to be organic. The click just kills the energy you find in all of our fave old school rock 'n' roll records. It's cool to build the tempo as the story layers up and then end in a blaze of glory.

At any rate we built in a failsafe measure which we ended up not needing as on our eighth take we made it through the version you hear on the record. Jon Loewen forgot his que and played an organ pad right through the break anyway but it sounded cool so we kept it. When we listened to the playback at the end of the day, Dinsmore felt that the guitar solo sounded a little spare and asked if John could lay a keyboard line alongside it. Only problem was that John had gone home for the day and our understanding was that the studio would be closing. Densmore Hummed and hawed and then reluctantly gave us the next morning to do the overdub ( a Sunday ). By some miracle Loewen was free and he came in and slapped down a beautiful tandem part on Dinsmore's vintage mini moog ( that guy has cool gear lying around for days). The guitar line is pretty fuzzed out and the moog complemented it beautifully - it really comes across as one big fat instrument. I let the guitar feedback through most of the second verse and the moog plays along , pitch shifting and oscillating with the Bigsby coloured, feedback in a most glorious way.

It's a bit psych, a bit prog and really carries the pathos that a requiem to the Dakota Tavern requires. It's funny that the happy accident of the middle break and the stolen last session at LCSC really made the track. Oh I should mention that John Dinsmore has yet to close LCSC almost a year later. I guess he felt we needed a little pressure to build the intensity of the performance? Or maybe he hoped we wouldn't come back? I can tell you it's going to take a lot more than that to keep OP out of LCSC - it's the place where you can still make real rock'n'roll! We actually recorded another eight tracks in March of 25 rounding out our new album, "Surface Tension" due out in September. It's 100% click free rock'n'roll with a really gritty psych pop garage vibe.

Hearing is believing. Now that you know the story behind the song, listen and watch for yourself below and learn more here