Recently I was engaged in a conversation about how musicians have to be paid for gigs. Having been a touring musician and still claiming to be in the fold, I could not agree more. The recent and shameful “play for exposure” scandal around the Olympics is a prime example of flat out abuse that artists suffer as a result of having hopes and dreams that are so obvious and transparent. These hopes and dreams give all artists a vulnerability which makes them eminently exploitable. The sheer number of artists these days is a factor as well, along with so many festivals and arts groups who are prepared to see musicians (again, by dint of numbers) as a source of revenue by setting up pay-to-play competitions for festival spots and/or other “opportunities.” (I address many of these artists’ predicaments in an article which will be published September 1rst by Penguin Eggs, Canada’s Folk Music Magazine.)
While café engagements are often done on an “audience donation” basis, I think it is important for us to make distinctions between the various types of gigs that go into the making of a strong music/arts scene. It behooves us in this consideration to try to not get hung up on the black and white “justice” that states that remuneration must be paid by anyone hiring musicians or else!
In my mind café-style gigs have their own importance. They create a “scene” which contributes in an entirely different way to the well-being of artists. Firstly, they provide a kind of less formal situation which allows the musician to “stretch,” to try out new material, or, in fact, try out an entirely different approach to their music. Secondly, and more importantly I think, the café gigs are also a crucible for creativity and a place where musicians talk to each other about their work, share a new tune, share approaches to their music, and, yes, gripe about the lack of good paying gigs. The more social function of a café is fundamental to the creation of a strong music “scene” in the sense of the music happening in a strong community and then gaining the strength to be exported to other markets.
I point to two examples…first, the Greenwich Village scene of the 1950’s and 60’s. In this era musicians and songwriters like Dylan, Van Ronk, Springsteen, Hendrix, together with comedians like Bill Cosby and Joan Rivers played the Café Wha??? and the Gaslight Café. These were called ”basket houses” and performers played for the “hat.” They used it as a place to work out the kinks in a routine or simply improve their craft so they could move up to real paying gigs like Gerde’s Folk City or the Bottom Line. And still after securing the paying gigs, “veteran’s” hung out in the cafés because it was a place to meet your fellows, check out the local gossip, and talk about that new recording. Can anyone deny that the music of this place and time did not then spread to the rest of the world? Were pass the hat gigs not a part of artist development?
The second scene I refer you to is the Austin, Texas, mélange of artists in which there developed the likes of Guy Clark, Jerry Jeff Walker, Lyle Lovett, Ray Wylie Hubbard and so many more “Texas Songwriters.” Again, their scene ultimately spawned gigs all around the world for those who could claim to be a citizen of that particular music scene. Café-style gigs were important to the creative impulses of those involved, there’s just no getting around it.
And let’s not even go to Paris in the twenties….
It takes all kinds of levels of participation to make a viable arts scene. The cafés should not be lumped in with the obvious abuses of large organizations who could find their funding from sources other than the squeezing of artists.
On Gabriola we are fortunate to have both a café culture, and to also have establishments who can afford to pay real wages, and they do. We are truly blessed.
I urge my fellows to look at each gig on its own merits. There are no black and white answers in the arts but there are many, many shades of gray.
© Tim Harrison
July/2012
Friday, 27 July 2012
Sunday, 18 December 2011
Profile: LLOYD ARNTZEN, musician, writer, storyteller.
When I began writing stories about performing artists here on Gabriola I was drawn to Lloyd Arntzen primarily because of his performances of New Orleans Jazz once a month at Raspberry’s Jazz Café. There was, however, a second reason. I have known Lloyd’s name for many years as the writer of a song which has joined the Canadian Folk Music canon entitled “Where The Coho Flash Silver.” As our interview progressed it was further revealed to me that Lloyd Arntzen has many other facets to his being apart from his musical endeavours. They include a facility for writing and telling stories, teaching, boat building, and wood working. I got the distinct feeling that my brief time with Lloyd barely scratched the surface of a life that has been dedicated to a path of discovery and creativity.
Lloyd Artnzen’s sense of history seems to be an important part of his nature, and as we talked informally to begin the interview he mentioned that his own father’s history had been documented in a book by Rolf Knight entitled “The Stump Ranch Chronicles.” This book includes a biography of Lloyd’s father, Arnt Arntzen, told in the first person, and another fisherman’s story as well, that of Ebe Koeppen. This book can be found on the net in PDF format at http://www.rolfknight.ca/Stumpranch_Chron.pdf. The book is popular enough as Canadian history to also have been produced as an audiobook and is readily available at many online stores.
Lloyd continued with a discussion of how it was a very valued gift to be able to tell a story, especially in his father’s era before mass media. At that time anyone who could tell a story, oral history, or humorous and/or cautionary tales, was an asset to the community. Lloyd chuckled that the gift of the storyteller is to know what is “interesting.”
With that sense of history and story telling in mind, we began at the beginning with his father’s immigration from Europe to New Orleans in 1907 at the age of seventeen. He landed on a British freighter working as a sailor and decided, because of the shortage of work overseas, to skip off the boat and remain in America. This unfortunately left him with no pay. The only asset he had in hand was a gold watch.
“And if that wasn’t enough,” Lloyd laughs, “he got swindled out of that by an American con-man.”
A twinkle comes to Lloyd’s eye when tells of a recent visit to New Orleans. He told his sister he visited the very pier on which his father’s boat had landed and the very restaurant where his dad had washed dishes for a living.
His sister said, “Well Lloyd, how do you know it was that restaurant and that pier?”
His eyes grew brighter and his response was , “Well it had to be!”
At that point I knew I was at the mercy of an imagination determined to share its own vision and its good-natured excitement and celebration of life. In this light we journeyed through the interview, but not before having a good laugh about hyperbole being a necessary ingredient to telling a story, not just a good story, but a great one.
Lloyd says his Dad lasted less than a year in New Orleans when he got a job on a Mississippi steamer plying between New Orleans and St. Louis. He left the boat in St. Louis when he heard about work on the railways in Canada and came up to work on the building of the Grand Trunk Railway down through the Fraser River Valley. Lloyd explains that all the supplies came in from the east and that there were supply camps every ten miles all the way down the Fraser for about two hundred miles to Hell’s Gate. They built the railway in both directions so that as Lloyd’s father floated supplies down the Fraser to Hell’s Gate, the rails were being built simultaneously from Vancouver on up to Hell’s Gate. The barges from the east were broken up at Hell’s Gate and the crew hiked back the two hundred miles to the eastern rail head. They didn’t have to carry supplies as they would stop at the camps every ten miles or so for food and stop after approximately thirty miles for the day.
His dad was a very enthusiastic amateur musician who was a very good singer and played guitar, flute, and accordion. He had a repertoire of American novelty songs and he also sang in German, Swedish and Norwegian. Lloyd says his father was always playing music with someone in the community and thus Lloyd grew up with music all around him.
“He was very ambitious for me and wanted me to be able to sing. I always say as a joke that had I not been able to sing my father would have exposed me on the hillside!!”
Thus Lloyd was doing concerts from the time he was three years old. He remembers his father driving he and sister 100 miles to Saskatoon to sing on the radio. He smiles at the suggestion that his father was a bit of a “stage dad” but adds, “He was, very much so!”
At that time Lloyd and his family lived near Fisk, Saskatchewan, about forty miles south of Rosetown, between Rosetown and Eston and about 100 miles south of Saskatoon.
I asked Lloyd my favourite interview question about when or if he made a decision to make music his livelihood.
Lloyd explains:
“My father got me a violin when I was about 6 and we had very good violinist living about 2 miles away who gave me lessons. Although I could do it well, as a child, it didn’t hold my interest. It wasn’t until High School that I really decided music was what I wanted to do.”
Lloyd finished his High School in Rosetown where there was no music, sports, or arts programmes. Undaunted, he and his friends formed a band and played for school functions. He decided violin was not a powerful enough voice to play with the rest of the band which contained trumpet, piano, and drums so he acquired a clarinet and taught himself to play.
Given his virtuosity on the clarinet, one might think that he had studied the instrument formally, but in fact Lloyd is self-taught.
In 1946 Lloyd’s family left the farming communities and moved to Vancouver but not, he says, without some regret.
“They fought their way through the great depression and the great drought. All of that struggle was wiped with one single event: War in Europe. And the rain fell at the same time. In 1939 they had what they call a ‘bumper crop’ of wheat in Saskatchewan, forty bushels to the acre. The price was sky high and in a single year they wiped out ten years worth of debt."
“My dad thought it would be a good idea to stay there now that they had kind of got that ‘beat’ and felt they built something up, but my mother was having none of it and was determined to have neighbours!!”
And so the move to Vancouver proceeded where Lloyd’s father got himself a small fishing boat, a trawler, after which he fished for the rest of his life.
At that time Lloyd was off to University of British Columbia to study engineering but in his last couple of years of High School, as mentioned, he had discovered New Orleans Jazz.
“That is when I really began to practice.” At UBC he joined the jazz society and met a cornet player and they played New Orleans Jazz together.
At this point Lloyd harkens back to a story he considers ironic. His father had asked him one day when they were still in Saskatchewan what it was Lloyd was going to do when he finished High School. Lloyd explains that he got very excited and told his father he wanted to be a musician. After his father had given so much encouragement, planned engagements, and driven him to so many performances, Lloyd expected his dad to be overjoyed. Instead he said, “Oh hell Lloyd, don’t do that! There’s no money in it!”
“After all those years!” Lloyd laughs.
But the career as an engineer was not to be, and Lloyd went to work in the shipyard for a year or two and then went to normal school. There he got a teaching degree and began his career teaching music. He later did a stint as a carpenter, and then as a musician (see below) but finally returned to teaching music in schools which he did until retirement.
While in Vancouver, after he ceased studies as an engineer, Lloyd continued to play his beloved New Orleans Jazz, but got jobs singing folk music on the radio.
“It was during the folk music era in the late fifties and early sixties and I had a show of my own on CBC Radio called “Songs They Sang,” It was all the songs the railroad men, the sailors, and the loggers sang. Lloyd played at several coffee houses but he says he avoided writing folk songs at the time –a wry smile appears - “So that there would be no chance of my making money at it!”
He explains his jazz friends and he looked somewhat askance at the folk scene as they felt there was some pretty pretentious stuff going on. Lloyd and his cornet-playing friend Ean Hay began to write witty folk-like songs, the titles of which, as Lloyd explains now, would be “politically incorrect.” It was their plan to foist these songs off on the public as authentic folk songs. Though the songs were written, the broadcasting plan did not come to fruition he chuckles.
“I had another spell on radio and that went 15 years. It was a weekly series designed for elementary school teachers who were expected to teach music but did not have any music in them. It was called Sing out (Like the folk music magazine SINGOUT!). The ministry of education financed it and booklets were sent out with all the lyrics to the songs to the schools."
Then Lloyd would on-air sing the song and teach it to the children and it would be broadcast into the schools.
At the time Lloyd was teaching full time music, doing the radio show once a week, and playing two or three times a week because of the abundance of live music gigs. Lloyd also sang with the Clark Brothers in the seventies, who modeled themselves after the Clancy Brothers.
“I can sing you every rebel song ever written.”
We talked about recording and laughed about the number of CD’s we still had of music that we made. Lloyd talked about the early days as a musician in the fifties when you could go down to the CBC, audition, and if they liked you, you got on the radio. You didn’t even need a business card. Of course these days you have to be recorded and often CD’s by independent artists arethe modern business card.
In 1971 when Lloyd’s father was still fishing and he was approaching his 80’s. He told Lloyd that someone should write a song about when the Coho are flashing silver on Silva Bay. (Silva Bay had been one of Lloyd’s father’s favourite fishing spots.) Lloyd took the idea and came up with “Where The Coho Flash Silver.” “Lloyd jokes that “Silva” wouldn’t scan with the silver” Then I wrote a second folk-like song which was “Take One Last Look Behind” or “Saskatchewan Farewell.”
“I have about 20 songs that I have written. My daughter Holly started to sing the Coho Song.”
In the nineties Lloyd’s son Tom decided they should get these songs down for posterity and they recorded Lloyd’s CD “Where The Coho Flash Silver” with eleven of Lloyd’s original tunes on it.
“I got a phone call from a nephew who phoned me out of the blue who said he just had to phone me up because his daughters came home singing “Where The Coho Flash Silver All Over The Bay.’ I asked them where they had learned it and it turned out they were taught the song at school.”
“I’d like to get out and play my folk music but I would have to practice” Lloyd chuckles, and I have to maintain my clarinet!”
After discussion of Lloyd’s folk music the talk turned to his storytelling. Lloyd recalls a song he used to sing when he and Grant Simpson, stride piano player, toured together. It was called “Born 40 Years Too Late,” a jazz tune. This story of the song in rough terms involves Lloyd explaining how New Orleans jazz came to Bad Lake Saskatchewan via a flood which misdirected a Mississippi steam boat to the South Saskatchewan River and how a farmer of Norwegian descent, Ole Bomstad (the name of a real neighbor) discovered a 7 piece band on the deck and ran to announce the coming of New Orleans Jazz to Saskatchewan…well, you get the idea. The real Ole Bomstad’s son heard this story on CBC one day and was surprised to hear of his father’s musical influence!!. These stories are part of Lloyd’s stage act when performing New Orleans jazz. The band plays in the background as Lloyd narrates. Lloyds’s version of “Just A Closer Walk With Thee” becomes a story song which, in his own words, "plagiarizes" the great speeches of western politics. Salted with biblical references, it is the story of the creation of New Orleans Jazz and the blessing of all clarinet players being created equal!! If that doesn’t peak you interest, nothing will. Lloyd speaks with glee as he references these stories he creates, told with down-home and wholesome humour.
Lloyd says the story telling grew out of reminisces that he thought would make good fodder for a story, and he distributed these among the family. The narratives then took on a life of their own as they found their way through Lloyd’s imagination onto the stage as performance pieces.
He calls his written collection of stories “The Bad Lake Chronicles.” He confesses that he has too many interests to devote much time to writing.
“I lived in Vancouver up until 2006 where I had taught in West Vancouver, Burnaby and in Vancouver” Then I started playing after retirement and was called to play festivals in Sun Valley Idaho and other places with the Dixieland Express from Victoria, a seven piece traditional jazz band. I was still living in Vancouver so I was doing a lot of commuting. The band was playing traditional jazz festivals, mostly in the United States, but there was a big one in Victoria as well. We used to play at Herman’s Jazz club (a landmark in Victoria) and still do. There Lloyd met his wife Nancy who used to manage Herman’s and they moved to Gabriola a few years ago. Lloyd explains that his mother and father had a recreational property here on Gabriola which is still in the family, and so he had been coming up to spend time quite often. He and Nancy found their own home and moved here.
He then went on to describe the numbers of traditional Dixieland jazz festivals, waning now because of aging demographics, but at that time Lloyd says there must have been 50 festivals on the west coast, one every week.
"Victoria was very large and perhaps 30 bands would come from all over North America and Europe. Sacramento was the largest one at the time I started participating. I have played in Seaside Oregon, Astoria, Tucson, Arizona. They were everywhere."
Prior to the interview I had heard much talk on Gabriola about the three generations of Arntzens, Lloyd, his son Tom, and his grandson Evan and I asked Lloyd about it.
“My grandson Evan is a very gifted and accomplished reed player and I gave him his first clarinet and two saxophones, gave him lessons and encouraged him a lot. He became an absolutely stunning player. So then his father, my son, Tom, who is a professional musician in Vancouver, came up with the idea of 'Three Generations of Jazz.' Tom is a jazz player who makes his living playing corporate gigs and conventions playing singable popular music of his clients. Evan, 27, can play contemporary jazz but plays New Orleans jazz with equal ease."
“It is uncanny,” beams Lloyd.
“It isn’t that he prefers one over the other as he feels it is all music and all good in some way or another.”
So the three of them started, but later they began including Evan’s mother, Lloyd's daughter-in-law Georgina, a fully professional singer. Lloyd’s son Leif, who is a trumpeter and lives in Manhattan, and Leif’s son Miles, who is primarily drummer, all get together. For the last 7 or 8 years they have been doing concerts in New York City. They have also played in Europe where Lloyd has relatives who are professional musicians. The last one was done in New York had eight Arntzens on stage: three sons, three grandchildren, a daughter in law and Lloyd together with a New York bass player.
"We do those concerts fairly frequently and have been at the Highline Ballroom for the last 5 years . The event is a charity for a children’s hospital and the gig has approximately 800 attendees annually."
To finish off I asked Lloyd how he got connected to Raspberry’s.
“The Three Generations band played a concert at the Surf Lodge a few years ago and Victor Anthony was setting up the sound. Victor invited me to take part in the Commons Annual Fund Raiser which Victor plays and organizes. I met Steve (Smith) at the Commons event and came down to Raspberry’s to hear the band.”
One thing led to another and Lloyd ended up playing at Raspberry’s with Victor and Ken Capon.
We talked about Raspberry’s Jazz Café on Gabriola, and the quality of music found here on the island. We both marveled at the lack of pretension and sincerity of the music that happens here.
“It’s quite charming sitting here listening to Steve Smith. You look out and feel like you are in a nice little town, but it could be Greenwich Village for God’s sake!”
Lloyd has lived here on Gabriola for 5 years but is still quite busy going to festivals to play and to play in Vancouver where he plays with his band the Red Onion Rhythm Kings, again a New Orleans jazz band.
Lloyd and I ended our discussion with philosophical musings of how a life is lived, particularly a life in music and the variations that can happen. He has accomplished much. He is an avid wood-worker and at one point in his life constructed a 36 foot steel schooner and did a lot of sailing. He reflected on how a path can seem obscure but his advice is this:
“Always pursue what you like. Never mind whether there is a future in it or not, always go for it.”
© Tim Harrison, December 18, 2011
Photo of Lloyd by Marlene Madison, Jazzstreet Magazine, Vancouver
Visit Now On Gabriola for all of your arts, entertainment and dining listings.
Thursday, 24 November 2011
PREVIEW: The Gabriola Players Panto - THE PIED PIPER
(BJ Godson), Rattles (Michael Kirkpatrick), and General Scurvy (Ginny Lowes), while Muddles (Nancy Jenner) looks on.
The Gabriola Players present:
THE PIED PIPER: THE TAIL OF THE RAT KING
This weekend. November 25, 26 and 27 at the Community Hall.
If you are seeking refuge from the cold weather and a remedy for the onset of the winter blues look no further. The Gabriola Players pantomime offering for this season, The Pied Piper: The Tail of The Rat King, will provide your cure with lots of belly laughs and the very therapeutic bonus of booing the bad guys and cheering on the good. Last evening's preview of was pure joy for old folk and new.
The show runs this weekend: Friday at 7 PM, Saturday at 1:00 PM and 7 PM and Sunday at 1 PM at the Gabriola Community Hall. Tickets are available at Artworks in the village, or at the door.
If you are new to the notion of a pantomime in the theatrical sense, there is an explanation included in the programme booklet.
But here is the skinny: It is a pantomime in the British sense...there are lots of demonstrative physical movements as in "miming," but also lots of dialogue in the Ancient Greek sense of "pantomime," meaning roughly a group who tell a story accompanied by music. The panto evolved in Britain to be an hilarious audience participation event where you can show your appreciation or disdain for the behaviour of a character by commenting, booing, hissing, or cheering as you see fit.
Catch this show and be prepared to have a great time.
For further information visit www.gabriolaplayers.ca
Wednesday, 9 November 2011
Linda McRae comes to Gabriola November 26
Linda is a Canadian singer/songwriter and multi-instrumentalist who earned 2 Platinum and 3 Gold records as bassist/accordionist with former Canadian Celtic/Roots group Spirit of the West. Linda left the band to resume her solo career and has since released three critically acclaimed recordings. Flying Jenny produced by Colin Linden (Bruce Cockburn, Emmy Lou Harris), Cryin’ Out Loud produced by Gurf Morlix (Lucinda Williams, Mary Gauthier) and Linda's current release Carve It To The Heart produced by Linda and Marc L’Esperance (Po’ Girl, Be Good Tanyas) have all received the highest praise from reviewers world-wide.
In recent years Linda has turned her attention to the study of traditional roots music, it’s history and it’s traditions studying acoustic blues guitar with Juno Winner Ken Hamm, clawhammer banjo with leading authority Brad Leftwich and songwriting with Grammy winning songwriter Jon Vezner. Her most recent work illustrates this, each aspect becoming an integral part of her songwriting and live performance.
Linda's soaring, honest, vocals hold nothing back. She nails a song to the wall. This gifted singer, songwriter, musician, plays clawhammer banjo, acoustic guitar, accordion and porchboard bass (an endorsement for EnRoute Music) combining old-time sounds with universal themes of heartbreak & redemption offering an intriguing sepia postcard from the past that is vibrant and alive in the present.
Saturday November 26th
Singer /songwriter Linda Mcrae
7:30 pm
$15
810 Canso
Reservations @ 247 8548
lindamcrae.com
Friday, 7 October 2011
PROFILE: Jazz At The Razz
PROFILE: Jazz at the Razz…Rick Cranston, Art Ellefson, Dick Smith and Steve Smith, three Sundays a month at Raspberry's Jazz Cafe.
Late one Sunday afternoon I left Raspberry’s Jazz Café just as Gabriola Island was beginning to experience its first real spring weather. There was a fresh breeze, and the steps of the Gabriolans in the village seemed lighter as they began to feel the season, to once again take deep breaths and to see in colour. I could still hear the jazz riffs as I rounded the boardwalk heading to my vehicle. It struck me how fortunate I was to have my senses raised on this fine day by the beauty and elegance of the sounds of Rick Cranston, Art Ellefson, Dick Smith and Steve Smith (no relation) as they riffed and rolled through jazz standards which echoed in the village square, as one poet says, “like the faint exquisite music of a dream.”.
As a group they play three Sundays each month at Raspberry’s. They play for the pleasure of making the music, earning enough (some days) from the tip jar to pay for refreshments and libation. I was fortunate to be able to sit down with the band individually for a talk about how it came to pass that they met up and began to make these Sunday afternoons a regular part of their lives.
I decided to approach each interview as a fresh slate without prior research so that the band members could set the direction and tell their own story. Details of time and place and how the band came together may vary from teller to teller, but the joy is in the story, and as I spoke with each member I could feel the richness of experience it has brought to each of them.
RICK CRANSTON - Vocals
“Growing up I was exposed to the music in my parent’s home and in movies after the war which were full of jazz music. My parents listened to Nat King Cole, Tony Bennett and others. I absorbed it by feel.”
This exposure steeped Rick in the rich nightclub music of the era. In his late teens he and his friends would cross the border from his native Ontario to New York where they could go to lounges with bands, mood lighting, and dance floors. Rick remembers those experiences with enthusiasm.
But it was serendipity, while helping Ken Capon (a well-known local bass player) to work up a song for the island choir, which then prompted Ken to ask Rick to try to sing a jazz tune. And so, after many years, all of that absorbed feeling for the nuances of jazz music turned into actual expression in song.
“We ended up learning and working up Autumn Leaves, Fly Me To The Moon, and Funny Valentine and others. Once we started we practiced every evening for a month.”
From this beginning, he and Ken got together with Arlene Carson, and Jenna Flor as a rehearsal band.
“This was approximately ten years ago.” says Rick.
“We had that band together for about three years. We began to play at Raspberry’s and Ken had booked us in for ten or twelve weeks. That was the very first gig that I ever did in front of people as a singer.”
Rick says Raspberry's formal opening felt like a huge event. This was owner Roger Christie's opening weekend in the original location a few doors down from the present one in the Folklife Village,
“It was in September and it was jammed with people who were out in the parking lot in a cordoned off a area, There was wine, and Roger served up great food. Other bands played as well, not just us, and it went on for a full three days,”
This band existed in different incarnations with different players for several years. The line-up then changed and became primarily John Capon, Ken Capon and Rick, occasionally adding Dick Smith who had moved to Gabriola. Rick says there was a fundamental shift when Dick Smith came and added his musical expertise to the mix. Then Steve Smith arrived in Nanaimo.
“John Capon had known Steve from the music business in Toronto and invited Steve to come and sit in with the band at a regular brunch gig they were playing at the Silva Bay Pub and Restaurant. John had brought his horn and asked Steve to play piano. After that, as things moved and changed, Steve, Dick and Rick began to do some gigs together. It remained primarily this way with various others moving in and out of the group, but the core remained. “
Knowing some of the history from others and listening to Rick’s own story, it struck me as we spoke that on some level he has acted as a catalyst, though he is quick not to characterize things this way.
I pointed out that he was there as these bands began and that he is still involved. It seems, to this writer at least, that there is something about Rick’s energy, and his enthusiasm for art and artists in general, that must have played at least some role in the gathering of these artistic forces.
With humility Rick denies a major organizing role and states that he feels, “fortunate to even be part of playing with these guys because the feeling is so fantastic. And fortunate that they like having me as vocalist. It is incredible and gets better and better and better as time goes by.”
I asked Rick how playing at this level has affected his own investigation into the world of jazz music. He explains that he is constantly learning new material and discovering new ways to phrase and express himself.
“My songbook has gotten huge. Steve and Dick insist on a disciplined approach to learning the material before improvising is introduced. In the beginning, I would just concentrate on getting through the songs, but this experience has given me confidence and I am now inventing my own phrasing. It is just coming out of me spontaneously.”
More on Rick Cranston and his art can be found on the net at:
http://records.viu.ca/~soules/eng315/fall02/faryna/gabriola.htm
ART ELLEFSON – Tenor Sax
After high school, Art went to Edmonton and Sylvan Lake and then east for a bit, to Toronto, where he studied harmony and took some private sax lessons. While in Toronto Art read ads on the back of Melody Maker, the music magazine, advertising that musicians were needed in England. At age 20, he and a trumpet player friend took the leap and went to seek work in Great Britain. They both found work and stayed.
“Being from North America they thought I knew what I was doing” Art says with a smile. “But I was really just a beginner. I got gigs in clubs and went on the road with various bands doing dances and concerts. It was mostly commercial music but was good training…the school of hard knocks.”
“University didn’t ever appeal to me,” says Art.. “The best way for me to learn was by just getting out there and doing it.”
He toured throughout the fifties in Britain, but when rock ‘n’ roll came in, Art concentrated on studio work. He became a sought-after player for recording sessions of singers and movies of the day.
“I wasn’t really into pushing myself or taking producers to tea so to speak, I waited for the phone to ring. I think I was just very lucky, fortunate.”
Reluctantly Art talks about some sessions he did for the Beatles. He was in on the experiments of over-dubbing in the sixties. It is rumoured that some of his work ended up on the White Album, though Art does not like to discuss this either. He worked often at the Abbey Road studios where many artists recorded.
“In our circles (jazz) you didn’t broadcast that you worked in commercial music.”
“But I would say that in the studios and elsewhere 95 per cent of what you did was nothing to write home about, and the other 5 per cent scared the hell out of you. The London Symphony for instance” says Art, “And other symphony orchestras when they would need a saxophone. Some of the modern composers were really difficult, and saxophone to me is not really a classical instrument. A much different sound is sought in the classical world than in the jazz world.”
Art considers his instrument to be much more a jazz instrument intrinsically. When I first heard him play I was struck by how he actually “spoke” with the saxophone. I asked him when he had a sense of that himself.
“At first I emulated a lot of people and eventually I tried to find my own style which is really difficult. Some are born with their own style and have it naturally, while others have to adapt and learn to express themselves. Original people are naturals, it’s just there. Sometimes something of yourself comes out, not thinking about it, it just comes out.”
“It took me a long time before I figured I had something to say…I was almost 40 by then. I thought to myself, 'I have a vague idea of what I’m doing.' It is very hard to explain and express verbally. There were so many good players there in Britain. You have to know what you are doing, know your harmony, and hope for the best every day.”
“Sometimes there were good days.” he laughed.
I asked Art what he listened to himself.
“Mostly classical. I like the modern composers Bartok, Janacek, but also Bach. I am more into tonal music”. says Art.
He references Stockhausen and says some of the more experimental music he likes but he doesn’t think that way himself. “I like Debussy a lot.”
When I asked Art if he had favourites on his own instrument he replied:
“There are probably a hundred tenor players who at one time have pleased me. I don’t have a favourite. There are so many good players I’ve listened to. I have gotten into a guy named Eric Dolphy who is the most far out guy you ever want to hear in your life, He is dead now, but this guy had energy!” Art says with emphasis. “He and Ornette Coleman, but I really liked Dolphy the best. Mad, he was absolutely mad. But I like a lot of stuff…Basie. I was brought up on Lester Young and Coleman Hawkins, Ben Webster,…I could go on and on and on…all tenor players.”
Art returned from England in 1974 when the music got thin, not wanting to work a day time job there. He had just won a battle with the BBC over being let go wrongfully. He won the case and stayed on, but the experience was unpleasant, and he really wanted to get away from the politics of the business. Art left for Bermuda where he stayed for 5 years in the seventies. He muses that Artie Shaw in his autobiography refers to the music business as “that dung hill”. Art philosophizes that in the business there are too many people interested in making money, not music.
"Yet these people control the business. They don’t care about music. As far as they are concerned, if it makes money, it's good music no matter what it sounds like.”
Art and I chuckled at that great quote from Hunter S. Thompson: "The music business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free, and good men die like dogs. There's also a negative side."
After Bermuda, Art says he looked at an Atlas to decide where to go. He wanted to be near a big city for music, but he wished to raise his son in a small town. He settled on Barrie, Ontario, north of Toronto.
“I got with a local trio and we played a lot in Muskoka. In 1980, when the recession hit, we went down to 2 or 3 gigs a week and that’s when I moved to B.C.in 88. The music that was happening then, both live and in sessions, I just didn’t feel like it was me. I took a course in instrument repair and I began to take playing jobs with my son Lee a couple times a week.”
They did quite a few recordings together while living in Courtenay on Vancouver Island. They also organized music in a Courtenay club through the nineties.
“I worked in a music store for a guy whose attitude I really liked. We made a few records with guys from Vancouver and managed to keep the wolf from the door.”
Art’s son Lee, who teaches guitar at the University, came down from Courtenay to the university and Art followed in 2008. He had not played at that point for 3 years. He says he didn’t miss it, but then when he came down here he heard Steve Smith on the piano.
“I thought, ‘Jeez I gotta play with this guy.’ Then I was really prompted to want to play again when I heard he and Dick and Rick and I went out and got a horn!”
Though that sounds simple enough, later Steve Smith explains with glee the dancing and circling that he and Art did before they finally played together.
Two masters checking each other out. A dance for which all on Gabriola can be grateful.
For a complete discography and more biographical information on Art Ellefson visit:
http://vzone.virgin.net/davidh.taylor/ellefson.htm
DICK SMITH – Alto Sax
“Well, I never made a decision like that, but I always liked music and the first music that really bowled me over was the music of Chopin. Being a romantic little kid, that music just swept me away. And so I wanted to learn to play it. I was also very interested in pop music in the era of Frank Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughan, Peggy Lee and others.”
“There was a saxophone player I heard, and Art really laughs at this because he knew about this guy, a guy named Freddie Gardner. He was an Englishman who had a very sweet, saccharine tone. But he was a beautiful player and it really knocked me out when I heard that, although you couldn’t call it jazz music really….it was a very romantic saxophone styling, He did improvise a little bit around the melody which I liked. And so I wanted to play the saxophone.”
(You can hear Freddie Gardner on YouTube)
Early in life Dick was given piano lessons which got him into the Chopin.
“But also I heard George Shearing and I really liked that. That was called progressive jazz…a kind of a funny term that people threw around. So I got the George Shearing books…I still have a couple of them and played out of them…and I learned a lot of theory from those books, a lot of harmonic stuff.”
“The first gig I had was with the band teacher at the high school I was going to. Our school band had clarinet, two saxophones, a trumpet, a trombone and a drum…that was it, and it sounded horrible. But the teacher took me to a gig and I played at it and he gave me ten bucks! So that really kind of turned me on.”
“I am reminded of something Gore Vidal said when someone paid him to write something. He was blown away by the idea that someone gave him money for something he was going to do anyway.” Dick chuckles.
“I thought it was a great idea to play, but really I just gravitated to it. And it was a real kick to get paid for playing, but at no time did I sit down and decide to myself ‘I am going to pursue this.’” He laughs and says, “It just sort of crept up when I was thinking of something else.”
“So (after High School) at that time I had an office job in Victoria working in the IBM section of the Government. Computers came in and that was right around the time I quit. The thing I told my family was that I wanted to go to university so they wouldn’t freak out that I quit my job. And so, subsequently, I took a year of university in the music programme and you either studied band teaching or performance and I learned right then that I was not going to be a band teacher.”
“The next year, (Dick pauses here to say that he forgets the exact chronology) I was working in an East End club. I met this fellow (Gary) who worked at a club called the New Delhi and it was owned by an East Indian guy. I worked there on and off for quite some time. The other guys in band, however, quit the club to go on the road and so I went to Berkeley. I was in Boston for about nine months.”
“After that I came back and went to UBC again until Gary came off the road and phoned me to play at the Delhi again and so I did. One thing or the other had to go…either the gig or university… and I quit university. So I suppose if there was any real decision about anything that that was it…that I would rather play. And we had a good band. I was fortunate that the guys that I was playing with were good players."
“So I was introduced to Rhythm and Blues music and fell in love with that stuff, on the juke box, and we played that kind of music, and we played for a lot of acts that mostly came from the States. They were strippers, singers, and dancers and we backed up the shows. Some were good, some not so good, but it was all great experience and fun. So I did that for a number of years.”
"I also went to Toronto and stayed there for the obligatory nine months.” (We had joked earlier about how Dick’s life seemed to have been measured out in nine month intervals.)
“I came back to Vancouver and was broke and I worked in a hardware store for a while. Then this guy phoned me up and he said: ‘I’m opening up a strip joint downtown and I was wondering if you want to put a band together?'”
“I said 'OK, what kind of a place?'”
“'A strip joint, he said, “Right down on Granville Street and you’ll have to do the noon show and the evening show.'”
“I wondered who would go to strip show at noon hour. But there were line-ups down the block…I couldn’t believe it! In those days the girls took everything off and so I guess I did that for around nine months and got myself into some upheaval (Dick intimates it may have been with one of the entertainers) and went back to Toronto.”
“One of the nine month stints was in Halifax. I really fell in love with Nova Scotia. I conceived this idea that I wanted to stay there and be a school teacher. So I jumped on my bike and I peddled from Halifax to Truro (about 94 Km) which is where the Normal School was, the school that prepared you to be a teacher. I was about a week late for getting that together…and I could maybe still be there teaching Grade four except for that!” (Laughter)
“When I came back to Vancouver after that I used to hang out in a club called the Classical Joint. I met a woman and got married.”
“I did a lot of solo work as a piano player, a restaurant piano player. The phone wasn’t ringing for saxophone, so I dressed up in suit and went into every restaurant to get hired as a piano player and one guy didn’t say no. He didn’t say yes, but he didn’t say no. I kept going back, and finally he hired me and I stayed with him for a number of years. He would open up a new restaurant somewhere else and he would send me out there to warm the place up. We had quite a nice relationship.”
“But somewhere along the line a friend of mine took me sailing and we sailed into Silva Bay, I flipped, and so I bought the boat off him and the next time I came over here,” Dick chortles, “I was the captain.”
“And so I started driving my truck over here, the marriage had split up and my ex and I sold our house and I got a real estate person here to find me a house. I thought Gabriola was great because it was just a stone’s throw from Nanaimo. I thought I would get lots of gigs in Nanaimo, which never came to pass, but I ended up here and have been here for 10 or 11 years."
"I had known John Capon before. He was here and had quite a few gigs at the time and I found that encouraging. I was glad to be here and I ran across Rick (Cranston) through John Capon and Rick and I used to do some gigs, piano and vocal. We did gigs with John and his brother Ken on bass.”
“But I started getting a fair number of gigs in Victoria, I fell in love with the place again, so I thought I would go and live there. This was about two and a half years ago. I stayed there a maybe a year and three months. I did some teaching on Saltspring and in Langford and played some gigs. I liked teaching one-on-one (as opposed to band teaching) and it turns out that I was good at it.”
“When I came back from Victoria Steve Smith had moved here. Rick told me about this piano player, and we met up and played together at my friend’s place on Mudge (Island). Some trees were down and she needed a work detail to go and help her do some wood. So we got some people, and Steve and his wife Barb came, and we did a bunch of work. I had brought my saxophone for some unknown reason, so we played together and it blew my mind. I thought: ‘What are the chances of a guy like that moving to Gabriola?’ And then, shortly thereafter, Art moved here!”
“When Art had moved here there was no way he was going to play again. He had sold his tenor saxophone and that was it. And then he saw us playing and he got this old alto somewhere and he and Saburo (Saburo Murata, well-known Gabriolan sax player) were playing duets together, just for fun. And so Steve and I and Rick were playing here (at Raspberry’s) and Art used to come down and we asked him to come and play.”
“Sometimes it sounds like Art and I went to the same school or something. We read each other’s mind …it gets quite interesting and good. So we couldn’t turn that down. As soon as we heard the possibilities there was no problem with that plan (of Art joining the group). That’s my recollection.”
“I love to play for people, but I don’t like to rehearse much. Our rehearsals are the most perfunctory thing imaginable. I never really enjoyed musicians just playing for musicians…jam sessions. For the most part I do like to play for people, and I like to play right at them, and I’m delighted if I can think of something really cool and lay it on somebody…it delights me!.
STEVE SMITH – Piano and M.C.
I joked with Steve about the probability that he didn’t gravitate to Bob Dylan. Steve laughed and pointed out that he loved “the Band”.
In Toronto Steve’s bread and butter was the bar scene, the days when live music was in all the clubs. Bands were also hired privately for special occasions like weddings, conventions, Christmas parties.
“You had to be a jack of all trades. That was the thing about the Toronto scene. If you wanted to make a living there you couldn’t be a specialist. You had to take whatever gig came up and do your best at it. And so the guys there tended to be really well rounded.”
“I worked as a free-lance pianist. I’d show up to a gig and not know who was going to be on the gig, but there was a common repertoire of music. Then when things got to be more top 40 oriented, we would clone the hits and use charts. Other gigs, like big band gigs, we would sight-read from a huge book of charts."
“I’m an accompanist I think. I have always accompanied…singers, shows, horn players. And whether it’s lyrics, or it’s music, I tend to accompany what’s going on. I listen to people that I am working with and try and play something that works with what they are doing, whether it is improvised or whether it’s all written out as is the case in a lot of shows.”
I asked Steve if that led him to be a musical director.
“Some several times, absolutely. I musically directed maybe half a dozen shows on my own and maybe a dozen or more, or twenty, where I would work in the band and then take over from the first musical director when he moved on. Doing shows you are accompanying what is going on on the stage. That is part of your role.”
“A musical director once came to me on a gig playing solo piano and he came to me on a Friday he told me he was totally stuck.”
“’If you are available on Monday can you go in and play the Fantasticks for me?’ he asked me.”
“It was the first Broadway show that I had ever done, so I spent Sunday looking at the score and Monday I went in and played the show. I reduced the score, but I did well enough the first show to keep the gig, because I could read. I covered the important stuff which was accompanying the vocalists. That was my first show, and I ended up finishing the run of show.”
“From then on I did Dinner Theatres and there were shows all over the place in those days.”
Steve explains, "There were also jazz gigs to be had at the time. George’s Spaghetti House was in its prime with players like Moe Koffman, Ed Bickert, terry Clark and Don Thomson. Moe Koffman booked that club as well as played there. Moe would work there 1 week a month and hire other bands for a week at a time for the rest of the month. Later Moe became contractor to hire musicians, and he used me for Phantom of the Opera, and Showboat."
“I was a young up-and-comer at the time and got quite a few weeks in there (George’s) and that was terrific experience as it was high pressure. I played once as pianist for Pete Peterson of the Harmonicats. Pete was a phenomenal player on the chromatic harmonica.”
“But then show business became the cash cow for everybody. The studio scene went very quiet. A lot of home studios continued, and a few of the big studios for TV shows, but it was not a real gravy train. The big shows came in with theatres like the Royal Alex, the Pantages and with producers like Livent.”
So Steve finished out his Toronto time as a keyboardist in various shows, sometimes on piano, sometimes on synthesizers or other types of keyboards. He also toured in a full scale production of Showboat in the U.S.
I asked if this kind of intimate playing experience, the kind that happens at Raspberry’s, was something he had done in the past.
“In Toronto what guys would do is they would go to some little restaurant looking for gigs, and they would go and find themselves a gig, and I have never, ever done that. I resisted it. I guess I appreciated my time off (from shows). But here on Gabriola I wanted to play live and I came to Raspberry’s looking for a gig after we had done a Canada Day celebration. I suggested coming in on Sunday’s for a couple of hours. He (Roger Christie, owner of Raspberry’s) was all for it.”
“It has led to a wonderful transformation for me. I have been playing jazz weekly now for 2 years and l've discovered, that much like any activity, regular live experience really helps to build playing strength. One can practice for twenty years at home, but the first time you go out and play a live gig you’ll learn as much as you did in the first ten years at home. Getting out there and doing it is the only way"
"I am a left-handed piano player, which helps my piano playing when playing without a rhythm section (bass and drums). The majority of piano work falls to the right hand, and as I have my own sense of time and like to play a bass line, I decided that I would do the gig without bass and drums."
“I did a couple of weeks with Saburo (see above) and then with Dick. Art came in every week. I didn’t know him at that time. I knew of Art Ellefson because he lived north of Toronto for a while and I had a chance to hear him in Toronto. He came in and was enjoying the music. He was a really, really nice gentleman. I don’t think he had his horns anymore, he had actually sold them, but he used to come and listen. I couldn’t figure it out. He was healthy and everything. I kept saying to myself: ‘How could you ever sell your horns and give it up?’”
“I didn’t ask him why, but I said to him ‘Don’t you think it would be nice to just play a few notes.’”
“He said ‘Oh no I don’t have my wind anymore.’”
“I would counter: ‘Well sometimes I don’t play very much during the day either. I’ll just sit down at the keyboard and get some kind of nice meditative sense and play a few things and just relax and play a few things and I find you know, it makes me happy to play a little bit.’”
Steve explains that then one week Art arrived and said, “You know what? I bought myself a horn!”
“A month went by and he says ‘it might be kind of fun to play a tune.’ I said ‘why don’t you come over we’ll play at my place.’ He said ‘Yeah it might be fun to have a toot, but I’m never going to play in public again!’”
Steve chuckles. “So eventually he actually did come in and play and it has been a real pleasure. It blows me away actually.”
I explained to Steve that the day in the spring I had been so affected by the band was after Art and Dick had played solos. Listening was just like hearing someone speaking in a different language with the full range of expression and telling you what was in his soul.
“And originality” Steve piped up.
Steve talked about jazz.
“There is a force and a creativity about it and it is not lyrical music in a sense, because it’s too fast to sing, but he (Art) is a unique player and has his own way of playing things that is unique to him when he gets going. The expression you used is that it ‘blew you away’ and honest to goodness it blows us away too, that’s really what it is. And to be blown away means to be taken out of yourself where you don’t know where you are. Your imagination is so captured by what somebody is doing…to the point where you should just be probably sitting down because your faculties are being usurped by a greater force. You are being taken away.”
“But to be blown away while being in the role of the accompanist is dangerous. I have to hold myself in reserve. There is a certain amount of me that can’t be blown away because I am holding down a chair there where I have to maintain a jazz structure over which he (the soloist) is performing and playing. So if he blows me away then it’s too bad, but when I notice I am being blown away, then I immediately focus on what I am doing because I want to be there for him. Chances are he is blowing himself away too, and when he (the soloist) finishes whatever that moment of inspiration is, and he doesn’t know where he is, you have to tell him. You have to play something right away that tells him where he is in the tune, just a hint of the melody or something that allows him to say ‘Oh yeah that’s where we are’ and then he can continue on from there and feel the support.”
“I think that I have grown since coming here and working with these guys and have made that discovery. I didn’t know that before (about accompaniment). I mean, I did play weeks at George’s Spaghetti House and maybe it was a little easier when I was younger. But I think even now with the more experience I have had by doing this every week for two years here, that it’s added a layer to what I had before.”
“And Rick. He was one of the driving forces to me coming over to Gabriola. He’s just a natural. He never comes in at the wrong time and always has a sense of where things are and that’s a gift. You can study it all your life, but if you don’t sense where things are naturally….he’s got that happening and it’s effortless working with him.”
Towards the end of our interview Jean Llewellyn of the Gabriola Players stopped by our table to say hello to Steve and he explained:
“That was one of the people from the Gabriola players who uses me to organize music for shows. That’s one of the fun things that I do here. I work a lot here on a volunteer basis but I’m having as much fun as I ever did. The community is really fantastic. I really love it.”
More information on Steve Smith can be found at: http://www.stevesmith88.com
Rick, Art, Dick and Steve can be heard at Raspberry’s 3 Sundays out of each month. Watch Now On Gabriola for shows and times.
Tim Harrison
Oct 6/11
Thursday, 8 September 2011
REVIEW: Eric Bibb at the Haven's Phoenix Theatre - Wednesday, September 7/11
Eric Bibb's concert at the Haven's Phoenix auditorium was a genuine treat for both the ears and the spirit. Son of actor/singer Leon Bibb, Eric Bibb is steeped in his father's New York Greenwich Village sensibilities of the 50's and 60's. He cites the blues as a major influence and, in fact, much of his original and cover material is blues in nature.
The show, a CD release celebration of Mr. Bibb's new recording "THE HAVEN," was also partly the culmination of a workshop which lasted for several days prior to the concert. The workshop, held at the Haven and mentored by Mr. Bibb, was entitled "Spirit In The Song." The title aptly describes this man's work. The performance, indeed his whole stage presence, is infused with a sense of sober joy and of emotional and spiritual collectivity. It is abundantly clear Eric Bibb is there to let his light shine. A song about being connected to all things inspired a spontaneous standing ovation mid-way through the show. Joy spread from the stage to the audience as he traded licks with pianist Bill Sample's lyrical playing. During one introduction, Mr. Bibb referred to music as medicine, and indeed last night's concert was a melodic, healing kind of elixir.
As a writer Eric Bibb is conversational rather than metaphorical. He states plainly the message he wishes to deliver: "Give me the pieces of your heart that are broken and I'll mend it for you." Not flowery, not cerebral, but clear, and to the point, delivered with a heart-felt sincerity which cannot be denied.
Adding to the beauty of the show was the quality of the sound. Impeccably mixed by Graemme Browne, a full-frequency sound scape was created adding richness to the performance and to the audience experience.
To close the show, Mr. Bibb introduced the members who had participated in his workshop: Alyssa Wright (who at one time recorded and toured as cellist with this writer), Don Bray, Ahmad Baabahar, Louise Gallagher, Sylvia Edlund and Cameron Dennison. Dennison and Bray discovered during the course of the workshop that they were actually related and shared a grandfather. Dennison had been adopted, and, in celebration of their discovery, the two performed a song in the concert together. Then the whole troupe, including Eric Bibb's wife Sari, performed a song they had all written together that week in the workshop, "Come On Home."
Indeed that invitation had been extended throughout the night.
Tim Harrison
For more information on Eric Bibb visit www.ericbibb.com
For more information on the Haven and its programmes visit www.haven.ca
Saturday, 27 August 2011
REVIEW: Paul Gellman's Seeking and Soul at the Roxy August 15/11
Every once in a while I have the privilege of keeping my technical chops in form by doing sound at the Roxy here on Gabriola. There are usually great shows to be seen there, and Paul Gellman's output on August 15 was no exception. I had only previously seen Paul at acoustic jams playing guitar and I was also familiar with his early musical adventures with the Perth County Conspiracy. I found his music at the jams to be quite pleasant listening. But this night's performance transported me completely to a different time and place...Paul's piano was reminiscent of great R&B and gospel rolling piano licks, his rockin' band was perfect for the soulful musical approach. The rhythm section, consisting of Paul's son Josh Gellman on very funky bass and drummer Luke Nixon, kept things hopping, while Brad Shipley provided some exciting breaks on guitar and mandolin. A great addition to the band was the backup vocalizing of Tami Blazer whose work was a musician's joy to hear. She watched Paul for key phrasing and matched his emotional vibrations with each song, which gave great power to the music, as great vocal blends always do. The very enthusiastic audience danced and sang along with Paul and were obviously familiar with songs like "Volcano" and "Medicine Wheel."
For more information on Paul Gellman visit www.paulgellman.com
Tim Harrison
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