Bob's Soundtrack : bs2007

My Back Pages - Rankin Street and other roots of GBS

Sat, 22 Dec 2007 19:21:00 GMT

My years with Sean (and many, many others) in Rankin Street have been romanticized a bit over the years. I have often regretted describing those years as ‘our apprenticeship in St. John’s rowdy dockside pubs’ in an early bio. It makes it all a bit too casual and rough and ready. And like anything else, the truth is somewhere in between.

In a way, though, we had no one to blame but ourselves. It is a bit embarrassing, but a lot of the craziest stories are true. Pubs were dodgier here twenty years ago. People drank earlier, drank more, and drank harder. Rock bands were out of favor, but the traditional scene was thriving, and we went at it full on. There were so many alcohol-fueled indulgences that sometimes it seems like an extended five-year dream We really did get into fist-fights onstage; sometimes with each other - more than once with the audience. Jeff Scott, Sue from Gander, Jackie, Fiddler, Heidi and another half dozen characters really did pass through the band. We really did swap instruments at random points during boring shows, (whether one knew how to play them or not). We really did lug the gear up and down George Street for three-show St. Patrick Days, and play seven nights straight for weeks on end, our voices bloody rags. Going straight from the pub to a final exam was routine, as was getting your whole night’s sleep ration after sound check, in the back of a car parked under the bar windows. We really did buy a large and complicated PA system on a whim one fall afternoon, and then set it up and played through it that night, despite having no idea how it even turned on, not too mention how to mix live audio. We really did produce our own series for local cable, without even having so much as a conversation about what we were going to do for half an hour a week. We played so well some nights that everyone there was transfixed, and remembered it like their high school prom - and we played so badly other nights that the bar emptied before our eyes. We really did give away some 1000 beers, right off the stage, during our farewell performance. We really did an entire show where we played ‘Lukey’ every third song, just to see if anyone would notice. We really did…and on and on it goes.

But mostly, we learned how to do this. We learned how to stand on a stage and be unafraid, no matter who was in front of you. We learned how to keep going, even if everything broke, we forgot all the words, or we suddenly acquired a world-class case of hiccups. We learned how to play when we were exhausted, enraged, loaded, when we could not hear a thing, when there was no room, when all the strings were gone, when we had no monitors, when someone was leaning on you, shouting the wrong words in your ear, or when you were trying not to spew after an unwisely accepted triple shot of Black Sambuca.

I spent years fighting with my instruments, trying to make things sound bigger and louder without also sounding like shitty electric guitars. Three different mandolins led to a mandola, and then my first bouzouki. It was a Greek model, better suited to the wall of a taverna, and it sounded so bad the band threatened to quit if I insisted on playing it. A series of fiddles all sounded wretched, with pickups that sounded like transistor radios. Once, I actually ripped an accordion in two, and I pitched dozens of cheap tin whistles into the crowd, vexed with their shrill tone. It took us til well into Great Big Sea before we got gear that was fit to actually use night after night.

Half the problem was the lack of decent models. Lots of guys played accordion around here, but only a handful had grappled with playing in high-volume situations. Most just used whatever microphone was available, and got used to the shit sound. Fiddlers, even the good ones, usually sounded terrible. No one really played the bouzouki much then.

Gradually we found decent pick-ups, and learned how to close-mic the accordion and the bodhran so they would not howl with feedback. In the early GBS days we acquired the first versions of the vastly superior Takamine guitars we still lay live. Sean discovered the Sausudo whistles, the whistle that made it possible to actually play the bloody things live. And in 1995 Alan and I bought our first bouzoukis. We used mediocre mandolin and guitar pickups for a while, until John Littler at Headway in the UK made us decent custom jobs. Then we had a bigger problem - what to play. We ended up evolving into two very different styles. Alan is primarily a guitar player, so he favours a rhythmic and chordal approach. For me, it was a just a big mandolin. Also, I knew the flowing melodic style of Donal Lunny and Andy Irvine - the guys who pretty much invented Celtic bouzouki. Mind you, their style didn’t really work for us. We needed a different sound anyway; the lyrical soft picking Lunny approach did not work at all with GBS’s power.

Turn was the first album where we really figured out how to use the bouzoukis. Alan’s style can be heard very clearly on Jack Hinks - his bouz carries the rhythm, a tight, direct strum pattern that holds the whole track together. We needed something different from me - I needed to be able to play pop hooks, but at the same time keep the sound essentially acoustic and folksy. The answer came from the Birds, half-heard on the radio. It was one of those ‘eureka’ moments. Have a listen to their ‘My Back Pages’, and then ‘Consequence Free’. The rest should be obvious.

Mailbag

Thu, 22 Nov 2007 14:36:00 GMT

Taking a macro look at this journal, which I have been keeping for well over a year now, a couple of broad themes seem to have emerged, at least if one is judging anything by the number of comments various topics have generated: for example, the more intellectual and argumentative I am, the more people are bored and uninterested. Conversely, the more revealing the anecdote (from a GBS perspective), and the more “in character” I write, the more popular the entry. This is not really a surprise; attempts at taking ourselves seriously have never been to our advantage. To quote my friend Ken, then, “dance with the one who brung ya…”.

Therefore, here are some replies, to those entries that caught my (at best) limited attention:

The Moody Blues - It was interesting that a number of people saw this piece as an attack of hippy values; on the contrary, I was trying to express something many Gen X’rs like myself have commented on - the envy we feel for people who grew up in era of limitless possibility. Seen from the depression that gripped the Newfoundland of my youth, bands like the Blues seemed to have lived in a world as foreign as Robin Hood’s. And I rather envied them for it.

Fly By Night - Fly By Night…Fly At Night….yadda yadda yadda. The urge people have to correct a very minor error never ceases to amaze me. When I ws a TV guide editor, I almost got fired one Monday, after 11 of our faithful readers called, one after another, to hurl abuse at me. Their complaint? Our listings had the People’s Choice Awards ending a half hour earlier then they actually did. All 11 had set their VCRs for the wrong time, and missed the last half hour. I was professionally sympathetic to the first few, but after an hour of that foolishness, I told the last caller to “*** off and get a life”. My boss was sympathetic, and in fact laughed when the irate customer then called him, but felt obligated to suspend me on principal. Quite frankly, I would do the same now.

Max Webster/Simani - My analysis of the odd career of Simani went over fairly poorly; perhaps it was a bit toooo local? Too bad, I thought about that one a lot. Ah well. The Max Webster piece was a bit more popular, though one thing is clear - no one else has a clue what the song is about either.

All The Small Things - I was delighted to see 41 responses to this rather rambling piece linking Blink 182 to the Voice Squad - until I discovered that my ‘Comments’ had been co-opted by some sort of Spambot. Not necessarily a bad thing - perhaps those seeking cheap Viagra and whatnot will instead benefit from some sharp self-satire and dazzling metaphors?

Steve Miller - The reaction to this one felt a little like the sort of discussion that goes on in Star Trek boards. I definitely touched a nerve with the vinyl fans. A couple even went so far as to go into rather elaborate explanations of why digital music pales in comparison to analog. I found that rather touching, actually. I mean, I know the difference; I am old enough to have listened, and recorded, in both worlds. I just thought it was too boring to go into in any detail. Not so for the defenders of analog. Burn those CD players, trash your I-Pod! Vinyl rules!

Frank Maher & Folk Festivals - See intro.

The Verve - OK, I get it. More crazy road stories which include madcap incidents, clever capers and harebrained japes involving the band. Well, actually, now that you mention it, there was this time with Murray, a roadie, three lesbian nuns and a blender….

Jethro Tull - I think we can all agree now that high school sucked, (or sucks). I have now firmly got this out of my system, and I promise never to speak of it again. Oh, what’s that? Facebook you say? *** me. Once more into the breech!

Mother Goose/Aqualung Jethro Tull

Tue, 30 Oct 2007 23:36:00 GMT

This one has been delayed for a while - five straight weeks of serious GBS studio days made it hard to even think about music, not to mention write about it. I started this a while ago, but only recently got a chance to finish it.

One of the dominant themes of this journal has been how the songs of my youth have been filtered into my current playing and performing. Time and time again I have commented on how pleasant it is when these songs still connect. By way of contrast, here is one that didn’t.

Jethro Tull is one of those bands that has never been cool. Even their hay-day they were a bit of a sideshow, never favoured by critics, and never widely popular in the hit parade, but nonetheless they developed a wide audience, and were very successful in their understated way - as folk oriented bands often are.

I loved the album ‘Aqualung’ when I first heard it. Ian Anderson’s rambling poetry, the vaguely traditional guitar and flute based melodies, the unusual riffs of songs like Cross-Eyed Mary - it was right up my alley in my high school ‘blue period’. A particular favourite was Mother Goose. The flute hook, which wraps itself around a complex guitar sequence, was particularly brilliant. I remembered it fondly, so much so that I have consciously recreated it a dozen times - compare it to GBS songs like ‘The Mermaid’ or ‘Gideon Brown’ for obvious examples. I was hoping for some pleasant nostalgia when I bought the album again, almost 20 years after I first heard it.

Unfortunately, it was rather disappointing. The sound was as flat as a board, the clever lyrics now seem absurd, and the band is both loose and uninspired. The clarity of the re-mastered CD sound does not help any of this; instead, it just underlines how wobbly their concept album theory was. The flute hook in ‘Mother Goose’ is still a good idea, but that was as far as it goes. One listen was enough. Instead of inspiring a happy reverie, I felt like I had just discovered a poem I'd written after a Grade 10 break-up. It was all a bit embarrassing.

Like everyone else, I have my closet full of high school obsessions and passing fancies - the Lemmy-inspired cowboy boots which almost crippled me, an all hot-dog diet, Tolkein, my Traynor 250 watt amp, a stack of Black Flag t-shirts - all of which I long ago abandoned.

‘Aqualung’ should have stayed with them.

Bittersweet Symphony - The Verve

Fri, 21 Sep 2007 00:01:00 GMT

Most GBS fans remember when they first heard a particular song. Often it was connected with a particular point in their life; a song came along at just the right time, and caught the extreme emotion of the moment. It is understandable, really. A lot of GBS songs are about the moment, as it were.

I have a similar story, although it is not about one of our songs. A recent afternoon spent waiting around in Hamburg airport reminded us all of our first German tour, a fiasco of major proportions, (even by our European standards). In the middle of a very busy autumn of 1997, we were offered four shows supporting Del Amitri, a Scottish pop band who were attempting a mild comeback. One more show was added at the last minute, a club gig in Hamburg. At the time, our German label was headquartered there, and it was felt that we should make an appearance in their backyard - in theory they would be so excited that it would spur them into actually doing something.

Right off the bat, things did not go well. In those days you still had to fly into and out of the same European gateway (or spend a fortune), so after an all-night trans-Atlantic flight we were forced to fly into Hamburg and then drive like maniacs to our first gig, which was inconveniently located in Berlin. The Del Amitri crew were complete assholes, refusing to move so much as a mic-stand for us. We had to play in the middle of their gear, tripping over and bumping into their numerous mics, amps, etc. With the exception of a handful of fans (some of whom are, to our mutual surprise, still with us), we were greeted with bemused indifference.

Three more demoralizing gigs followed. Our trip to Koln was punctuated by us getting thoroughly lost in the backstreets on the way to soundcheck. At one point we were so tangled up in the medieval section that we had to unload the trailer and walk it back to the main road. Even Alan, ever the optimist, was finding it heavy going. The Del Amitri crew never got any better, and the band completely ignored us. Saturday morning saw us making a long drive from Koln to Frankfurt in a depressing grey mist. About halfway there we were racing down the Autobahn when we heard a suspicious sound from the engine. Within seconds, smoke was pouring out. Our tour manager Tony was driving, and he managed to steer the dying van to an exit. Then it was all hands out the door, and we pushed the very heavy rig the kilometer or so required to get it off the extremely dangerous highway. Tony set off to a distant farm in hopes of help, while we stood there smoking in the rain. Morale was low.

Eventually he returned, and joined us on the side of the road. Tony was not sure if his sign language had actually worked, and we were almost surprised when a guy in a yellow jumpsuit showed up in an 18-wheel flat-bed truck about a half-hour later. He took a 10 second look at the engine and then turned to us. He shrugged.

“Das van ist kaput.”

Everyone understood that. Quickly, he attached his winch, tipped up his bed, and hauled our van & trailer onto his truck. We all looked at each other, and Tony, who by now was plainly in charge.

“Where are we going to ride?” was the foremost thought.

The repairman was not concerned.

“Gehen zie…” he commanded, waving us back into the van. With few other options, we all obediently climbed up onto the truck bed, and back into our van. He threw a few canvas straps over us, hopped into his own cab, and then off we went. The ride that followed is not one that anyone will ever forget. Almost two stories above the road bed, we careened through the countryside at high speed, tearing through tiny villages, close enough to the second floor balconies that we could snatch flowers from the window boxes. The van lurched and swayed like a carnival ride. At any moment we figured we would be rolling to our deaths, but it never happened. Instead, after a scenic and adventurous ride, we were dropped off at a sparkling new Honda dealership, literally in the middle of nowhere. The owner and his family were celebrating a poorly attended grand opening, or otherwise they would have been closed. In those days, as is the case still in much of Germany, Saturday afternoon is a serious holiday. The dealer and his family watched in amazement as we lounged around his new showroom, eating a cake laid on for the customers, and drinking their punch. We were starving, and it was the only food for miles. We were plainly a nuisance, but we were beyond caring. Morale had sunk to a new low.

After a lengthy conference, again in sign language, my rudimentary German being useless in this situation, someone found us two rental cars located in a village some distance away. Tony and Darrell went off to fetch them, while we waited around with the thoroughly mauled cake. Eventually they returned, and we now had to squeeze a van and trailer’s worth of gear into two hatchbacks, Euro hatchbacks at that. We abandoned the van, thanked the dealer and his family while pressing copies of Up into their hands, and raced back down the Autobahn. Amazingly, we made it to the gig with seconds to spare. The Amitri crew looked at us with distaste. We had not been missed. Again we had to play in the midst of a forest of gear. When we emerged backstage from our indifferently received show, we discovered that the band and crew had taken every single dressing-room available. We had to change and eat standing in the hallway, shoved and pushed around like high school frosh in their first day in the locker room. Morale disappeared altogether.

When we finally got to the hotel, inconveniently placed in the suburbs a confusing half hour drive from the gig, by mutual and unspoken consent, we booked six rooms. In those days a room to yourself was a huge luxury, a major extravagance. After that day we never shared rooms again. We couldn’t - spirits were so low, someone would have been killed over a reading light.

The next day it was back to Hamburg, three abreast in the front seat of for hours in the little hatchback, not even room to cross your arms. The Hamburg show was another debacle, with just 14 punters, a suicidal promoter and the scariest hotel I have ever stayed in. Our record company head turned out to be a strange hippie, who arrived on the sort of bicycle Lucy Pevensie might have ridden, wearing enormous corduroys and pant clips (a detail so absurd everyone later remembered it). He had never heard of us, and his label turned out to be a pamphlet and not much else. In fact, he was just our UK label’s local salesman. He had no budget, office, or even a car, and was thoroughly amused at our obvious disappointment.

That night I left Hotel Bizarre, and found a local beer hall down the street, on the dodgiest fringe of the Reeperbahn. I ordered a gaseous pint, and sat there by myself, trying to figure out what terrible miss-step had led me to this ridiculous point. Now it is all rather funny, but at the time I was ready to chuck the works. Out of the blue on the club stereo came this song - Bittersweet Symphony, by the Verve. It had not been released in North America yet, and it was the first time I had heard it. The hook was instantly killer, but more relevant were the lyrics, “It’s a bittersweet symphony, in my head…”. Indeed, I thought. And then the refrain “I can change, I can change, I can change…”.

My sad-eyed and silent drinking companions stared at me resentfully, flexing their swollen knuckles, my interloper status obvious to all. Too late, the Verve had already imparted their ounce of magic. For a moment at least, I did not give a *** what they thought of me, nor did I care what new nightmare the next day would bring. Germany could not defeat us that easily. I loved that song then, and I love it now.

Soundtrack - Festivals Deconstructed

Wed, 29 Aug 2007 11:44:00 GMT

It has been some time since we played any festivals in Europe. Three in a row in the past couple of weeks was a bit of an eye opener, particularly after doing a bunch in Canada and the USA. Festivals come in many shapes and sizes; some of the ones we attended were very well organized, and some were not. Some we thoroughly enjoyed, and others felt like very hard work. Talking to fans, it sometimes surprises me how little anyone knows about how and why such events operate. By way of explanation, and to expand upon a chat Sean and I had in a recent podcast, here is a highly personal overview of the current festival situation, at least as it pertains to us. Be warned, these are my opinions. Feel free to disagree.

There are essentially two types of festivals, those who are set up to make money, and those that are not. In North America, we play many events that feel like festivals, but fall somewhere in between; for example, they take place outside with multiple band bills, lots of hippies, etc., and feel very festival like. Generally they are produced either for profit, or by organizations that have a mandate (and budget) to present a wide spectrum of live entertainment. Recent shows in Lowell, Massachusetts, Northampton, Ma, and Maine all fall into this category. The Ottawa Blues Festival is another big one in this category. Festivals like Tonder, Calgary and Winnipeg are essentially non-profit. Money made goes to pay artists, operating expenses, and improve facilities.

This difference can be crucial. For-profit festivals tend to be much more corporate, but also better organized, and less given to bizarre eccentricities. Non-profit festivals tend to operate with a much looser vibe, with a wider variety of music, and a more family-friendly feel. They also tend to live and die by the weather, volunteer turn-out, and other ephemeral influences. Either way, after 15 years of doing these, a few observations are starting to emerge:

- At the big festivals, almost no one sucks. A slot on a stage - any slot, any stage - is highly coveted. Bands and artists compete heavily for these slots, and the result is an almost universally high standard. It might not be your cup of tea, but it will be quality. Even if you have only heard of half the bill, your time and money will not be wasted. I will confess that I have little or no interest in alt-country, particularly bands who are both deliberately disorganized and dreary. There are a lot of them at festivals these days, so I tend to pay little attention to them. Many others disagree. So be it. Either way, there is a plethora of fine performers out there, and only the best make it onstage these days.

- Festival organizers love workshops, particularly those that feature a disparate group of musicians somehow sharing the same artistic space. I have seen a lot of these over the years, although we participate in as few as possible. Not so much because we are snobs, but because we have created a cohesive package, one that we prefer to utilize in order to display our material to its best advantage (such as it is). Breaking our show up into bits and playing in some half-assed format just does not make a lot of sense. In theory, workshops give the audience more bang for the buck. They seem to work best when the musicians really do have something in common, i.e. style or presentation. I saw a group of Irish musicians slay at one such mini-concert, recently. Of course, they all shared a certain repertoire and sensibility, which made it easy to mix and match. Workshops organized by theme do not work quite as well. A couple of weeks ago, I watched one workshop loosely based on a Balkan theme come completely unglued. The musicians onstage were forced to politely endure each other’s music, music they were plainly uninterested in. At one point, after a ten minute meandering jam, the leader plaintively said, on mic, “Can we just please stop now?” Not ideal.

- More organization does not necessarily make for a better festival. Calgary and Edmonton are probably the most organized festivals in the world, but it sometimes has the effect of turning the audience into children. For example, the fuss over tarp spaces seems nuts to me. Effectively at those festivals, you have to run a race or win a raffle to get space to lay out a tarp or blanket, giving you 8 square feet of personal space at the main venue. This results in some weird situations. You can see it in the audience’s eyes - Who cares if I hate all the acts tonight, and only want to see a band on Sunday? My tarp is here - I would rather hang out here and be miserable than let someone else get it. In Calgary, in order to eat, for example, you had to rent a plate, which you then had to carry around until it was time to line up and return it to a separate window. I am all for recycling, but it felt rather too much like a prison movie for my tastes. Many North American festivals are just as puritanical, banning drinking, meat, sequestering dancers, preaching various political causes at the crowd, and otherwise ensuring that everyone has the minimum of fun. Then you go to Europe, where there is no seating to speak of, everyone drinks and smokes like crazy, dirty kids run around everywhere, and people camp happily in some bog up to their knees in muck…and yet somehow, no one gets seriously hurt, and no one needs to fear a lawsuit. A different world indeed.

- Good festivals make sure that the acts are bigger than the festival; in other words, there has to be people playing who the audience genuinely wants to see. Festivals, particularly older ones, have a way of losing site of the fact that they are entertainment events. No one wants to spend their precious fun time being involuntarily educated, and the more serious a festival is, the less people seem to turn out. The Newfoundland and Labrador Folk Festival, in my opinion, has almost fallen victim to this problem. For a variety of reasons, the festival has largely been abandoned by the province’s professional musicians. While it is still a very authentic collection of Newfoundland artists, it is now competing with a host of other local festivals, shows which feature the cream of the province’s working performers. Locally, it feels like the equivalent of porridge - not really what you want to eat, but damn it, it is going to be good for you. A lot of casual fans have been voting with their feet, and the results are shrinking gates and wobbly finances. We have seen this phenomena taking place elsewhere, as well. Festivals need to constantly evolve, and keep abreast of what is happening in the music, and most important, find acts that the audience actually wants to pay for.

-Volunteers can be both the blessing and the bane of a festival. We have met some genuinely wonderful people working at festivals, and anyone giving up their time to perform thankless tasks needs to be congratulated, not criticized. On the other hand, we have spent hours pulling our hair out in frustration, stymied by volunteer crews that seem to have been summoned directly from some particularly bureaucratic branch of the post office. We are not unduly picky about dressing rooms, riders, and other rock star hand-holding. We do expect to play, sound-check, show up for interviews, and otherwise do our jobs when we are scheduled, hopefully with a minimum of fuss and bother for all concerned. You would be amazed at how hard this sometimes is.

- Young bands are struggling to take on the mantle of headliner. In Europe, we see the same bands who have been headlining for 20 years still at the top of the bill. The situation is somewhat better here in North America, but only just. While this is good for people like us, it is not good for the festivals. All festivals need to find and support young acts, acts who can build audiences and go the distance, acts who one day can draw the large crowds that will keep these unique events strong and healthy. In light of the above, check out Danu, Seth Lakeman, Lau, La Vent Du Nord, The Duhks, The Sadies, Julie Fowlis, and a dozen more. They need you.

- No one, not Newfoundlanders, not Germans, not even the Irish, can drink more than the Danes. Once again, we have been humbled.

Frank Maher & Vince Collins, or Accordion vs. Fiddle Explained

Mon, 13 Aug 2007 19:31:00 GMT

When the button accordion came on the scene here some 150 years ago, dance players quickly adopted it wholesale. It had some huge advantages over the fiddles and occasional tin whistles which had provided music for dances in Newfoundland in an earlier era. For one thing, accordions are way easier to learn at a basic level, and relatively easy to maintain. Unlike finicky and temperamental violins, accordions were pretty much immune to the punishments of climate. Accordions also had the advantage of volume, something very useful at community dances where drums and guitars, not to mention PA systems, were pretty much unheard of.

I spoke before about the differences between Cape Breton and Newfoundland traditions. If I can digress even further, the Cape Bretoners solved their volume problem by massing fiddles, two or three together with accompaniment from the ubiquitous parish hall piano. They also transferred many tunes from the big pipes, which forced some complex and unusual fingerings and styles. This has led to their complex fiddle repertoire, held in common by all decent players, one in which virtuoso playing is held in wide regard. There is really no equivalent in the Newfoundland tradition. There are lots of fiddle tunes here, but they rarely make it into the repertoire of the accordionist. Conversely, the Cape Bretoners never really took to the button accordion - too many of their Scottish tunes would be unplayable. When I was learning to play the fiddle, I learned dozens of Irish & Scottish tunes. They were easy to find on record, and I found them much easier to play than the choppy and propulsive Newfoundland tunes. Melodies which practically rolled off the buttons on my accordions turned into complex and ugly finger exercises when translated onto the fiddle. Diatonic accordions, (which are pretty much the only ones used in Newfoundland), are very restricted musically. Each row of buttons is fixed to the notes found in the scale of the chosen key. Therefore, all the accidentals and sharps and flats that fall outside that key become unplayable. On the other hand, the resulting ease of playing up and down the straightforward scale allows one to play with a forceful precision, ideally suited to step dancing, waltzes and set dances. Forget playing fiddle tunes, for the most part - the legato sway of good Irish reels often become clattering and popping bundles of 8th notes, about as melodic as reciting the ABC’s.

That is not too say there are not accordion virtuosos found in abundance in Newfoundland. Two of my favourites are Vince Collins and Frank Maher. I recorded Vince myself a few years back, for an album called Lifting Out The Stove. Vince is an extremely old-fashioned player, with a style that pre-dates most modern influences. His repertoire is a mix of Irish tunes, learned from local players and half-heard Irish radio broadcasts from Boston, and more idiosyncratic local dance numbers. He learned to play first and foremost to accompany dancers, and you can hear the spaces he leaves for them in every note.

One of the best tunes on the album is the Irish jig The Blackthorn Stick. This tune is very popular among uillean pipers In Ireland, and though that weird and wonderful instrument never made the journey to Newfoundland, you can hear echoes of them in Vince’s playing. The notes bubble and pop, as fluid as a waterfall. On a fiddle it would be awkward, a much slower and tortuous expression, but in Vince’s accordion the tune is as light as a daisy.

Frank Maher is the senior hand among Newfoundland accordionists, and much loved for his ebullient character and powerful playing. His repertoire is similar to Vince’s, a mix of Irish and Newfoundland tunes. Unlike Vince, Frank traveled the world with bands like Figgy Duff, and has compared his own technique to many others. He recently released his debut album, Mahervelous, and it has some dandy tunes on it. Most instructive may be his version of the Goat Dance, a Newfoundland set dance that by any standards is an exercise in force. Over the years, the four tunes have been reduced to their simplest form, in order to aid the fast and driving half-time rhythm the set dancers prefer. Frank plays them furiously, as if he was trying to rip the accordion in two. For a man in his seventies, it is an incredible demonstration of the possibilities of the instrument. Although his band accompanies him, their presence is at best superfluous. He squeezes a mighty sound out of his simple instrument. It is easy to imagine that if he was playing alone somewhere in an isolated outport parish hall, with dozens of dancers stomping around him, and nary a drum nor microphone to be seen, you could be sure of one thing: Frank and his accordion would more than suffice.

Analog vs. digital via Steve Miller

Sat, 04 Aug 2007 23:06:00 GMT

A while ago, I was talking about the difference between the way we make records, and the way they used to be made. The difference can be a little hard for a layman to understand; after all, to most people, a song is a song. Audio quality, as long as it is decent, is probably neither here nor there.

Thus it may come as a bit of a surprise that so many older audio critics hate Itunes (and Ipods). An MP3 is a compressed version of the audio information available on a CD; and, it should be noted that Itunes is just a sophisticated version of the MP3 format that has been around for a decade or more. It is a black and white picture of something designed to be listened to in colour. These days, a lot of musicians and engineers have grown up familiar with the tight fizzy sound of an MP3. They are comfortable with it, and they take this reality into account. More often than not, records made prior to the digital age suffer the most in comparison. Three-inch tape could capture an enormous amount of real audio information, aided heavily by the warm tube mics and solid state pre-amps which were the only thing available in those days. That is why albums cost so much to make thirty years ago. To do anything like a decent job recording music, you needed a fortune in specialized equipment. I can record and edit multi-track songs on my laptop, but the reality is, certain aspects of the audio quality will never even approach the stuff made in the 1970s. While recording platforms are infinitely cheaper and more sophisticated today, the digital mics and preamps found in most studios cannot come close to the sound offered by old solid state equipment.

This is not to say that the digital age has not been a boon to recording. Simple computer programs and dirt cheap digital-audio interfaces mean I can make very sophisticated recordings without the benefit of an engineer or stduio. And I can do them for practically nothing. And so can anyone else. This is a good thing. On the other hand, the infinite editing possibilities offered by the digital platform can be problematic. When do you stop? Especially when endless tinkering does not cost anything? While our studio is a mix of digital and analog, it is not free. The first thing I do with any new client is to underline the necessity of at some point stopping. We always remind our clients that artists usually run out of money before they run out of inspiration. No one ever listens, but we are sympathetic. We have learned the hard way that endless tinkering does not makes for more interesting records. In a digital age, it is the spaces between the notes, the burst of energy, the sudden moment of passion that can make all the difference.

35 years ago, bands had no choice. You could not go back and overdub your enthusiasm. Tape cost a fortune, and studio time was rare and valuable. If the band was wobbly, the record sucked. Interestingly, sometimes the band did indeed suck, and the result was still brilliant. Recently I downloaded Living In The USA by the Steve Miller Band. I heard the cut on classic radio, and it stayed with me. If you listen to it on headphones, it perfectly illustrates the sea change that has taken place in the past decade.

The song is a blues shuffle in that late 60’s San Francisco style, complete with someconfusing hippie patriotism passing for lyrics. A squeaky old Hammond organ and a truly crappy bass carry the hook, along with an inordinate amount of noodly percussion, sloppy handclaps, and some honkin’ harmonica. Still, it has a great feel, all good vibes and happy grooves. Listen to it again, and you start to hear a few things that really make it stand out when you put it up against something from the past decade. For example, the intro takes a full 50 seconds. These days, the radio edit would have you well into the third chorus by this juncture. 20 seconds later, when you finally hear the classic hook for the first time, the group half-heartedly bumbles into the riff only to have the guitar silenced by an ungainly blast of feedback.

My favourite moment comes at 1:42; for some reason the drummer comes fully unglued, falling a full beat behind the rest of the band. He is forced to speed up to catch everyone else, skipping along like a novice soldier. A minute later, a 60s-style breakdown is abandoned after a dozen bars when neither the bass, guitar or drums can agree on who is supposed to be doing what. And for the final bonus: the unrehearsed ad-lib that covers the wandering fade contains some faux calls for patriotism; the last audible one?

“Somebody get me a cheeseburger!”

They don’t make them like that anymore. It just does not work that way.

All The Small Things, or, Changing My Demeanour

Wed, 18 Jul 2007 23:39:00 GMT

One of my original aims here was to illuminate the band’s music by exploring my own influences, and trying to draw metaphors and links between the two. Unfortunately, none of the songs I have been listening to lately have anything to do with Great Big Sea. Of late we have all been busy writing away like maniacs, trying to outdo one and another in the race to the next album. When you have any time for pure listening, it is a good idea to get as far outside the box as possible. Therefore, as it is raining, and my house is unbearably hot, and I do not have the patience to go on and on about some tune no one else even likes, and the last song I finished stunk, I thought I would stick to basics for a change. Or just ramble on. Be warned.

Looking back on all these pieces, it is interesting how many songs I like because they are a bit sad. Perhaps this will give me a new sobriquet in the band - ‘the depressed one’, or better yet, ‘the sad one’. For years fans have accused me of being ‘the quiet one’, because I rarely say anything onstage. In my defense, I saw the White Stripes the other night, and that Gillis fellow hardly said anything either. And his wife or sister or whatever never said a word. No one calls them ‘quiet’. I am also known as the ‘smart one’, mainly because I have an unhealthy ability to recall trivia of little use to anyone, and I rarely watch TV. And unlike everyone else on the Newfoundland music scene, I bothered to figure out how HST worked. It does not take much, sometimes.

Anyway, here are a couple of really sad songs: ‘No Rain’ by Blind Melon, and ‘All The Small Things’ by Blink 182. Neither song is supposed to be sad, but both are testaments to the vagaries of the rock life style, and both have gained an unhappy tone. Blink 182 broke up in acrimony a couple of years after this song came out. The song’s odd tone of resignation, which always made for an unusual juxtaposition with its Ramones’ groove makes perfect sense now. I actually feel kind of bad that the band broke up. Their last single, with the unfortunate title ‘I Miss You’, was a massive step forward for the band, and should have been their turning point. Instead, it was their requiem. Blind Melon’s ‘No Rain’ was so good even they could not surpass it. Try to put the silly video out of your mind, and just listen to the explosion of sweet hope in Shannon Hoon’s voice. It could not last, and it didn’t. A heroin o.d. is a particularly pointless way to die, especially since with that one song Hoon proved he had greatness in him.

In those songs, context puts them into their emotional place. A lot of folk songs are so unhappy context does not even need to come into it. Try and find the Voice Squad’s version of ‘The Brown and the Yellow Ale’. The song is about the discovery of infidelity, and the sort of incomprehension and despair that comes with it. The melody is melancholy without ever becoming a dirge, (which is a fine line to walk), and the lyric pure poetry. My personal favourite from the sad song catalogue is ‘*** of the North’, an obscure Irish song best recorded by Eddie and Finbar Furey. The lyric is a woman’s defense of her love for the town simpleton, and the joy he brings her with his strange, impractical and beauteous vision. Furey sings it as if he was recalling someone he knew all too well, and his voice cracks with emotion in the live version. Whether real or feigned, I have never heard another song like it. In the ‘sad’ department, it is a heads-up winner.

Hmmm. The ‘sad one’. I rather like it. Indeed - I shall grow a drooping moustache, and wear even more black. Instead of trying to think of witty remarks for podcasts, I shall keep a self-indulgent journal full of my musings on diverse and dull topics, and I will paint grayish water-colours of cliffs and dead caplin and abandoned gill nets. I shall write lengthy poems. And drink unpleasant cheap cognacs. I will submit hectoring editorials blaming Canada for all Newfoundland’s problems. The key of ‘Dm’ shall be my default setting.

I am sure it will make for a refreshing change.

Year of the Cat - Al Stewart, &, Irreplaceable - Beyonce

Mon, 02 Jul 2007 23:00:00 GMT

The first time you go into a studio, it is enough just to get something out that doesn’t utterly suck. As time goes by, ambition grows. Now you want to introduce some nuances. And I do not think any seasoned band would argue that tone is one of the hardest things to put across in music. It is all too easy to get wrong, and all to hard to get right. One might disagree, but just today while driving along I heard something which made the point easier to explain. Like a lot of drivers, I switch constantly between channels, trying to find something in ‘the great wasteland’ that I can stomach. I stopped on a station playing the Beatles version of ‘With A Little Help From My Friends’. Ringo Starr’s laconic delivery perfectly suits the song. In his world-weary tone it is mild tribute to his friends in the band, the men riding life’s ups and downs with him, watching with wry bemusement the various follies that surround them. The station followed it up with Joe Cocker’s histrionic version, made famous through its appearance in the Woodstock movie. In his hands the song is a completely different beast, all intense passion, hope and despair, a different beast entirely. If you listen to the arrangements, it comes as a surprise to realize they are not really all that different. It’s all in the delivery.

Even in my own minimal singing career, I can think of a few times when I did not really nail what was intended. The demo of ‘Helmethead’ is full of self-loathing and sarcasm. Somehow, the final version ended up jokey and comedic, which wasn’t really the point at all.

While poking through my Ipod the other day, I came across a couple of songs I downloaded a while ago, and have hardly listened to since. In the midst of this current phase of studio productivity, I have been thinking about this problem, and these songs really stuck out.

I guess I am not supposed to like Beyonce, but anyone who appreciates talent for its own sake has to respect this creature. Genetics have favoured her more than most; good producers have also made the difference. ‘Irreplaceable’ is as close to perfect as it gets. The music is bare, all washed out loops and samples. The song’s power comes almost entirely from the vocal delivery of Beyonce herself, her tone both economic and somehow florid. The lyrics are more resigned than angry, and Ms. Knowles nails it perfectly as she lectures her errant boyfriend in an almost conversational tone. She manages to keep her trademark octave swoops to a minimum, dropping them in here and there when she wants to make her point - which (not unreasonably) seems to be ‘I am the one in charge here, take it or piss off’. In contrast to the braggart’s world which is male R&B & hip-hop, it is actually rather refreshing.

Al Stewart’s ‘Year of the Cat’ is the diametric opposite of Beyonce’s song, but they have greatness in common. Stewart was a 30-something ex-hippie singer-songwriter in the mid-70s, when this song came out, and to all reports he has changed very little in the intervening period. The song has that smooth 70s sound, combined with a great performance from everyone involved. Lyrically it’s about getting caught up with the wrong woman, in the wrong place, and then being unable to extricate yourself from either. Really, though, the song is about ennui. Stewart’s delivery conveys this with every syllable. His reading is mostly soft and laconic, but every so often he pushes his voice a little, or clips a vowel, just to let you know what’s really going on. Solos come and go, but Stewart is always there, aimlessly wandering the streets, picking up books and laying them down, buying drinks he doesn’t really want. The song would literally be nothing without him.

In the studio, this is the stuff that drives us nuts. How, exactly, does one create that sort of magic? And a worse thought - if we did, would we know it? Or would we keep going, driving right past the house, down the highway, and into the next town?

Unfortunatly, it’s never easy.

Jerusalem - William Blake & C. Hubert H. Parry/ performed by the BBC Orchestra

Sun, 03 Jun 2007 22:12:00 GMT

House-guests are often surprised at how few CDs I own. Little do they know – this is fairly typical for musicians. It must have something to do with the amount of music you end up carrying around in your head. I know several word class players who do not even own a stereo, and never listen to the radio beyond the news. While my collection is not large, it is pretty diverse, and what has ended up on my little Ipod shuffle is fairly representational.

One of my favourite songs is a hymn, the English patriotic song Jerusalem. It stands out in my collection, the highlight of practically the only classical album I have ever purchased. The song is from the ‘Last Night At The Proms’, with the BBC orchestra in London playing the last night of their annual summer concerts, an evening always devoted to British patriotic music. This particular version is nothing amazing, the quality is not great, and with the audience bawling along, not particularly musical. Still, it has that certain something.

I would not say my family were Anglophiles, but older relatives from Britain visited regularly, and even now, familiarity with English mores has a lot of social capital in Newfoundland. In many ways Newfoundland is still a colony, and the sort of outside approval Newfoundlanders seem to crave is especially valued when it comes with an English accent. Our imaginary England was not the England of the Clash and ‘Eastenders’; it was a place full of heather, quaint pubs, chummy boarding schools and heroic Spitfire pilots. Queen Victoria herself would have been quite at home there.

When I went to university here, Oxbridge refugees still largely staffed the English faculty, accents, gowns and the love of Wordsworth transferred intact to their hardship post. The Oxford Book of English Poetry loomed large in any course selection, along with lashings of Shakespeare, Thackery and Milton. It is no wonder the archaic language of folk music comes so easily to myself, Sean and Alan, having each of us having spent four years immersed in the world of 18th century letters.

So it is that even though I am all too aware that the real England bears little resemblance to this bucolic world, I still have a massive soft spot for it, and I am a sucker for songs like Jerusalem. The lyric comes from the poetry of William Blake, an 18th century poet and artist gripped by vivid religious visions. In his lifetime he was considered to be a madman, but his strange output is very highly regarded now. To him, God and the angels were personal acquaintances, and he conversed with the biblical prophets regularly. While much of his work is heavy going, some of his poems have a child-like simplicity. Jerusalem is perfect in its brevity and conviction:

Bring me my bow of burning gold!

Bring me my arrows of desire!

Bring me my spear! O clouds, unfold!

Bring me my chariot of fire!

I will not cease from mental fight,

Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand,

Till we have built Jerusalem

In England's green and pleasant land.

You can see why it has become the unofficial English anthem, almost as popular as ‘God Save The King’. It is based on the sort of idea that drives ‘The DaVinci Code’ – that the young Jesus visited southern England with his cousin Joseph of Amrimathea, and while doing so, particularly blessed that Island. Flimsy for a historian, but for someone of a spiritual or sentimental bent, very inspiring. Blake the visionary saw his duty clearly: to try and create the mythical Jerusalem of the prophets and the Book of Revelations in his ‘green and pleasant land’. C. Hubert H. Parry put this stirring melody to the poem in 1916, in an attempt to stir patriotism in the dark days of WW I. It does not matter if you are an anti-anglophile or a raging atheist, only someone with an ear of lead could not appreciate the perfect marriage of form and function that exists in this song.

And even if you are both of the above, it might do well to remember another of Blake’s pearls, a line succinct enough to be any artist’s motto:

“The imagination is not a State: it is the Human existence itself."

Soundtrack - Let Go The Line - Max Webster

Sat, 26 May 2007 11:01:00 GMT

More than once here, I have found myself referring obliquely to the ‘Can-Con’ regulations. For the uninformed, this is a set of laws that govern what radio and television stations in Canada are allowed to play. More specifically, they dictate that around 30% of Canadian prime-time broadcasting must be devoted specifically to Canadian artists. The definition of ‘Canadian’ can be complicated, and the regulations are usually under siege from multi-national companies and American trade regulators. Still, they persist.

The Canadian music industry knows how important these regulations are – prior to their advent in the mid-1970s, the only way to get played on radio or TV here was to become famous elsewhere. The industry was so grateful, they named their annual awards after the technocrat who designed the regulations – Pierre Juneux – and thus the Juno awards took flight.

It took a while to get going, but by the early 1980s, a small but healthy Canadian music business had formed. Not only were standard pop bands gaining national recognition, some pretty weird stuff somehow came out of the woodwork. My personal favourite from that era was Max Webster. They started in Sarnia, an industrial town in southern Ontario, not far from Detroit, in 1974. Heavily influenced by art rock bands like Yes and Genesis, they wrote complex music, filled with odd shifts, lurching rhythms, and unusual melodies and lyrics. Rush were big fans, and both bands shared the talents of lyricist Pye Dubois. These days, they are best remembered for their front man, Kim Mitchell. In any era Mitchell would be remarkable. Tall and and almost skeletal, he favoured outlandish costumes and bizarre makeup. Although he later became a blue-collar rocker, a la John Mellencamp, in the 70s he looked like he was from Mars. Still he had a great ear for melody, and along with fellow singer Terry Watkinson, the band created some memorable music.

The song Let Go The Line comes from their high water mark, the album Million Vacations. It is rather ironic that the album came out in 1979. It could not be further removed from the punk aesthetic that was gathering steam at the time. Even the surreal cartoon cover reeks of 70s artistic pretensions. As out of step as it probably was, the music is timeless, Let Go The Line particularly so.

Wistfulness is something hard to convey in music, even more so in a rock song. Let Go The Line is all about that kind of semi-sad ennui. The band put a lot of thought into this arrangement. It takes almost 45 seconds for the vocals to start, an eternity these days. There is a wonderful melodic guitar solo, the sort 70s bands like Boston did so well, the kind that have all but disappeared from modern pop. It is echoed by one of those synthesizer lines that are very much of the age. Sadly, it has become very unfashionable to use those sounds – you know what I mean, vaguely spacey airy tones, a cross between shimmering violins and a female voice. Somehow they have become cheesy. It’s too bad – there is nothing else that conveys mystery better, and Let Go The Line is a very enigmatic song. Long before the singing starts you know that this song lives in a different place.

Life has been likened to a poker deal

Or a poor brief candle or a karmic wheel

All I know is that tonight I might let go the line…

Watkinson’s lyrics could easily be read as a suicide note, but there is nothing nihilistic about the melody, or the way he sings these words I am not sure what he really meant – perhaps he is a drowning swimmer, letting go of the rescue line. I was a kid when I heard this song the first time, (albeit a while after it came out), and having spent a lot of time on the water, I heard it differently. When you pull away from the wharf, ‘let go the lines’ (or more likely, ‘cast off’) would be a command to release the ropes keeping you tied to the dock. It would be an exciting act: the nautical equivalent of ‘start your engines’. It might also be frightening – the ocean here is fierce, and very dangerous. No one takes a sea voyage lightly. Casting off might also be an act of regret: on any voyage the crew is divided into two camps, one being those who are sailing towards, the other being those who are sailing away.

I like to believe that Watkinson found himself in-between all those states. And he created the perfect metaphor to express that wistful stage, somewhere perched between sadness and hope, the goal on the horizon, and the port left behind. If we ever get around to doing our Canadian cover album (along with our kids album, our Oysterband tribute, our instrumental album, etc.) I think that I am going to have a go at this one myself. It’s too good a song to be lost.

The Wreck of the Marion Simani

Mon, 07 May 2007 13:24:00 GMT

It is funny how Newfoundland music has evolved over the past 20 years. Whether we intended it or not, Great Big Sea has had a vast influence on how the music is presented here. Our evolved pub band format has itself become an archetype. Like young people everywhere, younger musicians see this state of affairs as permanent. They do not realize that the three-and four-piece pub line-up of guitar, bass, bodhran and fiddle/accordion/whistle is a recent phenomena.

When we started doing this 20 years ago, there wasn’t really anyone else taking this approach in our part of the world, apart from our colleagues and competitors, the Irish Descendants. Other bands existed – Stogger Tight, and later the Masterless Men. However, they were casual, part-time outfits, and based themselves largely on the Irish Rovers, a band that for whatever reason we had hardly heard of. Neither of those acts played much, the members were a lot older than us, and had real jobs. Our model was a bit different - the full on approach of shouters like Fergus O’Byrne, married with the in-your-face performance and DIY attitude approach of my punk bands, and later, the well-rehearsed approach of Alan’s rock bands. The only other serious folk act in Newfoundland at the time were Rawlins Cross, and they were for all intents and purposes a rock band with bagpipes, and had little time for our pub heroics.

Now there are a dozen bands here pursuing our model, (such as it is), with God knows how many out there in Ft. McMurray, Cambridge, Ottawa and other centres of the Newfoundland diaspora. Yet, like everything else in Newfoundland culture, it was all a bit of a fluke. We have often talked about how influential bands like Ryan’s Fancy and the Wonderful Grand Band were, but by the time we were teenagers, no one was really listening to them. By far the most popular and influential Newfoundland band was Simani. If their influence had been maintained, or if they had been a little bit younger or more charismatic, then it all might have been very different indeed.

Simani have faded off the radar in Newfoundland, and they never made it onto the radar anywhere else in the country. For a time, however, their music was by far the most popular of any group in the province, and their distinctive sound created a whole musical movement. The band was a duo, actually, made up of Sim Savoury and Bud Davidge. (‘Sim and I’, in other words, the sort of pun much loved by Newfoundlanders). Davidge sang, and played guitar, while Savoury played accordion, mandolin, and also played bass pedals and ran the PA. Simani also embraced the tick-tock sound of the drum machine, and popularized the device among Newfoundland performers. They started playing in 1977, and made their first album, Salt Water Cowboys, shortly after.

It was an instant hit, and the two went onto record a dozen more albums over the next 15 years or so. They had a very distinctive sound. Unlike the groups that GBS has spawned, Simani seemed either oblivious or just uninterested in pop music, Irish acts like the Clancey Brothers, or anything else that came out of the 60s folk revival. Their model was simple – classic country, a la Hank Williams, Johnny Cash and Ray Price, married with Newfoundland-style button accordion. Davidge was a fine singer, with a rich baritone, and Sim was a great arranger and instrumentalist, with a good ear for a hook. They wrote almost all of their own material, and apart from a few instrumental sets, rarely played anything I would call traditional. The sort of country music they loved had (and has) a huge following in Newfoundland, and Simani was one of the first local bands to get airplay alongside the more easily absorbed mainstream North American acts. They did not tour a lot, but their tapes sold in the tens of thousands, so well in fact that the two set up a very successful recording studio and tape manufacturing factory, both in the tiny fishing villages on the isolated south coast where they lived. Dozens of other bands followed their model, many of whom are still going strong today, still packing them into outport lounges, with their blend of high-twang country and soft, sentimental accordion. They played for a largely older audience, but one that absolutely loved them.

Let me say that I was often doubtful about Simani; they embraced a level of Newfoundland cliché that made me very uncomfortable, and their explicit encouragement of the term ‘newfie’ pissed me off. Like a lot of older Newfoundlanders, they were fine with it, and seemed oblivious to the negative connotations the term carries. They did not like St. John’s very much, hardly ever toured here, and made no secret for their dislike of townie folk pretensions. Their heavy use of drum machines was irritating, made worse by the hundreds of imitators who jumped on their band wagon.

That said, they wrote and recorded a couple of some great songs, songs that deserve a place on any Ipod. Their best is the ‘Mummer’s Song’, a Xmas song that dominates radio stations and house parties around here at the Yuletide. It is very, very good, but it is also a novelty song, and well outside their normal repertoire.

More interesting to me was their song ‘The Wreck of the Marion’. Shipwreck songs are common in Newfoundland archival collections, but they have pretty much evaporated from local songwriting. It was left to Simani to write the last of the great ones. The song is about an incident which took place within living memory, when a small Newfoundland banking schooner and it’s skipper, both from the south coast community of St. Jacques, ran into trouble with an aggressive captain from the nearby French island of St. Pierre. The Marion disappeared after a dockside confrontation in St. Pierre, and local people believed that the two captains had settled their accounts with a battle at sea, a battle which left no trace of the Marion.

The song has clever lyrics, an unusual story, and unlike most others of its genre, an anthemic chorus. It is the only song of Simani’s which continues to be sung and recorded by younger bands. It deserves the tribute. It has also stayed with me for another reason. Around the time GBS was getting rolling, I was visiting with an elderly family member, who came from the same area as both Simani and the Marion. She remembered the disappearance of the Marion very well, and had mourned the crew with others from her community. For me, it was a surprise, a sudden shift sideways, into someone else’s reality. Up to then, all the lyrics of the traditional songs I knew pretty much existed in a parallel world – I loved them, but all the talk of ‘ships in sail’ and ‘milk-white steeds’ and what-not really had little to do with my life. For Aunt Essie, however, this song was part of her own story. Traditional music sometimes has that ability – it can open a window you didn’t know existed and draw a connection with the past, in a way which just does not happen elsewhere in life. ‘The Wreck of the Marion’ was original, but Simani wrote their song so well it both embraced and became part of the tradition, and in doing so, made the circle whole. We should all be so lucky.

Sullivan's John - Sweeney's Men & Fly By Night - Chilliwack

Sun, 22 Apr 2007 14:13:00 GMT

The wanderlust that drives many a musician into the world often wanes as careers rise and fall. While I hate the tedium of airports and such as much as anyone, my enthusiasm for going somewhere different has never waned. My favourite time on any tour bus is the early morning, before anyone else is up, when I can just sit by the wide windows and watch the world change in front of me. And even thought their lifestyle is probably pretty grim, there is a part of me that envies the Travelers of the British Isles, and the French Gitane, with their caravans, ponies, and delight in the open road. I am lucky that I found a way to make a living and indulge in a piece of that fantasy, while still avoiding many of its hardships. One day I will write a song that captures this paradox. In the meantime, others have already done so.

As Irish songs go, Sullivan’s John is a bit obscure. I heard it somewhere back in my pub days, and liked it enough to learn all the words. Fortunately, I never ruined it by playing the song with a band, so it has remained a personal favourite. Ostensibly, the song’s narrator is warning the eponymous John against running off with a tinker (an Irish Traveler) girl, and and taking up the life of the road.

Oh Sullivan's John, to the road you've gone

far away from your native home.

You've gone with the tinker's daughter,

for along the road to roam.

Oh Sullivan's John, you won't stick it long,

'til your belly will soon get slack.

Up along the old road, with a mighty load.

and your toolbox on your back.

The only recording of the song I have, by the 60’s ballad band Sweeney’s Men, perfectly captures the song’s irony. While the narrator’s warning is quite dire, the song’s tone is anything but. The rather cheery melody undermines any dour threats. Instead of foreboding, the narrator just ends up sounding envious, as if he too would like to take off down the road with a beautiful tinker (girl or boy). And on a dull, grey day, when the office or the cares of the world are closing in on you, who wouldn’t?

Fly By Night, by Can-Con heroes Chiliwack is a very, very different song, but I think it’s creative impulse comes from the same place. Led by the golden voice of Bill Henderson, Chilliwack were a 1970’s Canadian band that managed to take advantage of the new Canadian content regulations of that era. Aimed at getting more Canadian music on the airwaves, the Can-Con laws created a domestic music industry overnight. A wave of bands poured across the country in the wake of that sea change, and Chillwack were one of the best.

The song is supposed to be an extended riff about the experience of taking an overnight airplane flight, but it feels a lot more like a driving song. The guitars rumble along in perfect Chuck Berry fashion, creating as evocative a representation of the turn of the wheel as I have ever heard. More than half the song consists of a unique vocal hook, layer after layer of Henderson’s high, perfect voice, keening like a siren in harmony with himself. You cannot hear it but find an echo of the prairie wind, blowing through the telephone wires that parallel the highway in those wide-open places. Finally, the song both begins and ends with a perfect quatrain:

Four men in a rock and roll band,

Fly at night, in the morning we land

Fly at night ‘til we’re satisfied…

See the morning from the other side…

Words to stir the heart of the vagabond.en in a roll bandFly at night in the morning we land

Fly at night 'til we're satisfied

Soundtrack - Ride My See-saw The Moody Blues

Wed, 11 Apr 2007 15:00:00 GMT

I was never much of hippie, the laconic lifestyle necessary just doesn’t work for me. That may come as a surprise to some people – more than once in my life I have worn my hair in a ponytail, after all. Most would probably convict me on that basis alone.

That said, it must have been nice. As devoted as I always was to punk aesthetics, when I was in university I listened to a lot of 60s music. I suppose everyone does, when they are at college. It just seems to fit. I saw the Woodstock movie for the first time around the same era. It was genuinely hard for me to put myself in that mindset. Everyone in that movie seems so absurdly optimistic, and genuinely delighted with themselves.

Hippies were a bit thin on the ground in Newfoundland. I was obviously an infant during the era, but judging by my parents and their friends, the whole thing barely touched us in Newfoundland. Judging by their college yearbooks, to all appearances we skipped the whole fun summer of love thing and went right from Grease into the dreary 70s recession. Perhaps as a people we are better suited to hard times then dancing around with flowers in our hair.

On the other hand, the hippies sure had some great tunes. My personal favourite is Ride My See-Saw by the Moody Blues. It is from their breakthrough album, In Search of the Lost Chord. The song is over the top, but then again the whole project reeks of patchouli. The cover features one of those classic comic book style depictions of nirvana, as done by a teenager with new magic markers. Instead of liner notes, the album’s back cover has a useful explanation of the tantric term ‘om’, along with its various uses.

All foolishness aside, See-Saw is a classic, and it easily rises above the era’s nonsense. At first glance the title seems a bit silly, one of those faux nursery-rhyme things favoured by Jethro Tull and the Genesis of that era. When you dig into it a bit, you realize it is the opposite. The band is using a see-saw as a metaphor for the soul-numbing life of boring jobs and pointless education. It is an interesting idea. Children are often disappointed by see-saws – they go up, and then down, and then up again, and then the child is off to find something more exciting. The Moody Blues perfectly captured that idea. They were from the industrial English midlands, not the jolliest place in those days, and you can hear their relief at escape in every joyous note. The band came from the same area that spawned Black Sabbath, yet their sunny demeanor is pure California.

There are other reasons to listen to this piece. Electric guitars were still interesting when this song was recorded in 1967. They use distortion like a cello, booming chords that swing over the song’s tight groove, crackling and bubbling away out of time, as novel as a sitar. The hook itself seems compiled of a dozen 12-string guitars, all furiously strumming away like Django’s Hot Band. My favourite aspect is the massed vocals – the whole band sings together, in a loose choir. Combined with the ubiquitous melotron, it sounds incredibly warm and rich.

In another very real way, the song is a relic. These days, such overt optimism would be considered naïve. And the buttery warmth of the audio is irreplaceable. Not just a huge dose of good vibrations were lost in the 1970’s – in the 1960s, bands were forced to rehearse, to really learn the finicky listening and singing skills that allowed bands like the Moody Blues to sing that well together. They had no choice – the primitive 8-track recorders and monitors of the era required it. There were no elaborate overdubs. All the sounds on See-saw are real, played at the same time. The result is a clarity, and at the same time strength, that even a hundred overdubs cannot achieve.

Maybe that’s the magic of it. You just cannot reproduce anything like this. The skills required to make great records are completely different now, and the technology has moved so far away as to be unrecognizable. Yet, you can still hear their youth and excitement, almost a half century later. We know they are probably elderly men now, and likely as cynical as the rest of us. Thankfully, it doesn’t really matter. For me, they are frozen in 1968, their voices clear, their motives pure, their optimism intact.

Like I said, it must have been nice.

Soundtrack - Some Shameful Self-indulgence

Fri, 30 Mar 2007 15:06:00 GMT

During a reworking of this website a few weeks ago, I took a look at the layout of my blog, and realized that the comments section was actually working. And so to complete my slide into self-indulgence, I thought I would answer some of the questions, say thanks for the compliments, and debate the cantankerous.

Marie, Sherry & others, re. 54-40 - It was interesting how many readers of our site had been at the late-90s show in Guelph I spoke about in this entry. We played over 150 gigs that year – that particular Stardust Picnic was memorable for many reasons, our performance being none of them. I am happy you are all still around, and doubly pleased that so many of you realized just how stunning 54-40’s performance really was. Even now I can see Neil Osborne Standing onstage in front of the mic during the sudden hurricane, the wind & rain blasting him like a fire-hose, and him just blinking, a little irritated, like someone standing next to a smoky campfire.

Todd & Ana, re. Bothy Band – Todd took exception to my suggestion that the title of ‘The Maids of Mitchelstown’ somehow related to the actual mood of the pieces. I realize that the two are probably unrelated, in the sense that the jig ‘Auntie Mary’ does not really refer to someone’s mother’s sister. On the other hand, to me it makes a kind of poetic sense. As always, it’s all about the context, isn’t it - once you have decided on what the tune means, you tend to make the title fit that emotion. I do anyway. I am not sure when and why I decided that ‘The Maids’ is the epitome of quiet despair, but now I am firmly convinced. For her part, Ana linked the tune (albeit obliquely) to Led Zeppelin. I think she has something there: Zeppelin were well aware of bands like the Bothies, and made no secret of their admiration. Listen to the bass and guitar solos in ‘Ramble On’ sometime, and you will hear exactly what I mean. There is a loneliness and sadness in that song that comes from the same place as the Bothy Band.

To Anne in Philly, re: the Tannahill Weavers – I have never actually seen the Tannahill Weavers live, and I have had lots of chances. To be honest, I am afraid I will not like them. As I have fallen in love with the performance of many a band whose records I have disliked, so have I been disappointed in the performance of many bands whose albums I loved. For that reason, I have decided to let my love for the Weavers go unrequited. There should always be some mystery in life.

Rabellka, re. Cornershop – Your comment has left me confused; do you agree, that (a) a bosom makes a useful pillow, (b) Ben Ayres should learn to love St. John’s, and/or (c) Fatboy Slim’s remix of ‘Asha’ is a thousand times better than the original? Actually, all options are acceptable, I suppose.

Hangin Johnny, re. Ryan’s Fancy – Johnny wondered why the Newfoundland Irish band Ryan’s Fancy’s albums are so hard to find. Unfortunately, most of their records were recorded for the Audat/Boot label, a Toronto based label that released many Newfoundland and other Canadian folk records in the 1970s and early 80s. The label went bust some time ago, and took the band’s catalogue with them into bankruptcy oblivion. Various corporately wobbly labels have purchased the band’s masters and re-released Ryan’s Fancy albums from time to time, but they do so without permission, paying any royalties, or otherwise acknowledging the band’s efforts. For that reason, we encourage you to buy ‘Songs From The Shows’, the only album from which Dennis, Fergus, and Dermot’s family receive any recompense.

Dave & Frank, re. The Killers - Dave helpfully suggested that if I was such a fan of Franz Ferdinand and The Killers I would like alt-country heroes Son Volt. It is an interesting suggestion – I cannot see any similarity at all. On the other hand, to me there is an obvious connection between every artist discussed in my blog. Which goes to my over-arching theme – songs reach us in funny ways, and therein lies the mystery and the beauty of it all. Dave sees the Killers and Son Volt as coming from the same place, while I see the Killers and the Dubliners as equal parts artistry and gutter. We are both right. Frank asked, apropos of nothing, if it was me his wife had glimpsed recently in a Bahamas pub. While I travel widely, I was not in said pub. On the other hand, in the past couple of years, I have been recognized at an ice-cream truck in Rome, loitering outside a dollar store in Nice, in a ticket line-up at Disney World, and while standing at a urinal in Galway. All four of these people were utterly astonished when I agreed that I was, in fact, myself. My larger point being, while in Frank’s situation, it was not the case, it was entirely possible. Frank’s wife should have asked.

Z, re. Shanneyganock – Z, a little churlishly perhaps, wondered if as producer of an album, my own perceptions of what was valuable about the band outweighed theirs. The answer is an unqualified yes. In my experience, an act hires a particular producer because they wish to avail of their ears and ideas. If Shanneyganock did not want to listen to me, or agree with my suggestions, they had the option of hiring someone else, doing it themselves, or ditching the song. GBS has had several producers. Some we liked, some we didn’t. Regardless, each one was hired based on their proven ability to bring ideas, arrangements, sounds, etc., to the table, elements which we were unable to create ourselves. My assumption is that anyone who hires me desires the same. Otherwise, why bother?

Anonymous, via an e-mail – Sometime ago, I received an email from a reader who declared this whole exercise to be pompous in the extreme. Again, I offer an unqualified ‘yes’. Unless you are solving cancer or something, every blog is an exercise in self-indulgence. I am talking about my records, after all, with the underlying assumption being that my opinions about them have some value to the world at large. What could be more pompous than that?

Fling Out The Flag - Shanneyganock vs. David Bowie

Fri, 23 Mar 2007 15:03:00 GMT

Serious fans, or ‘musos’ as my British friends would call them, often want to know where the ideas come from. How do you get from a lyric sheet to the finished product? How do you start with ‘a pile of notes’ and end up with a slick recording? Where do the arrangements get hashed out? It is one thing to research these old tunes, but just how do they turn into something like ‘Lukey’?

It is often a round-about journey. By way of explanation, and as a half-assed way of plugging my latest outside project, I figured I’d use a song I produced and arranged on the new Shanneyganock album, Fling Out The Flag. Shanneyganock share some similarities with GBS, but they are also very different. The biggest fundamental difference is that band has neither played nor taken any interest in pop music. Their whole thing has been about making folk based music, just bigger and louder then what would be possible without electricity. Figuring out new ways to create pop music is not part of the picture. They are an accordion driven folk rock band, one of a handful in Newfoundland who tour nationally. And they are very conservative, much like their hardcore audience.

I didn’t really like any of their previous albums. They always sounded half done to me, as if no one had cared enough to really dig into the material, or as if there had been some economic constraint that forced a one-take maximum on everything. Live, they were a much better band; too much better, really. Only an early live album managed to capture their physical presence. They are big men, and their sound and playing reflects that. Their albums sounded tiny to me, and I wondered why.

The world of serious accordion players in Newfoundland is a small one, so I have known Mark Hiscock, the accordion player and co-lead singer for longer than I care to think about. I met the band’s other leader Chris Andrews when he was a teenager, fronting his own pub band. Some time ago, we decided that at some ill-defined point in the future we would work together. When my booking agency took Shanneyganock on as a client, we all decided that a fresh and innovative album was going to be a very necessary part of a new and improved package. Unfortunately, I was (and am) rather busy, so it took us over a year, with a day here and there, to get the job done.

My approach for the album was to treat every song as an end in itself. They get a lot of airplay hereabouts – we were going to make the album as if it was a collection of singles. And they were going to sound as eclectic as possible. Offstage, they were listening and enjoying a wide variety of music. This was not reflected in their recordings. I wanted to define their sound as something modern, but also very traditional in its mindset. GBS is constantly striving to reinvent itself; this is not the Shanneyganock approach. They wanted, to quote David Lee Roth ‘more of the same, only different’. And, although no one was saying it, the playing, writing and actual sounds - everything - needed to get a lot, lot better.

We had most of the album done when Chris came to me with the song ‘The Flag of Newfoundland’. One of Newfoundland’s most explicitly patriotic songs, it was lyrically suited to the band’s strong nationalist sympathies. Unfortunately, it was rather slow. While the song was an anthem, it sounded instead almost funeral hymn. Somewhere along the way Mark and Chris had decided to do it as a duet. This was not helping – their voices are nothing alike, and the contrast between their different approaches to the lyric was not working for me. I took the idea home and thought about it.

First, we agreed that Chris would sing it. Although the higher parts would be a strain for him, his burly growl was better suited to the songs’ passion. Then I started listening to weird records, trying to find a good idea, something that would pull the song out of its banal hole. Somewhere along the way I dug out a compilation of glam rock from the UK, circa the early 70’s. This is a period close to my heart, and I have often found inspiration there. David Bowie’s early hit, ‘Rebel, Rebel’ almost leapt out of the speakers at me – it was the perfect model.

Bowie’s song is an anthem, which is where we needed to begin. Obviously, the lyrics and tone have nothing to do with obscure Newfoundland songs. It did have a killer drum hook though, with a slamming downbeat. It was nothing at all like the country shuffle the band favoured, but slowed down a little, it was perfect for the song. I figured out a tempo, and got the band to record a rough demo. Later that night, with just a drummer and the engineer in the studio, I got him to lay down a new back-beat for the song, one based entirely on Bowie’s song. Over the next few days, we re-did all the band’s parts so they would sit better on top of the new back- beat. We added a key change at the end, and I played some low whistle and fiddle to darken the choruses, making them a little moodier and angrier. We then layered some background vocals, several parts each, until the chorus had the male choir effect I thought the piece needed. Now it was a powerful folk rock anthem, a song utterly unlike anything they had ever played before, but one that was a logical extension of their earlier work.

To say the least, the band was dubious about it at first. The ‘Rebel, Rebel’ groove felt weird to them, slow and sluggish. This is one of the harder things about being a producer – you have to be able to see and hear what the final outcome will be even before a note has been recorded. If you can manage that, it is like putting the pieces into a puzzle. I knew the Bowie model would work for the song, but it was hard for the band to appreciate my vision. When they heard the final product, they understood. And to the degree that bands like Shanneyganock have hits, ‘The Flag of Newfoundland’ has come to define their new sounds.

Not many Newfoundland bands have looked to Bowie for inspiration. But if you are going to go ‘forward into the past’, you need to use every trick in the book.

www.shanneyganock.ca

Rattlin’ Roarin’ Willie - The Barra MacNeils

Wed, 14 Mar 2007 18:40:00 GMT

Rattlin’ Roarin’ Willie is typical of their early repertoire. Although it is a great traditional sing-along, they never surrender to pub heroics, and throughout the piece they find subtle nuances, nuances I am still finding now. The blend of their voices has changed little over the years, and unlike some of their more outré pop forays, this has held up well.

A year or so after I heard them for the first time, I went to Halifax, a city I had never visited before, for a student newspaper conference. Somehow I had heard that the Barras were playing at the Club Flamingo, and dragging a Newfoundland fiddle playing friend along, we pipped off the conference to go to the show. The Barras were, as I recall, brilliant. Lucy was there, up from college for the weekend, and the band was in fine form. They played all the ‘hits’, plus a number of Cape Breton sets. I had never heard one before, there is no equivalent in Newfoundland, and I was fascinated by the slow tempo and chromatic builds each set featured. Somewhere along the way I got to talking to this guy, who had noticed that I had a mandolin strapped to my back. In those days I carried it everywhere – just in case – like I was Captain America with his shield or something. He suggested I should join him at a party at someone’s house, which the band was slated to attend. It was all extremely casual. Being a fan of traditional music in that period was like joining a somewhat obscure religion. Enthusiasm was the only qualification, and if you had it, you were in.

Eventually, as the show wound down, we found a cab, and made off for the far distance suburbs where someone’s cousin was hosting the party. We got there at the same time as the band, and were quickly ushered into a house absolutely heaving with people. Instruments of all types were soon out, and the session began in earnest. Everyone knew each other, and my friend and I were welcomed, Newfoundland players being as exotic to them as the Cap Bretoners were to us. The tunes just seemed to get better and better. I felt like I had stepped into this alternate universe, where everyone around me was into the thing in the world I loved more than anything. It was if I had finally found my niche, my group, my place in the world. Eventually, the big pipes came out, and to the accompaniment of drummers bashing away on the kitchen table and whatever else they could find (to the horror of the cousin & host), two pipers led a drunken parade through the house, fiddles, and dancers going mad behind them. It was, bar none, the best party I had ever been to in my life, and I decided right there on the spot that I was done with the punk scene – this was the future, and I was going to seize it.

Eventually the party wound down. It took us hours to get back to our digs, as neither of us had a clue where (a) we were, or (b) where we were billeted, but it didn’t seem to matter. I was wrapped in a glow that took months to wear off. As soon as I got home, I sold my amps and bass, dug out my great-grandfather’s fiddle, and started practicing for real. The Barras had changed my life.

Some years later, we crossed paths with them professionally for the first time, when we supported them on a show in Cape Breton. Backstage, I sat down with Kyle. I figured you only get one chance to thank someone who had had such a huge impact on your life, and I was going to take it. I had spent years prior to that gig envying them, their ability to play music in such circumstances, the fact that they regularly enjoyed evenings like the one I had stumbled onto. My own desire to live in that amazing world had fueled my ambition, the ambition to start Rankin Street, learn all those tunes and instruments, suffer those tough years out in the pubs, and to ultimately move onto Great Big Sea and everything that had followed. If I had not gone to that party that night, I would probably have stayed at my government job, slowly sliding into despair, always wondering what I had missed. Like that girl in the Titanic, I had been saved.

To my astonishment, Kyle remembered the party just as well as I had; as, in fact, did the rest of the band. During their long career together, it was the only such party they had ever been too. I was absolutely amazed to discover that they recalled it with just as much nostalgia as me. They too remembered the pipers in the kitchen, the wild dancing, everything. And nothing like it had ever happened to them before or since.

Which just goes to show, sometimes you really do have to be in the right place at the right time.

The Barra MacNeils

A quick note about the recent death of our friend Dermot: Much has been said about his musical influence, some of it by me, and there is no point repeating it all here. Ryan’s Fancy loom large in the persistence of traditional music in Newfoundland, and for that we are all grateful. More important, Dermot was a true gentleman, one of the nicest people I have ever known. His enthusiasm and boundless energy for singing and playing, plus his wide-ranging mind and intellect were a gift to us all. He shall be much missed.

Ryan's Fancy

Take Me Out - Franz Ferdinand & When You Were Young - The Killers

Tue, 13 Feb 2007 15:05:00 GMT

No one listens to the radio anymore, according to music business conventional wisdom, anyway. Of course, this isn’t true – people are just listening to hundreds of different stations at the same time. The mass audience that existed until relatively recently is pretty much gone forever, at least in North America.

In Europe this hasn’t quite happened; not yet, anyway. There are still radio stations and shows that command massive audiences. A song can still break on the radio and propel a band into the stratosphere overnight.

One of my favourite examples of this from the past few years is the band Franz Ferdinand. Scotts, they hail from the UK art school scene that seems to produce so many good bands. The first time I heard ‘Take Me Out’ I loved it. Dirty guitars, just distorted enough to be cool, a sneering, detached vocal, loose and tight at the same time, it has all my archetypes. Great club lyrics, too:

I say, don’t you know?
You say, you don’t know
I say, take me out.

Somehow they perfectly capture a moment many people have had – an escalating romantic tiff, performed in public, with just enough alcohol involved to make it truly irrational. It has all the ludicrous gravity of such moments. The next day one wonders ‘what in the hell was that all about?’ but neither party is sure any more. All that’s left is the (again, irrational) conviction that one was in the right. Somehow Franz Ferdinand nailed it.

The song also has another feature that endears it to the producer in me. The first half consists of a lengthy intro, which has a different tempo, groove, melody - everything. When they decide it is time to get to the real deal, the band somehow slows down and switches gear, to finally lurch into the songs trademark riff. Every band who has tried to switch gears for a studio bed track knows just how hard it is. Slowing down (and making it sound deliberate) is infinitely harder than speeding up. My hat goes off to them.

I can feel my credibility draining away like bathwater, but the Killers have been on my top ten Ipod shuffle list for a while. I would say that I didn’t really get disco stuff like “Mr. Brightside”, and I thought the whole vibe was a little too retro to be true.

Then I caught this song on the local FM station the other day, and it stuck. ‘When You Were Young’ has something that too few songs enjoy these days – a serious devotion to the art of songwriting. The prevalence of loops and the dominance of the bass hook has boxed in a lot of pop songs. The Killers write a lot of their songs on keyboards, and you can hear the difference. Piano players don’t think in the blues patterns that dominate rock and roll guitarists, and it makes their songwriting more intriguing. There is a good reason Elton John and Freddie Mercury wrote such interesting stuff, at least in their early days. Brandon Flowers writes big choruses, full of grandiose melodic leaps. The guitars are there, but they are forced by the different musical structure required by a keyboard into more unpredictable places.

Lyrically this song is interesting. Writer Flowers is counseling a girl, maybe his own? – you are never quite sure. He is trying to convince her that her childhood fantasy of love doesn’t exist – there is no one out there who “looks like Jesus”. It is an interesting idea; maybe he is really talking about the complications of his own faith, or that of someone close to him.

Either way, it is pretty heady stuff for a pop song. It’s not easy to be catchy and serious at the same time. If nothing else, I like their audacity. Picking through the contradictions of your own faith in front of millions is the sort of thing only a Bono can pull off. The Killers are to be admired for their nerve.

And it sure sounds good on the radio.

Ryan’s Fancy - The Green Shores of Fogo

Wed, 31 Jan 2007 15:18:00 GMT

On several levels, it is pretty safe to say that without Ryan’s Fancy we would probably not be here at all.

But like many fortuitous events, nothing about this was obvious at the time. How did a trio of Irishmen come to change the culture of Newfoundland and Atlantic Canada?

Ryan’s Fancy were not the only Irish musicians who came to Newfoundland in the 1970s, drawn by the vibrant local culture, and the huge and hungry audience for their music. The Irish Rovers & the Charlton Showband certainly spent lots of time here, and the Sons of Erin eventually took up residence. Even more authentic folk stars like Dolores Keane realized that there was a treasure house of songs and music here, just waiting for someone to take up the torch.

And for what it is worth, some local bands tried. Figgy Duff devoted their career to Newfoundland music, as did lesser-known lights like Tickle Harbour and the Red Island Band. Unfortunately, most struggled with local indifference. Some managed to make a go of touring, but the rest barely made any headway at all. Like a lot of small nations, Newfoundlanders often seem to need an outsider to point out what should have been obvious all along.

The three men who became Ryan’s Fancy were looking more for steady work than artistic inspiration when they first arrived in St. John’s in the early 1970s. What they found was an audience eager to hear their own music played back to them in a highly skilled and energetic fashion. Newfoundlanders were already well familiar with the band’s repertoire of Irish ballads and street songs. When Fergus O’Byrne, Dennis Ryan and Dermot O’Reilly started to include local songs in their lively performances, something massive clicked between them and their audience.

With their live shows exploding, the CBC, invited them to host a new show they were going to start filming in Newfoundland. It would involve traveling around the province, meeting older Newfoundlanders, examining the province’ history and culture through the lens of its music. While locals were always featured, anchoring the show was Ryan’s Fancy themselves. Somehow they were able to learn and arrange dozens of Newfoundland songs, some common, some so obscure they were known only by one family. They then presented these songs as if they had been playing them for years, with all the honesty and musical dexterity they were capable of. For the first time Newfoundlanders saw someone taking their culture seriously, and playing their music in an unpolished yet sophisticated manner.

In later years the show’s locations expanded to the rest of the Maritimes. Figures like Stan Rogers, Alistair MacGillvary and the young Barra McNeils received their first notice on the show. Cape Bretoners embraced the show with the same fervour as Newfoundlanders, delighted to hear music by and about themselves on television. In both places traditional music gained a place in the mainstream that it never really surrendered since. Children who saw those shows in the late 70’s, children like the Barras, the Rankins, Natalie McMaster and ourselves went on to start new bands, and build new musical worlds based on that very solid foundation.

Perhaps all this would have happened anyway. I don’t know. I have seen the Ryan’s Fancy shows in reruns, and they still offer something special. Dermot, Fergus and Denis’s ability to create an instant rapport with total strangers was very unusual. Their interest in Newfoundland culture was genuine, and their love of the place and people convinced many here that there was indeed something special about this place, something worth fighting to hold onto.

‘The Green Shores of Fogo’ comes from the album ‘Songs From The Shows’, a relatively recent release, and the only one which the band actively endorses. The song is a beautiful ballad, one of the greatest Newfoundland love songs. The arrangement is not overly complex, yet it still features some of the band’s many strengths – poignant singing from Denis, delicate concertina from Fergus, and intricate guitar and mandolin from Dermot. It is not as raucous as many of their arrangements, but it serves the song very well. Prior to its appearance on the TV show, the song was practically unknown; it is still obscure by any standard. Yet by it’s very presence on the CD it is given legitimacy; whether I want to believe it or not, Ryan’s Fancy have endorsed it, and by recording it, made it ‘good’.

I do not subscribe to the belief that three Irishmen recording local songs made them any better - any worthier - than they were before. However, that is effectively what happened. And while it says a lot of sad things about Newfoundlander’s self-esteem (and lack thereof), the end more than justified the means.

Many folk musicians see ‘preservation’ as a their goal. I disagree; if there is no longer any excitement, or energy, or meaning in the music, then why bother? Preservation for its own sake leaves the music in a museum, desiccated and ultimately of little use. Ryan’s Fancy grabbed Newfoundland music from its box in the back of the closet, where it lay almost forgotten, polished it and dressed it up, and by their inspired example made the rest of us realize how good it really was.

And for that I am grateful.

www.avondalemusic.com/ryansfancy.html

54-40 - Baby Ran

Wed, 24 Jan 2007 19:14:00 GMT

Somehow, without anyone sending us a letter or certificate, we have become one of those bands people refer to a Canadian institution. There are only a handful – Spirit of the West, Blue Rodeo, Trooper, and a few more. Most are pretty much unknown in the States or Europe, but have plugged away for decades in Canada, headlining Lobster Festivals, Firemen’s Days, hockey arena openings and the like. Never enormously successful, no one goes hungry either.

We cross paths with one another in airports and the like, and we all seem to share the same dozen-crew guys. Most of the bands are a fair bit older than us, but they are all universally nice guys, and have been generous and helpful over the years.

Over the years I have become rather fond of 54-40, a band I missed entirely when I still lived on the other side of the monitors. I would have liked them a lot. Songs like ‘I Go Blind’ and ‘Ocean Pearl’ are text book examples of great power pop. Lead singer Neil Osborne is not blessed with a great voice, but he knows every inch of the one he does have, and knows exactly how to push, and when it matters. On ‘Baby Ran’, a fast punky slice of rock, he puts on a sly sneer. The lyric expresses regret for his lost girl, but the tone is opposite – it’s all about the subtext, and the subtext is that there’s another one around the corner, anyway. ‘Casual Viewing’, from another era, establishes a slow, murky groove, one the band exploits to its limits. It should get dull, but instead it gets suspenseful. You expect it to let go, but it never does. It’s the sound of musicians who are completely at ease with another, but utterly unafraid to hold back, waiting, lurking.

My greater personal appreciation of 54-40, as a fellow traveler on the ‘long, cold road’ as Dave Bidini would have it, is founded on their their punk work ethic. There is a big part of me that wants to be Joe Strummer or Greg Ginn, beating the shit out of an electric guitar, the crowd inches from my face, the amps ripping your nuts off. 54-40 lived in that world during their salad days, and 20 years of criss-crossing Canada still has not completely extinguished that spirit. After a while, just keeping the band together is an accomplishment; doing it with a bit of brio is worth bonus points.

In the late 90s, we joined with Blue Rodeo and a number of other Canadian bands to organize a traveling festival. It wasn’t the best idea we have ever had, but we had some fun times. 54-40 joined the ‘Stardust Picnic’ several times, the most memorable being a Sunday afternoon show in Guelph. The venue was a local park, already damp and humid after a week of rain. Osborne and co. went on in the late afternoon under darkling skies. A few songs into their set, a torrential shower broke out. It was hideous – sheets of rain, a sudden gale – you could hardly see the sound guy from where I was backstage.

The crowd couldn’t move, they were too tightly packed up front, and just suffered under the downpour, instantly up to their knees in muck. The band members of 54-40 just looked at each other, shrugged, and in the face of all logic and good sense, went driving into one of their fastest and most raucous tunes. The audience, who had expected to be abandoned, reacted with surprise, then a huge roar, as they realized the band was going nowhere. The stage roof blew off, and now the band was soaked. It looked like they were being hit by fire-hoses. The bass player was right next to me, and in seconds he was standing in a sizable puddle. The crew was horrified, but the crowd was delighted, screaming and roaring their approval. It was magic, the best display of showmanship I have ever seen. The drummer was grinning like a teenager, big splashes flying off his kit every time he hit a drum. Osborne didn’t even move, he just kept on singing and playing, his long hair glued over his face.

It all came to an end when the PA crew unhooked the generator, fearing mass electrocution. The band, clothes and instruments ruined, finally left the stage to a mass ovation, one that rang through the storm. I felt like a coward, sitting in the bus, warm and dry while 54-40 showed all and sundry what playing in a band is all about.

For that act of stupidity/brilliance alone, I’ll buy every album they ever put out.

The Maids of Mitchelstown – The Bothy Band

Mon, 15 Jan 2007 20:35:00 GMT

Amongst fans of traditional Irish music, it is almost a given that the Bothy Band were the greatest folk band ever. The recent death of founder Michael O’Domnhail got me thinking about them, and listening to their music for the first time in many years.

As bands go they had a short life, just three albums, and a couple of after-the-fact live recordings. They suffered badly from the sort of poor management that ruined many 70’s bands, and the lack of any North American market ultimately led to their premature collapse.

Still, their reputation for brilliance is undiminished 30 years later. It is hard to imagine how revolutionary they were now. These days every folk band plays fast, complex instrumental sets, and no self-respecting Celtic act would appear without their vital bouzouki player. However, in 1974, Bothy founder Donal Lunny was still inventing the instrument’s style, and the tunings that we all play today. If you listen to the other big acts of the time, like Planxty and the Chieftains, you realize just how ahead of the game the Bothies were. Members like piper Paddy Keenan, fiddler Kevin Burke and flutist Matt Molloy are still acknowledged as virtuosos today and the handful of tunes the Bothy Band recorded are required learning for any aspiring Irish musician. O’Domnhail’s open tuned guitar caused a revolution, as he discovered a way to create drone tones more sympathetic to pipes and fiddles than standard guitar chord sequences.

More interesting, perhaps, is that the Bothies, (unlike, say the Chieftains), were unapologetic about separating instrumental music completely from its roots as dance music. They played with tempo, counterpoint and harmony as they saw fit, creating a driving rock-based sound that bands like Danu, Altan and Lunasa and hundreds of other Celtic bands have embraced with fervor.

For me, nothing sums up their brilliance more than their setting of the reel ‘The Maids of Mitchelstown’, which appeared on the album ‘Out of the Wind and Into the Sun’. Unlike most of their sets, it consists of just one reel. It starts with a series of guitar chords, playing an out of time hook. It is a surprise when the flute starts playing the actual tune – all of a sudden the hook makes sense. A little while later Kevin Burke’s fiddle joins in, sliding around the fiddle in harmony. Somewhere along the way you realize the fiddle and the flute are actually playing two different versions of the ‘Maids’; such is the genius of the playing and the arrangement, that you could listen to the piece dozens of times and still not realize this.

All this creates a sound that is almost otherworldly, beautiful but very, very bleak. It somehow conveys loneliness better than any other piece of music I have ever heard. An Indian acquaintance of mine once tried to explain how certain ragas are associated with the seasons of the year. For example, a scale, or a certain sequence of notes would indicate ‘summer’ to a knowledgeable listener. If the same metaphor could be extended to Irish music, (the blood in the veins of so much Newfoundland music), then ‘The Maids’ is definitely a winter tune. I can’t hear it without thinking of an iced-up landwash, or a windy and empty road, or a snow-swept barren. I have played around with the tune many times – you can speed it up, and give it a more jaunty air, but the tune remains isolated, drained of the joy that drives so much traditional music. I believe the Bothies instinctively understood this. Their ability to reach a common understanding of a melody, and then to enhance each other’s interpretation of it is unparalleled. Despite the wildness of so much of their music, ‘The Maids’ is a masterpiece of restraint.

I sometimes wonder who wrote the jigs and reels and waltzes and hornpipes I have spent so much time learning. As a rule, tunes with titles like ‘The Maids’ are usually a little happier and more celebratory, a la the standard ‘Buffalo Gals’. It occurs to me, in my currently reflective mood, that the writer of ‘The Maids of Mitchelstown’ was perhaps not a young man, excited about a ‘buxom lass’. Perhaps he was much older, or far removed from Mitchelstown. Maybe the ‘maids’ only existed as the sad remnant of a happier time. You have to wonder. I do, anyway. Instrumental music, especially the ‘weird’ tunes that weren’t suited for dancing, were kept alive for another reason. For most of traditional music’s history, the prevalence of a given tune required a string of people to love, learn and pass on the music. If no one loved it, or found it devoid of meaning, the tune was quickly forgotten.

‘The Maids’ resonated enough for both Matt Molloy and Kevin Burke to learn the reel in the 1960s, and then bring it to the band for the perfect arrangement years later. They knew exactly what it meant, enough for it to be as powerful thirty years later as the day they recorded it.