Northern gothic: Bob Wiseman and the SKS theme song

​Bob Wiseman's studio is a small, windowless, fluorescent-lit room, located in the Tranzac Club in Toronto.The walls are covered with letters, concert posters and newspaper clippings. Plastic milk crates are used as shelves. And on any given day, the sound of live traditional Irish music or avant-garde jazz can be heard from the community spaces below.

"There are a lot of people in the world of production and audio who would be freaked out by this place, who would think it's totally unprofessional," said Wiseman.

"People mistake the ship for the cargo all the time. But do you have the content? Did you write something that's powerful? If so, it doesn't matter where or how you record it."

If you don't know Bob Wiseman, you definitely know his work. A founding member of Blue Rodeo, Wiseman has five Juno Awards to his name. Now, he's a prolific producer and solo artist, when he's not scoring music for film and television.

Wiseman, who has collaborated with SKS host David Ridgen on film projects in the past, was asked to create a song that reflected the unique mood of the show — intimate, unsettling, heartfelt and just a little bit scary — a tone that might best be described as northern gothic.

In fact, Wiseman wrote three themes for SKS.

"When I work for people, when I'm a hired gun, I try to make a bunch of different things and fine tune it from there," he said.

"If you give people choices, then there's a lot of opportunity to have conversations about what they like and what they don't like."

One of the alternative theme songs had more of a pop feel, with keyboard arpeggios, strings, and a sort of theremin-sounding synth wave washing over everything to give it a spooky feel.

The second option contained a suspenseful, wandering baseline, with a texture of digital distortion that sounded like distress calls from the bottom of the sea.

The third option — the one finally chosen as the SKS theme — had more of a country/blues vibe, with a simple staggering drum beat, chimes, a twangy lap steel guitar and oboe undertones.

Wiseman built the song out of textures sampled from his production of Jess Reimer's album, The Nightjar and the Garden.

He then wrote a new melody and new lyrics:

I will never stop, my love,
I will never sleep
Something here is precious
A memory I keep

I will never stop my love,
I will never sleep,
all I want is an answer
to this mystery we keep

Maybe one day we will all
Look out on the sun
and know a light that shines the truth
on our loved ones

Vocals were provided by the wonderful Mary Margaret O'Hara, a Canadian musical legend in her own right.

"She's kind of unlike any singer than I've ever known," said Wiseman, who's worked with O'Hara in the past.

"She doesn't learn the melody and then sing the words, she's a really highly accomplished improviser, she fuses with the thing."

"It's kind of like you're entering a science fiction movie when you hit record and Mary Margaret is in front of the microphone, because there's this fascinating, electric, emotional thing that happens," he added.

Jess Reimer provides backing vocals. As does Katasha Andrea, a student of Wiseman's at Centennial College. Wiseman plays all of the music.

But if you listen closely, you might be able to make out the eccentric sounds of his closet-like studio at the Tranzac Club — a wayward fiddle or flute — wandering into the track like a ghost of music's past, a long suppressed memory, a mystery we keep...