Behind The Tracks: Versa - Artemis (Single) (2026)

In early 2022, Hollas, Versa's violinist, and I were kicking around a couple of bits and pieces we'd written that hadn't made it onto our album A Voyage / A Destination, which was just about to be released, with no real sense of how we were going to develop them into a finished song or songs. Hollas had a short piece with what I thought was a really strong melody, but it wasn't quite enough to be a whole song on its own, and I had a few melodies, but they also weren't really fleshed out yet. In May of 2022, my wife and I attended "Cruise to the Edge", the annual progressive rock music cruise. It was five days long, and we saw performances by Haken, Transatlantic, Martin Barre of Jethro Tull, Alan Parsons Project, Marillion, Moon Safari, LifeSigns, Riverside, and Pain of Salvation - it was really incredible. We got to meet so many great music fans and artists - in particular I was able to meet and make a connection with Ross Jennings, who later sang on Versa's "Flew the Coop", and John Young of Lifesigns, who has been very generous in sharing his wisdom and experience with the next generation of prog musicians. I had one of the most surreal experiences of my life sitting watching Martin Barre's band play Thick as a Brick, and Alan Parsons came and sat right next to me to enjoy the show! It was a truly exhilarating and inspiring experience, and as soon as I got back to Canada, I started writing - taking those bits and pieces Hollas and I had assembled, and working them into a cohesive whole.

It took about two weeks to write the whole 18-minute piece, about half of which was arranged using those existing ideas, and about half of which I wrote as I worked through the arrangement. I always write music first, and lyrics once the music is complete. The two epic-length prog songs on "A Voyage / A Destination" were about journeys (voyages and destinations), one a fantasy story, and one a bit of historical fiction, so I thought it made sense to try a science fiction story this time. I had the idea of a future where a person could buy an old spaceship and fix it up and baby it and fall in love with it, in the way that guys will buy and fix up old cars, and brought in the sci-fi idea of "what if the ship could fall in love with him back?". The arc of the story was shaped by the arc of the music, and once a first draft of the music and lyrics was completed, Jesse, our drummer, who doesn't write much but has a fantastic ear for arrangements, made a bunch of suggestions for adjustments to the music and lyrics to make the music and lyrics feel more coherent and flow more smoothly, and we arrived at the finished song.

The music video was not something I ever thought could come together; it really started as just imagining what I'd want for the song if money and time were no object. When the Voyage/Destination Part 2 album was getting close to being finished, I started talking with Amy Winter, who has been a friend for many years and is a very talented professional concept and video game artist, about putting together about a dozen backgrounds in the style of a classic point-and-click adventure game. I was going to find an artist on Fivrr or teach myself to do some basic pixel art animation to just have some simple elements move around on the background to get the feel of a retro video game, but as Amy dove into the project, she started getting the hang of animating both backgrounds and sprites in this style, and we ended up substantially increasing the scope of the project, and she did all of the animation and sprite work herself as well as the backgrounds. It's an incredible piece of work, and we are all so grateful at the amazing job she's done in bringing the song to life in such a unique, fun way.

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