A former Vancouver heavyweight returns to the city next month from his self-imposed exile on a ranch outside of Calgary. Art Bergmann will be back for a one-off show at Richard's on Richards on March 26 to launch Lost Art Bergmann (The Poisoned Sessions). The disc is a compilation built around 1986 demos, many of which were rerecorded for his major label debut, 1998's Crawl With Me. Bergmann was poised for a major breakthrough when Crawl With Me was released, but fans, critics, and his band Poisoned were disappointed with the album, largely due to a perverse production job by the Velvet Underground's John Cale.

Ray Fulber—Bergmann's bass player in Poisoned and manager at the time the demos were made—is releasing Lost Art Bergmann on his own BearwoodMusic.com label. The tracks were produced variously by the band and Paul Hyde, and were mixed by Bob Rock.

“I think it's a level above anything else Art did,” Fulber told the Straight. “These are the songs John Cale heard and said, ”˜I wanna produce.' But what he did was just nowhere near what these are.”

When the Crawl With Me sessions wrapped in Toronto, Fulber recalled, “We grabbed the finished mixes, we headed out on the 401, and we cranked it up. And about two songs into it I look over at Art on the passenger side of the van, and there are tears rolling down his face. He knew that it wasn't happening.”

Added Fulber, “This is the way it would have come out without ”˜the industry'.”