STUDIO 64 JAZZ AND BLUES SERIES – THE 6L62

STUDIO 64 JAZZ AND BLUES CONCERT SERIES –  THE 6L6S  Saturday November19, 2016, 8pm

fall-concert-series

Studio 64 has done it again!. They concluded the fall Jazz and Blues Concert series with a crack-a-jack blues outfit – The 6L6S featuring Mike Watson – guitars and vocals; Tommy Knowles – Bass Guitar; and Kent MacRae Drums). This band came out of Calgary to especially warm up this frosty night in Kimberley. They are a full on LOUD electric band with obvious affection for the roots of the music and featured many songs from deep within the acoustic blues traditions of the 20s, 30s, and 40s. They included their special interpretations of songs by Leadbelly, Blind Blake, Robert Johnson, Elmore James (Dust My Broom) Willie Dixon (Diddy Wha Diddy) Cripple Clarence Lofton  (Strut that Thing), Little Walter / Muddy Waters (My Babe) and a couple of early rock and roll classics including Maybe Baby and a tune by Link Wray. It was a boisterous night with Studio 64 patrons adding an appropriate touch by “dancing in the isles”. It was a fitting conclusion to another very successful concert series. For now we just have to hang tight until spring rolls around with another Studio 64 Concert Series. Here are some images from the night:

102a-mike-watson   100-kent-macrae200-mike-watson226-tommy-knowles220-mike-watson   228-mike-watson224-kent-macrae234-tommy-knowles   236-tommy-knowles240-mike-watson254-kent-macrae   268-tommy-knowles280-mike-watson300-mike-watson302-mike-watson304-tommy-knowles318-tommy-knowles    316-mike-watson326-mike-watson330-mike-watson   330-tommy-knowles

@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@

In memory of Leonard Cohen – Paul Zollo

Leonard Cohen-1September 21, 1934 – November 7, 2016

Leonard was 82 years old when he died

I remember it like it was yesterday. I was ten and learning how to play guitar. In front of me were the lyrics and chords for his song “Suzanne.” I remember thinking, “How does someone write something this beautiful?” It seemed like a miracle to me.

Still does.

So when I got the supreme privilege of sitting down with him myself to talk about songwriting, I told him exactly that. That since I was just a kid, I have been pondering the mystery of “Suzanne” and other miracle songs he wrote. He smiled that warm, gentle Leonard smile when I said this, and did not demur.

“It is a miracle,” he answered. “If I knew where the good songs came from, I would go there more often.”

And in that one answer is the crystallization of this man’s greatness. With just a few words, he gives us humility, humor, reverence, mystery and dedication. Dedication to the mystery itself, to the realm into which all songwriters reach to find their songs.

He spoke in parables. Unlike most humans who rarely finish entire sentences, he spoke in perfect paragraphs, with language at once beat and biblical, ancient and modern. Never was this more evident than when I asked him what he thought about the current quality of popular song, and the widespread conviction of many from previous generations that meaningful songs are no longer written.

“There are always meaningful songs for somebody,” he said. “People are doing their courting, people are finding their wives, people are making babies, people are washing their dishes, people are getting through the day, with songs that we may find insignificant. But their significance is affirmed by others. There’s always someone affirming the significance of a song by taking a woman into his arms or by getting through the night. That’s what dignifies the song. Songs don’t dignify human activity. Human activity dignifies the song.”

One time I interviewed Anjali, the singer-musician who loved and lived with him for years, and did a whole album of his words with her music. We met at a café in mid-L.A. and the great man himself, Leonard, accompanied her. Of course, being him he knew right away I would be unable to conduct a meaningful interview with him sitting there. So he immediately assured us that he would sit elsewhere while we spoke.

We did the interview, and afterwards I made an admission to Anjali. Which was that it was hard to fathom actually living a regular life with Leonard. I did know he was a man, after all, as I told her. But to songwriters, I said, he is a God.

She laughed heartily when I said that, and answered, “Oh trust me, he’s a man! He is definitely a man.”

Now with his mortal life complete, it seems she must have been right. But there are very few men I have ever known who did what he did. Even when the industry as he knew it essentially collapsed, never did he waver from the thing that mattered most: the work. If it took him seven years to perfect a song, even to the extent of writing forty or more verse, he would take seven years. There was no rush. Nothing mattered more. When he would be up at Mt. Baldy, serving time as a Buddhist monk, he would be working on songs in his head. During his last year, when he was in severe pain and immobilized, he worked on songs. The work never stopped. Songwriting was for him, as miracle songs like “Hallelujah” made so clear, more than a job. It was a calling. His highest calling. And he built a beautiful and indestructible tower of song, brick by brick, day by day, year by year. Like all of his songs, it has been built to last.

“It begins with an appetite,” he said, describing the way he started a song, “to discover my self-respect. To redeem the day. So the day does not go down in debt.“

Songwriting, he explained, did not come easy. It was work, and he felt artists were wrong to ever consider otherwise. “But why shouldn’t my work be hard?” he asked. “One is distracted by this notion that there is such a thing as inspiration, that it comes fast and easy. Some people are graced by that style. I’m not. So I have to work hard as any stiff, to come up with the payload.”

Asked to explain just what this work entails, he basically answered anything. Whatever is required. “Anything that I can bring to it, he said. “Thought, meditation, drinking, disillusion, insomnia, vacations. Because once the song enters the mill, it’s worked on by everything that I can summon. And I need everything. I try everything. I try to ignore it, try to repress it, try to get high, try to get intoxicated, try to get sober, all the versions of myself that I can summon are summoned to participate in this project, this work force. I try everything. I’ll do anything. By any means possible.”

So, I asked, do any of these things work better than others?

“No,” he said with a smile. “Nothing works. Nothing works.”

Nothing but pure dedication to this art and craft so impacted by his own work. “Dylan blew everyone’s mind when he started,” said the poet Allen Ginsberg. “Everyone except Leonard Cohen.” It’s true. Leonard was on his own path from the start. Never did he sway from the conviction that the only true mission was finding a way to get there, to reach that realm from which the great songs come. It’s where he is now.

“It’s much like the life of a Catholic nun,” he said. “You’re married to a mystery.”

In Memory of Leonard Cohen – Written By   Paul Zollo –  November 11, 2016

@@@@@@@@@@@@@

PAUL ZOLLO is the author of eight books, including several on the craft of   song writing. His book Songwriters On Songwriting has been expanded three times and features in-depth interviews with many of the world’s greatest songwriters, including Bob Dylan, Paul Simon, Randy Newman, Laura Nyro, Pete Seeger, Leonard Cohen, Neil Young and Frank Zappa. It has been called “the ultimate book about songwriting” and “the songwriter’s bible,” and is used as a textbook in songwriting courses in many universities.

On October 18, 2016, the sequel to Songwriters On Songwriting was published, More Songwriters On Songwriting featuring all new interviews with a vast range of legendary songwriters, including Leiber & Stoller, James Taylor, Loretta Lynn, Elvis Costello, Paul Simon, Randy Newman, Brian Wilson, Matisyahu, Patti Smith, Chrissie Hynde, Kris Kristofferson, John Prine and many more.

@@@@@@@@@@@@@

Special thanks to Doug Mitchell for sending this to me.

@@@@@@@@@@@@@

Read any good books lately? (#6) – Aroatoare

Aroatoare – “The Land of the Long White Cloud”, this is the name the early Polynesian seafarers gave New Zealand when they first colonised the two islands around  800 AD.  In the popular imagination of North Americans,  New Zealanders and Australians are grouped together. Although their accents are similar they are different people with different histories. Modern Australia came about as a collection of penal settlements. Habituated by convicts, felons, political prisoners  and their jailers who the British government dumped in a harsh forbidding land that became Australia. They were surrounded by almost inconceivable expanses of bush and lived cheek by jowl with an aboriginal population that was beyond a white man’s comprehension. The life was hard, harsh and that shaped a rather flinty race of inhabitants. New Zealand, on the other hand was never host to penal settlements of any kind. The Polynesians were there long before the white man and were basically a free people with a highly developed culture. They literally owned the land and did not take kindly to attempts to being  dispossessed and to prove a point they went to war with the whites to assert their rights. The early white settlers were free people untainted by any convict blood. Modern day New Zealanders do not hesitate to point that out. The Maori can often trace his ancestry back to the immigrants of the canoe that brought them across the sea from “Hawaii”.  The historical literature of Australia is about convicts, jailers and bush rangers and the struggle to survive. New Zealand’s stories are about fairly peaceful settlement, and apart from the Maori wars at one stage,  and peaceful interactions between whites and Maoris. I think I can safely say the New Zealand must be one of the few places colonized by white  men where the indigenous population has actually changed the white man.

The German author Sarah Lark explores the early New Zealand experiences  in a series of  “landscape novels” that have made her a best selling author in her native Germany. Fortunately the novels have been translated into English and are available from Amazon.ca on Kindle. The concept of New Zealand historical novels written by a German author would seem unlikely and yet, in execution, the three novels in the trilogy work well. They are historical romance novels that could be disparagingly described as “chicklit” but that would be too unkind. They have a lot more strength and depth than a typical “harlequin” paperback. Having traveled and lived in New Zealand, the novels have a geographical and cultural authenticity that takes me back to the time I spent there  many years ago. For an excellent read I recommend all three novels. Below is the synopsis of the three novels available from Amazon.ca.

In the Land of the Long White Cloud (In the Land of the Long White Cloud saga Book 1)

Helen Davenport, governess for a wealthy London household, longs for a family of her own—but nearing her late twenties, she knows her prospects are dim. Then she spots an advertisement seeking young women to marry New Zealand’s honorable bachelors and begins an affectionate correspondence with a gentleman farmer. When her church offers to pay her travels under an unusual arrangement, she jumps at the opportunity.

Meanwhile, not far away in Wales, beautiful and daring Gwyneira Silkham, daughter of a wealthy sheep breeder, is bored with high society. But when a mysterious New Zealand baron deals her father an unlucky blackjack hand, Gwyn’s hand in marriage is suddenly on the table. Her family is outraged, but Gwyn is thrilled to escape the life laid out for her.

The two women meet on the ship to Christchurch—Helen traveling in steerage, Gwyn first class—and become unlikely friends. When their new husbands turn out to be very different than expected, the women must help one another find the life—and love—they’d hoped for.

Set against the backdrop of colonial nineteenth-century New Zealand, In the Land of the Long White Cloud is a soaring saga of friendship, romance, and unforgettable adventure.

Song of the Spirits (In the Land of the Long White Cloud saga Book 2)

This is volume 2 in the internationally bestselling In the Land of the Long White Cloud saga.  Song of the Spirits continues the soaring saga begun with In the Land of the Long White Cloud, as the founding families of colonial New Zealand experience trials and triumphs of friendship, romance, and unforgettable adventure.

Elaine O’Keefe is the radiant grand-daughter of Gwyneira McKenzie, who made her way to New Zealand to take a wealthy sheep baron’s hand in marriage in In the Land of the Long White Cloud. Elaine inherited not only her grandmother’s red hair but also her feisty spirit, big heart, and love of the land. When William Martyn, a handsome young Irishman of questionable integrity, walks into her life, she succumbs rapidly to his charms. Only to have her heart broken when her sensual half-Maori cousin Kura Warden arrives for a visit and draws William away.

Though both young women must endure hardships and disappointments as they learn to live with the choices they make, each of them also discovers an inner resilience—and eventually finds love and happiness in new, unexpected places. Tested by the harsh realities of colonial life, both girls mature into spirited young women with a greater understanding of the challenges—and joys—of love, friendship, and family.

Call of the Kiwi (In the Land of the Long White Cloud saga Book 3)

In the exhilarating conclusion to the internationally bestselling In the Land of the Long White Cloud trilogy, the spirited Warden and McKenzie clan continues its trials—and triumphs—in New Zealand and beyond.

The great-granddaughter of Gwyneira McKenzie—who arrived in New Zealand as a naïve young bride in In the Land of the Long White Cloud—Gloria Martyn has enjoyed an idyllic childhood at Kiward Station, her family’s sprawling sheep farm in the Canterbury Plains. When her parents send word from Europe that it’s time for Gloria to become a proper “lady” by attending boarding school half a world away in England, Gloria must leave everything and everyone she loves most in the world, including her steadfast protector Jack McKenzie. Wrenched from her beloved homeland and struggling to fit in with the stifling strictures of British boarding-school life, Gloria has never felt more alone. Upon discovering that her parents have no intention of ever sending her home, Gloria takes matters into her own hands and sets off on an adventure that will change her forever.

A stirring coming-of-age tale of love, loss, endurance, shame, and redemption that takes readers from the lush plains of New Zealand’s South Island to the bloody shores of Gallipoli, across Australia’s Northern Territory and beyond, Call of the Kiwi is a profoundly satisfying conclusion to the saga that has captured readers’ hearts across the globe.

@@@@@@@@@@@

Sarah Lark has written many novels and now currently lives with four dogs and a cat on her farm in Almería, Spain, where she cares for retired horses, plays guitar, and sings in her spare time.

@@@@@@@@@@@

HOME ROUTES HOUSE CONCERT – Blue Moon Marquee

red-square-cranbrook

BLUE MOON MARQUEE: HOUSE CONCERT AT 8163 GIBBONS ROAD, WARDNER (MAYOOK), Tuesday October 25, 2016, 7:30 pm

From their website: “Blue Moon Marquee is a Gypsy Blues band that stem from the wild rose foothills of Alberta. A.W. Cardinal (vocals/guitar) and Jasmine Colette a.k.a. Bandlands Jass (vocals, bass, drums)  write and perform original compositions influenced by anything that swings, jumps or grooves. Artists such as Lonnie Johnson, Louis Armstrong, Blind Willie Jonson, Charley Patton, Howlin’ Wolf, Bill Jennings, Big Bill Broonzy, Tom Waits, Memphis Minnie, & Django Riendhart to name a few.” Although they originally hail from Rocky Mountain House in Alberta they have recently relocated to the blues drenched valleys of Vancouver Island. Who would have thunk it. Never-the-less they are back near their old stomping grounds to perform a series of House Concerts under the umbrella of Home Routes / Chemin Chez Nous (a non-profit organization spreading live music throughout Western Canada). This particular concert was held in a large, spacious room of a private home out near Wardner. It was not the first time the duo has performed in the area. They were part of Studio 64 Jazz and Blues Concert Series  held in Kimberley March last year (check my review below)

Blue Moon Marquee at Studio 64

These folk are hard working touring musicians who have crossed Canada back and forth at least four times this past summer. They performed at a number of well known festivals, including the Montreal Jazz Festival. European performers do not know how easy they have it. The distances covered between gigs in Europe are minuscule compared to those in Canada – “In Britain 100 years is a short time and 100k is a big distance. In Canada 100 years is a long time and 100k is just a drive to the local pub”.  Then, of course in Canada, the climate almost forbids extensive touring in the winter. So it is is with great appreciation audiences welcome Canadian performers who spend some much time and effort on the road to provide live music in our communities. This particular venue was perfect for the duo. Apart from some mild amplification of the electric guitar it was basically an acoustic performance. The sound was well balanced with their acoustic vocals soaring over the top of the accompanying instruments. The lighting was great and the seating very comfortable. As with their last performance in Kimberley the majority of their original material was heavily flavored with blues and gypsy jazz. Every now and then a little fragment of  “DjangoReinhardt’s  Minor Swing would sneak in and liven up the “hot jazz” atmosphere.Their original material included Dancing with the Wrong Man’s Wife, Gypsy Blues, Hoodoo Lady, Sugar Dime, Troubles Calling, In the Hen House, Runaway Lane, Saddle Sore, Black Rat Swing  (?), Shading Tree and others. They did perform a couple of  “covers”, well not exactly “covers”, their re-interpretation of  a Memphis Minnie classic and one of Lead Belly’s songs  put those songs back out there in a whole new way. As promised, A.W. Cardinal’s guitar swung unrelentingly throughout the evening and Jasmine Colette’s acoustic upright bass and her innovative percussion added to the swing and punch of the music. I had a hard time trying to figure out how she managed to play  the  “hi-hat” and the snare drum at the same time she was playing bass and singing. Here are some images from the evening:

204a-a-w-cardinal206-jasmine-colette  208-jasmine-colette   220-jasmine-colette210-a-w-cardinal  212-a-w-cardinal 216a-a-w-cardinal224-jasmine-colette218-a-w-cardinal228-a-w-cardinal232-jasmine-colette  246-jasmine-colette234-jasmine-colette238-a-w-cardinal242-a-w-cardinal  250-jasmine-colette256-a-w-cardinal264-jasmine-colette260-jasmine-colette   262-jamine-colette266-a-w-cardinal286-jasmine-colette288-jasmine-colette290a-a-w-cardinal012a-blue-moon-header

Thanks Patricia and Glenn for hosting this great concert in this great series. Patrons, don’t forget the next concert THE BOMBADILS, a Celtic based group performing at this same venue on Wednesday November 23, 2016, 7:30pm.

@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@