Blog

Thoughts on music, the arts, and interviews with friends.
Click the title of each post to read on.

16. Alison Krauss - Forget About It (1999) Alison Krauss phoned my house on Thursday November 23, 2000. Yes, the Alison Krauss. I was at York U taking Rob Bowman’s Popular Music course. Rob loves music more than anyone. One of the very best teachers I’ve had. Right at the top. By age 21, his life was already more exciting than 1000 people put together. I loved that course and count myself lucky to have been in it around Rob and so many interesting students. Anyway, I knew I wanted to focus of bluegrass for my final paper in the course. Specifically, I...

14 July, 2018

If you're just tuning in, this is what I am up to. 11. The Artistry of Christopher Parkening (1993) The next few albums on this list relate to a specific time in my life governed by the anxiety of Columbia House and the urgency of the guitar. The first CD player I ever got was a Hitatchi boom box, still functioning in the room it has been in since 1990. I needed to feed it. CDs were expensive and the Columbia House deal was too good to pass up. The secret shame of receiving a selection from them, their choice, and having...

05 July, 2018

4. The Shaggs – Philosophy of the World (1969) In my UVic Jazz Theory class, we discussed The Shaggs and what it means to be an original. It was a thrilling class and I really enjoyed hearing so many insightful and differing opinions expressed with such passion. Love or loathe them, The Shaggs challenge ideas around intent and execution in popular music. This list I am creating is not officially ranked in order of preference, nevertheless this particular record tugs at my heart way, way more that most. It could even be #1.5. I can’t listen to it while driving. Too intoxicating....

30 June, 2018

2. Barry Elmes – Climbing I’ve told this story a hundred times but never written it down till now. As Canadian jazz festival season is in full swing, it seems appropriate to finally pen it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rwfmfyndYAQ Long ago in a land where jazz was valued, touring Canadian bands would come to St. John’s NL and record at the CBC building on Water Street. These sessions were often for broadcast on JazzBeat. Katie Malloch – I don’t know where to begin. Easily one of the greatest supporters of Canadian jazz. Her show, along with Don Warner’s JazzLand and later Jeff Healey’s My Kind of...

24 June, 2018

Presenting the first in a few installments of my top 40 records of all time ahead of my 40th birthday in August. This meticulous research is sustained by red wine and all my ethics reviews came back negative. I’m not afraid to turn 40. In fact, I’ve been dressing like I am 80 for a long time so no one will notice my getting old. As this socially constructed milestone approaches, I thought it was important to look back and consider which recordings and musicians have had a particular profound influence. Like driving a new car off the lot, the value...

21 June, 2018

Big bands are more about people than music. Ellington wrote specific parts for specific sounds people made. Freddie Green played with Count Basie for 50 years. In buses, hotels, and in rehearsal, players learned to live and work together against all common sense. The twenty-two hours off stage is fuelled by the two hours on stage each night. It was a hard way to make a living. JazzEast is a led by my good pal Bill Brennan. This group is celebrating their 20th anniversary and I am thrilled to join them for the party. That is something worth celebrating! On May...

01 May, 2018

Join myself, George McFetridge (piano), James Young (double bass) and Paul Fitterer (drums) at the intimate Martin Batchelor Gallery Saturday April 28, 2018. We'll play an opening set of new music, but then things really get interesting. We'd like to experiment with a kind of "improv salon" where musicians, poets, dancers collaborate with us in the second set. There are no rules other than to respect the space and the sound. We can make a running order on the intermission. If you have any other questions, zap us a note. Here is the FB event for the show. George, James, and Paul are...

16 April, 2018

Gerry Squires made this sculpture in 2005 honouring Shanawdithit, widely believed to have been the last of the Beothuk. She died of tuberculosis on 6 June 1829 in St. John's. I feel strongly that if you spoke to most Newfoundlanders who left high school in the mid 1990s, this fact would be the sum total of their experience with Indigenous people. That or a school trip to Halifax to see Mic Mac Mall.  Indigenous people weren't talked about in school or at home. This past spring I taught MUS 391 Indigenous Peoples and Music at UVic and I would welcome the opportunity to...

12 April, 2018

[photo Jack Vartoogian/Getty Images] In my recent youth, me and Mark Neary were typical arseholes. We knew it all.  Tinkling his parents Young Chang during a break from a Trimmed Naval Beef rehearsal, we hatched a scheme. “What if we just made posters that said GORD NEARY: ONE NIGHT ONLY?” Mark’s dad, to the best of my knowledge then and now, is not a musician in any way. But punks that we were, we thought we could take a bite out of the avant-garde scene by making everyone think Gord’s improvisations would be must-hear music. (I didn’t know what avant-garde was then and I...

06 April, 2018

Dr. Peter Narvaez wore many hats. Musician, singer/songwriter, folklorist, and friend. I was lucky to perform and record with him, but my favourite Peter moments were in his MUS 3018 Blues and Jazz course at Memorial University. When I was getting ready to start work at the University of Victoria where I taught a similar course, he laid all manner of great advice on me. This guy had big ears and a big heart. But “Peter the Teacher” is just one side of this incredible human who we lost too soon. I had heard of this wild, provocative music he made...

25 February, 2018