A Winnipeg soul prodigy who made one album and then built gear

Remy Shand grew up listening to Stevie Wonder, The Isley Brothers, Marvin Gaye, Steely Dan and Earth, Wind & Fire, and in 1998 he started to write and record songs on his own. Three years later he was signed to Motown Records, and those songs became the basis of his first and only album.

The Way I Feel came out on 12 March 2002 and reached number one on the Canadian Albums chart. Two of its singles, “Take a Message” and “Rocksteady”, were released that year, and the record won a Juno Award for Best R&B/Soul Recording in 2003. The album and the single “Take a Message” brought him four Grammy Award nominations.

After that, the story gets quiet. Shand now lives out of the public eye and has moved into electrical engineering. He said Motown was one of the few studios that built their own gear, and that this inspired him to become more than just an entertainer. In his view, modern music has always been dictated by technological advancements intertwined with cultural movements, and he would like artists to evolve beyond the old cycle and get deeper into the recording arts and sciences.

He did not vanish from music completely. Starting in 2013 and running through 2016 a long list of singles appeared on his own label, Remy Records, including “Lust”, “Son Of Night”, “Electronic Flesh” and “Event Horizon”. They suggest a musician who wants to understand how the sound is made. One album, four Grammy nominations and a second life in engineering is an unusual shape for a career.