42 minute read
CALGARY ELECTRO PIONEER TONA OHAMA GOES A LOTTA BIT COUNTRY
by bsimm
Wired Western
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Tona Ohama admits he hasn’t felt this nervous about releasing new music since his debut cassette nearly 40 years ago.
“I hope people will listen to it,” he tells theSCENE. “I normally don’t care much, but it feels like my entire life is on the line with this album.”
Ohama is referring to My Electronic Country Album, a startling project released last month that even his most diehard fans couldn’t have anticipated. Roughly half of the record is spoken word, with the 61-year-old electronic music artist revealing stories from his past that he’s kept secret for decades. Each story is followed by a country music classic — King of the Road, The Gambler, Wichita Lineman, I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry and others — performed entirely on synths; he connects themes in the lyrics to experiences drawn from his life, recontextualizing some of the genre’s bestknown songs.
He admits what he shares on the record — and in this interview — is, “beyond my comfort zone after a lifetime of silence.”
On the album, Ohama reveals details of daily life on his family’s potato farm in Rainier, AB, where he built a studio and released a series of recordings in the 1980s, now hailed as classics of the minimal wave/ retro electronic genre. He also talks about the wilderness years that followed: stories of drug addiction and rehab; of romance and recklessness; of being a high-roller and being homeless. And, yes, there’s a tale of a cheatin’ heart, too.
“My reluctance to discuss personal details of my life prior to this album was simply to protect my son,” Ohama says of Tona Michael, now 28. “Particularly when he was a child, moreso when he was a teenager. I no longer need to do that.
“My wife Mia said I was very brave in this process. (His older sister) Natsuko, too. I’m proud of the work. Everyone can feel when a story is authentic.”
Wired Western
by DAVE VEITCH
But that authenticity didn’t come easily or quickly. Ohama has worked on My Electronic Country Album for the past five years and, as recently as last July, he scrapped all of his music and vocal tracks, and started over.
“I thought it was going to be so easy at the beginning and — oh! — I was wrong,” Ohama says. “Because they were country songs, I wanted to (sing) them naturally. Very few tricks. No autotune. No voice doubling. It was really tough. And (the songs) are complicated … Those arrangements are not straight-forward. Ring of Fire: that’s not in 4/4 time. It’s really quite complex and yet it sounds like such a simple song.”
Ohama says the spoken-word segments took even more time to get right.
“I spent a long, long time writing these stories out and then I tried reading them (out loud). It just sounded terrible,” he says.
He consulted Natsuko, an actress and voice teacher, who convinced him to memorize his stories like a script, then hone and rehearse them until they sounded natural.
“A lot of these stories were ripped apart, word by word, over and over. Things were taken out, hundreds of times, literally. I rewrote and scrapped every word of this album that felt cloudy or mysterious. I was rehearsing them every day.”
Ohama points outs — with one exception — he chose the songs first, then attached stories to each.
For Roger Miller’s King of the Road (“No phone, no pool, no pets, I ain’t got no cigarettes …”), Ohama talks about losing it all in bankruptcy: he was homeless and searched sidewalks for cigarette butts to sate his tobacco habit.
For Kenny Rogers’s The Gambler (“Every hand’s a winner/ And every hand’s a loser/ And the best that you can hope for is to die in your sleep...”), he shares the time he feared his winning streak at the poker table would escalate into bloodshed.
And for the Charlie Daniels Band’s The Devil Went Down to Georgia (“The Devil bowed his head because he knew that he’d been beat…”), Ohama talks about a time in early 1992 when he and a friend capped two days of freebasing cocaine in his Chevy truck, speeding 160 km/h down the wrong side of the Trans-Canada Highway. On the pitchblack night. With no headlights on. For 13 kilometres.
Ohama entered rehab two days later.
“I like to think of that moment if I ever start to think my life is getting a little bit boring,” he quips.
For the final track recorded for the project, Ohama flipped his modus operandi. He started with a #MeToo story: in the early 1990s, when Ohama was in charge of sales for the farm, he spurned the sexual advances of a produce buyer for his biggest customer.
“He did not take this rejection well,” Ohama says on the album. “In fact, he got so angry that he made it his mission to put me out of business. How do I know? Because he told me right to my face.”
The farming operation was struggling at the time and Ohama says an “evil masterstroke” by the buyer, “put the final nail in the coffin. We lost over 50 per cent of our business in the blink of an eye.” Within the year, the potato farm — once the biggest in Western Canada — was out of business after a half-century of operation.
“I didn’t know people could be that selfish and cruel,” says Ohama. “When people would tell me how bad the music business was, it was never as bad as the produce business.”
Deciding he’d finally share this story, Ohama then chose a song — and asked local singer-songwriter Janine Bracewell (MoFaux, Same Difference) to sing These Boots Are Made For Walkin’.
“Every time I hear that song, I think of (that story),” he says.
“It’s the most important story of my life. My mom and dad and uncles and aunts never knew (about the sexual advance) and all passed away blaming me completely for the failure of the business. My father never said one word to me after the farm closed down.” They were still estranged when Tona Sr. died in 2003 at age 90.
TheSCENE asks if My Electronic Country Album might be something of an olive branch to his father given Tona Sr. loved all things country and western, including most of the songs on the record.
“I’ve forgiven my father,” Ohama says. “He’s definitely part of me and part of the record. There’s a hidden credit on the album, right before (closing track) The Dance. I just say: ‘I made this album for Tona.’ And that means for my son, it’s for my father, and it means for me. For all of us. It’s quietly in there. It’s important to know that hidden beneath my work is a connection between the generations.”
Nowadays Ohama lives a quiet life with his wife of six years in their East Village home that doubles as his recording space. “My life now? I’m happy,” he says. “It’s been a tough road to get here.”
When it’s pointed out, with My Electronic Country Album, he’s made his most candid and emotional album without writing a single song, Obama demurs briefly.
“I didn’t set out to do a memoir,” he says. “I was trying to do a country album. After the fact, I saw Randy Bachman doing that show where he was singing Guess Who songs and telling stories. And I saw Springsteen on Broadway. This is almost like that except these are not my songs.”
He pauses, then corrects himself.
“No, I took them. They’re my songs now. The stories make them my songs.”
MUSIC
Premiere: betaboys So Shy, so much fun
Call it nostalgic crate digging. Except easier: a rediscovery of the good stuff initially found by those who had good ears at the time, and left it in a bin marked “kool stuff” at the garage sale on the corner.
What many had to sift through, what was appreciated in the ’80s, directed by some tastemakers and, on a broader, more mainstream level, heard through the Hughes-esque goggles of a PG-matinee, Southland Cinemas-screening, is now getting loved again and used as an influence — the good of what was slogged through by Hughes, by others, is now being plucked from the actual excellent slag heap of history from which it came.
And being brought forth by acts such as Calgary’s John Bender-Brian Johnson, retro indie-rock hybrid betaboys.
The tasty quintet is one of those acts whose ears are in the right place, in the discount bin at Kelly’s or Mister Sound, where the good stuff often was and those in the know would direct us to.
Their first single, So Shy (the title, itself, having Kajagoogooesque implications), is the initial taste of something larger, recorded with Calgary producer and artist Chris Dadge (Lab Coast, Samantha Savage Smith) for their debut EP, coming this spring.
It’s the culmination of bassist and songwriter Scott Perrin’s initial vision for betaboys, one he’s been working on since he first came up with the idea for the act, between 2016 and 2017.
“I had always wanted to do a new wave pop band,” says Perrin. “One of my first inspirations was The Cars … Ricky Ocasek is my guy.”
The songwriter spent the next couple of years making his own demos, while collecting together, through mutual loves, a backing band: Brett Sandford on vocals; Thomas Englund on guitar and backup vocals; Davis de Souza on keyboard and synth; and ubiquitous #yyc skinsman Sean Hamilton.
All brought together under the umbrella of what they should be doing, “on the fun side of new wave.”
As for the song itself, the punchy, angular assault on your catchy, melodic, ’80s pop-rock existence, it’s built on the promise of a band that’s been here for awhile and for all the right reasons.
“All the guys, we get along really, really well and we have a lot of fun with this band,” Perrin says.
“So Shy, I think, is one of those songs that really personifies that best of us, so far.”
Betaboys wanted the bubbly chorus of the tune to be “super fun, and unpretentious, and just be like a Wham! or a Hall and Oates or a … Culture Club thing, and have it be fun …” — yet smarter, harder and stiffer.
Like digging through an already OKed batch of excellence that came together quickly, from a place of positivity.
“I wrote the verses and then I wrote the chorus, I think maybe a couple of weeks, maybe a month later — and, I don’t know, it was kind of random …,” Perrin says. “I just thought this could be something really fun. And, again, that’s the big message of this song, it’s just meant to be fun, new-wave pop or whatever you want to classify it as.”
Good.
That’s where we come down.
Enjoy and hear the single and its official premiere on theYYSCENE.com March 5, with more soon to follow.
Cancer treatment fundraiser for Rae Spoon
Rae Spoon needs your support. Canadian singer-songwriter Spoon continues to face an uphill battle after being diagnosed with stage 3 cervical cancer a year ago and as a result, the medical expenses that are mounting due to their treatment. Spoon, musician, artist, author and founder of Coax Records, received the initial diagnosis in March 2020 but after going into remission in August 2020, doctors discovered the cancer had returned in October.
Undergoing a hysterectomy and a complicated double oophorectomy, Spoon now requires another surgery to repair tissues that were damaged by radiation therapy. They also have a permanent colostomy and may need either a urostomy or a nephrostomy as a result of that procedure.
Understandably, it hasn’t been easy for Spoon, who, according to a release, is now launching a fundraiser with the goal of raising $32,000 for costs related to the treatment, surgeries and prescriptions, and living expenses.
After receiving another surgery on Feb. 19, Spoon now has to spend two-to-eight weeks in hospital recovering and faces months of recovery after that.
Spoon also needs to find a place to live in Victoria, BC, while applying for long-term disability from the province’s government, get onto Fair Pharmacare, and dissolve their current corporation as they can no longer sustain it, the release said.
“All of these will help Rae heal and stabilize into a life that matches their ability. They also want to prioritize creating a new business model for Coax Records, so the label can keep functioning after they dissolve their corporation.”
They have no blood family or financial support, according to the statement, and no health insurance, so they have to pay for prescriptions and all other health expenses out of pocket.
Calgary-born Spoon is a trans, non-binary artist who has been making art and music for over 20 years.
“Rae has always been a community focused artist and has made a lot of community art projects with people from lots of backgrounds,” the release said.
In 2015, Rae founded Coax Records to support and amplify underrepresented artists. Their writing on gender, the medical system, trauma, their evangelical Christian upbringing, ADHD, surviving incest, cancer, and much more has been met with gratitude from audiences all over the world.
Everyone that donates will receive a download link for The Rae Spoon Songbook containing sheet music for all of their songs and the music from all of their solo albums.
• KRISTA SYLVESTER
TRY IT OUT... punk rock for life
Calgary vets Julius Sumner Miller keep those old-school, belligerent bonfires burning
by MIKE BELL
You know. You can smell it. You can sense it. A lifer. Live-er. Forever. Days, months, years, decades, a lifetime, it’s a way of life for those who mean it and truly live it. The old punk rock.
Doesn’t matter how old you get, how suburban the lifestyle, how mundane you sometimes feel and feel like being, you is or you ain’t; and if you once was, you always is.
Longtime booker, promoter and artist Darren Ollinger — dressed in the eternal-youth uniform of ball cap and hoodie — sits sipping a pint in the dartboard back of the Ship, acknowledging where he is at in his life, but also proud as fuck as to what he still is and doing with his life.
Even if his kids think he’s lame. Ish. Perhaps they’re too soft for the punk rock life.
“They probably just think it’s stupid,” Ollinger says
“My kids are 13 and 11 now and they could care less about my music,” he continues. “But they’re actually impressed when you show them the actual vinyl …
“So it’s neat, now I’m in the process of trying to encourage my daughter to start listening to punk rock so she can start telling her friends that her dad’s in a band and maybe that will sell some records.”
Every little bit helps when it comes to the new, coloured-vinyl release (got me the creamsicle) from his longtime, local, old-school troupe Julius Sumner Miller. That latest, Try It Out, is a 12-tune, roof thumper that preaches loudly and proudly to the punk rock vet or recently converted, invited to the party by the Alls, Black Flags, DOAs, DKs, SNFUs and Descendents that gob among us.
Eight years and four albums into things, the band is established and Ollinger is who he is, even if that’s not the path his, er, offspring want to take.
“Punk rock’s not a fad anymore,” he says simply about his life and his charges. “I’ve given them a good life so I don’t see them finding the route of punk rock for the reasons me or you might have when we were kids.”
Those reasons — anger, resentment, middle-class malaise, shock, aggression, frustration, social and political awakenings — still fuel Ollinger and the rest of the JSM crew, which also features Scott Burton, Sean Hamilton (again,) Monty Montebon and Glen Murdock.
You can hear it in the dozen daggers that make up Try It Out, with songs that range from: the sweetly pernicious Don’t Believe In Anime, which is, he says, simply “a list of things I think are dumb”; the silly statement Cheap Parmesan, which lifts the verse from a Crass song and most definitely, not even kind-of, totally doesn’t encourage unsatisfied Albertans to lob a brick of bad cheese at Jason Kenney’s melon; to Leave the Key, written after the settlement of a $9-million lawsuit Ollinger was faced with when a patron was injured at the former all-ages club he ran in Inglewood, The New Black; and the rousing, singalong-when-we’re-ready-again This Town Sucks.
That latter track is a common theme running through JSM’s, or rather lyricist Ollinger’s, songs, him offering an insider’s view of local indie- and punk-rock promotion, and band life, which isn’t always glowing.
“I live it,” he says. “I’m not part of anything. In my world, I am that content that I create.
“And it’s not out of malice or anything. I write most of stuff out of what I know, what frustrates me, excites me.
“A song like This Town Sucks is probably about Calgary, but I bet you that would really be relatable in Thunder Bay or Winnipeg or Regina or Vancouver or any local scene.”
He admits it’s all done with tongue firmly planted in cheek, heart on sleeve.
“Yeah, this town sucks but I also love this town, and because I love it I can say that it sucks, so there’s an ownership that not too many people are allowed to have, and I have given myself permission.”
And JSM have increasingly given themselves permission to stretch out of the total DIY, punk-rock approach and aesthetic, stepping up their sonic game consistently over the past decade (Ollinger joking this is their prog record).
This, their fourth album was recorded during last April’s early lockdown, with the band bunkered down with producer Josh Rob Gwilliam in the somewhat opulent OCL Studios just outside of town, for four days and three nights. (“It was like, the world is coming to an end and we’re sitting in a mansion,” he says.)
And after that bonding and laying down of blissful belligerence, the album was then sent south of the border to be mastered by Stephen Egerton, from hardcore legends the Descendents — Ollinger’s fave band, and an obvious influence on their reverential, throwback sound (despite the fact he admits none of his bandmates are as to-the-death as he is, when it comes to punk).
Which brings us to perhaps the most bizarrely poignant and fitting moment on the record, the quintet’s cover of SNFU classic Drunk on a Bike — a tune JSM has covered for ages, sidelining it only on the four or five occasions they actually opened for the Edmonton legends.
In its soul and in its heart, it’s a nice tribute to fellow lifer, the late singer, songwriter and true punk pioneer Chi Pig.
Ollinger’s admiration and affection for Mr. Pig is obvious, as he describes the one time he’d booked SNFU into the Ship, and the doormen stopped their singer because the bouncers thought he was, “legit a homeless man,” Ollinger says with a laugh. “And somebody had to come get me, and I had to explain to management that this was our main attraction tonight.
“They didn’t believe me, but listened to me, and the place was packed and it was an epic show.”
And while all the old punks can raise a glass, acknowledge the fallen, those who came before, they can also take heart in the fact there are still old punks out there keeping the bonfire burning.
“The real punk rockers,” Ollinger says, “and I’m not using that as an elitist term, but the people that do it are in it forever. It’s never been a fad for me, it’s never been a fad for Chi — it’s just what (we) know and what (we) do.”
“I love the energy of it, the adrenaline of it, the drive of it, the party fun of it and I have yet to find any other form of music or friends that works for me.” MARCH 2021 • theyyscene.com 23
MUSIC LIFE IN SONG
Matt Masters gets set to drop a horn-fuelled classic country covers album... Everybody Loves A Winner by MARY-LYNN WARDLE
PHOTO: MICHELLE SPICE
Calgary musician and founder of the wildly successful pandemic-driven music venture Curbside Concerts, Matt Masters hasn’t put an album out since All Western Winners in 2011. Before thinking he’s lazy or unmotivated, consider his reasons for the lull in a recording career that started with The Alberta Reporter, made on his dad’s computer in 2003, followed by 2006’s Centennial Swell — worth the price of the album for the stick-in-your-head title track alone — and 2009’s Don Coyote, (“which was literally recording a rehearsal one night.”)
“Since (All Western Winners) came out, I’ve had three kids, I lost my dad, I lost my grandpa, our house got robbed, my car got stolen,” says Masters from his southwest Calgary home. “I developed mental health issues – you know I just got diagnosed with bipolar disorder – to say nothing of the fact I had throat surgery last summer for a vocal cord polyp.
“I’ve literally had so much shit go down that past 10 years that I haven’t had the chance to focus on making records. Because they don’t make money for me. They’re fun to make and they get you more festival gigs, but its not my business model for making money.”
During that time period Masters also ran for the NDP against a guy named Stephen Harper in the 2015 federal election, even going door-to-door horseback around the Calgary Heritage riding. Harper won and then resigned.
Masters has also been the program leader for the National Music Centre, facilitated music programming at Lougheed House and Wine-Oh’s, and created the now defunct Spaghetti Western Festival. He produced and toured on Barney Bentall’s annual charity fundraising tour, Cariboo Express, founded and produced the Western Canadian Music Awards Festival, and had time leftover to host a weekly radio show on CKUA.
In addition, he worked for the City of Calgary for six months to draft the current busking by-law. “My big thing was, ‘Please let people amplify, please let the keyboard players play,’ because that was not allowed before. How do you eliminate tickets for busking? Allow amplification. It’s pretty simple and it made a difference.
“There’s more to being a music worker than just making records.”
With everything that’s gone on, Masters is positioned to write the perfect country song – you know, the one that if you play it backwards, our hero becomes footloose and fancy free again, his relatives are safe, his car, phone and computer come back, and his mental health is just fine.
However, Masters’ upcoming album, Everybody Loves a Winner, is an album of euphonious cover songs by Kris Kristofferson, William Bell, Willie Nelson and others. Recorded and produced with Leeroy Stagger at Stagger’s former Rebeltone Ranch Studio in Lethbridge, this is not your everyday Matt Masters album.
He channels his inner Tom Jones on opening track Walk a Mile in My Shoes (Joe South), then delivers a pretty version of Ian Tyson’s Someday Soon with Jill Barber, sashaying through the song while goosed along
by horns. The album is a creamy, dreamy an eye to creating a healthy workplace, he And this explains why a jewel like feeling.” A special moment for Masters was delight, offering sweet little surprises around built Curbside Concerts in a manner that Everyone Loves a Winner sat in the can his wife, Amanda Burgener, who earned a each corner. It is the antithesis of the hell gives everyone (he has seven full-time for nearly three years. “I didn’t have my degree in music performance at the U of Masters has lived through, including being employees across Canada at this point) shit together. I just didn’t have the ability C, playing flute on Kristofferson’s For the diagnosed with bipolar disorder six months time and space before things get over- to release this record … I had it pressed Good Times. When the horn director found before his upcoming 45th birthday on March whelming. He’d been breaking down on a in the fall of 2018, it was ready to go,” out Masters’ wife was playing the part, he 23, which is the date of the album’s release. regular basis, including trips to the Sheldon Masters says, adding that vocal cord suggested writing an easy part but the sing-
“I had an unfortunate degradation of Chumir Centre in 2019 for emergency care. surgery in 2019, which required a week er let him know she could handle anything mental health over the past five or six years. “When I say breaking down, I mean, last of not talking followed by two months of thrown at her; she plays with the Calgary At the onset (there was) significant anxiety year when I was on tour with Barney Ben- not singing, also delayed things. Wisely, Wind Symphony. And handle it she did. and depression, among other things. In part, tall, there were a couple of nights where I the forward-thinking Masters had WCB The songs come with stories. Some it’s the loss of my dad and a lot of other was bawling my eyes out in the dressing coverage, as damage to his vocal cords was Day Soon is one the singer says he’s loved things combined. We’ve had some traumas room for no particular reason, and then it a workplace injury. forever; perhaps that love deepened back in our life. You know, right after I released All would be like, ‘Matt, you got 10 seconds,’ Another piece of good fortune was Mas- in the days when Masters was a waiter at Western Winners, I lost all my hair. and I’d dust off my face, walk out and it ters’ deep connection with the musicians Calgary’s legendary double-wide venue
“I was in Niagara Falls. My mous- The Mecca Café, and Friday night tache fell off my face in the shower house band, Tom Phillips and the and so did my beard and so did my Men of Constant Sorrow, perhair. I had a gig to go downstairs formed it weekly. He was working and play, then I had to go to the there in May of 2002 when Yukon and play for a week of West- Bloodshot Records’ Kelly Hogan ern Canadian Music Awards before performed (“It was a big night for I was allowed to go home and see me; Neko Case kissed me!”); she’s my doctor. That was traumatic as previously covered Poppa was a shit. It was enough to fuck a guy up Rodeo (next line “Momma was a for a long time. rock and roll band”), a song that
“But for me it was just like, ‘Well, appears on this album. I got a baby on the way now, better It was a song that fit his family. get to work.’ ” “My dad won a saddle at a team
Then, while wife Amanda was roping event. My mother (future expecting the couple’s first son, Calgary Conservative MLA Jocelyn they were tucking their daughter Burgener) was featured in Teen into bed when someone broke in Beat Magazine in 1964 for her through the patio door and took preview of the Stones landing at Masters’ phone and computer, the airport. Mom was (one of) the which held photos of the last year first three people at the airport in of his father’s life, as well as nearly Toronto with a ladder to see the two years worth of Masters’ music. Beatles land. (She) knitted a scarf
“That would be enough to fuck for Keith Richards and mailed it a guy up and make a whole record to him and got a response from about, but I was just like, ‘Well, Keith’s mom,” he recalls. better keep on keeping on here. “Mom was an early rock fan. So, Thank goodness my pregnant wife to me, mom was a rock and roll and four-year-old daughter weren’t band, and my dad was a rodeo. harmed or stressed or traumatized.’ (He) was a total quintessential
“I’ve had all these things happen downtown cowboy.” and it was just like, ‘Roll with On an album full of charmers, it, baby, you’ve got to keep on Dimitri Tiomkin & Paul Francis truckin’.’ ” Webster’s My Rifle My Pony and
The musician says he wasn’t Me is the highlight, sung as a aware of how mental health could duet by Masters and Bentall, just come crashing down; many of us like when they tour. have learned this the hard way. Interestingly, after a 10-year “I wasn’t taking care of myself. I gap between records, the song(didn’t) take breaks or vacations. I writer has another album written, work every weekend and we can’t and a live album, recorded at his afford to go on vacations because used-to-be weekly live appearwe had to work, so eventual- ance at the King Eddy (“One day ly I started to lose it … I didn’t the guys just turned on the board understand that I had these deeper PHOTO: ROB PORTER and recorded us, so we’ll have issues.” A family doctor connected a new release maybe later this Masters with a superb health-care year”) ready to go. team who made the diagnosis. would be, ‘Ladies and gentlemen, its time of Cariboo Express, who were studio ready In this meandering, incredible saga,
“It gives me some explanations for my be- for fun!’ to make this album with him. In fact, the Masters says it best. “The most stand-up haviours, and that’s something I appreciate. I “I remember Scott, the guitar player, album was born when Masters was coming thing on this record, it lets me be a singer realize I have a lifelong challenge in front of saying, ‘How do you do that? Who are you? off the stage in 2017 after having sung in a few different ways. I’m not wearing a me, and my wife has a challenge in front of What is going on with you?’ John D. Loudermilk’s Then You Can Tell Me cowboy hat on the cover. I’ve still got it on her which is even bigger, I think. But that’s “I couldn’t explain why I was so sad. I Goodbye. and Stagger put a hand on his the back cover, but, hey, here’s my big bald just who I am it turns out. I’m often drawn to was doing fine, I was on tour, my family shoulder and said, “Let’s record this song. head singing songs I love with horns. a quote from a hockey goalie (Robin Lehner): healthy, and here I was crying my eyes out Let’s make that record.” “I have a huge smile on my face about ‘Just because I’m mentally ill doesn’t mean before going out in front of an audience They knew they wanted to pay tribute the thought of people opening up their I’m mentally weak.’ ” who totally loved me. to the Memphis soul-country blend, with vinyl and finding this great record. I’m
Masters says his health is something “It’s been a pretty dark time, to be the Memphis horns feeling. “Well, we have stoked about it.” his family and team deals with. Thus, with honest.” Vancouver horns, but they still have that
MUSIC THE BREAKAWAY DECADE
15 artists and recordings from the late ‘60s to the early ‘80s that still shine on
by B. SIMM
Carole King’s landmark recording, Tapestry, was released 50 years ago in February 1971. While often referred to as her brilliant debut, it wasn’t the singer-songwriter’s first crack at trying to carve out a solo career. Leaving New York and the success she found writing girl-group songs in the early ‘60s at the Brill Building hit factory, King went West Coast to Laurel Canyon in 1968. There she formed a threepiece band, The City, that produced one low budget, long out-of-print album then attempted her first official solo record, Writer, that was not without promise although still on the rough side.
Then, with the encouragement and support of her newfound Laurel Canyon friends James Taylor and Joni Mitchell, King stepped up again, dusted off an old Shirelle’s tune, picked up Aretha’s Franklin’s (You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman and, along with a handful of fresh originals, she let producer Lou Alder work his magic inside Studio B at A&M Records. Magic it was, and still is.
Sometimes dismissed as soft rock and easy-listening, Tapestry is more than just a testament of its time. While it definitely has the underlying feelgood sentiment of peace, love and understanding, the first single, It’s Too Late, is the unprecidented, non-judgey breakup song initiated by a woman who’s taking control of her destiny. The single on the flipside, I Feel The Earth Move, was a scorching followup suggesting that once out the door, the world is hers for the taking.
Tapestry certainly opened doors for King, skyrocketing her into a life-long career of writing, singing and recording songs exactly the way she wanted. But it also came at a time when opportunity swung open for other female artists as well. From the late ’60s, just before Tapestry launched into orbit, to the early ‘80s when the music industry then went into a tailspin of cosmetics and overproduction, there was a progressive upsurge of female musicians breaking and remaking tradition while shaping new minds. Here’s a few of those great gateway albums that dip into a universe of tremendous talent.
ARETHA FRANKLIN — I Never Loved a Man the Way
I Love You (1967)
Although she had been making records since 1961, Franklin wasn’t truly crowned Queen of Soul until she signed with Atlantic Records in 1966 and promptly ascended to her throne when the single Repect stormed the charts.
LAURA NYRO —
New York
Tendaberry (1969)
Throughout her teens Laura Nyro sang in the subway and street corners with doo-wop groups in the Bronx. By the time she was 21 she had released two albums with dazzling originals that The 5th Dimension, Three Dog Night and Blood Sweat and Tears covered and all had top-sellers with. In 1969 she put out New York Tendaberry which was much more intense, moody, dark and intimate veering away from pop formulas mixing folk, soul, jazz and rock into New York’s then stark, dramatic cityscape. ROBERTA FLACK — First Take (1969)
Although the single Killing Me Softly pushed Roberta Flack way, way up on the charts in 1973, her debut album, First Take, that included covers of Leonard Cohen’s Hey, That’s No Way To Say Goodbye and an unknown folk song from 1957 called The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face, showcase Flack in superior soul-bearing form.
JONI MITCHELL —Blue (1971)
Joni Mitchell has a knack for writing witty, catchy, folkpop ditties. On her 1971 release, Blue, she delivered the ultra radio-friendly Carey which danced and swirled about with all the glorious, fleeting, romantic monents that went with a bottle of wine. But then the rest of Blue took a detour. Mitchell dropped her guard, exposed another side of her craft straying from making infectious folk and dove off into the deep end of vulnerability — that too was sensational. Expressway to your skull, indeed.
BETTE MIDLER —
The Divine Miss M (1972)
Even though Bette Midler’s early ‘70s burst-on-the-scene was a throwback to the glory days of big bands, bugle boys and flashy stage shows, the Divine Miss M was more progressive than nostalgic rattling the cages of convention with her bold, brassy persona while spearheading a gay rights agenda. BETTY DAVIS —Betty Davis (1973)
The expression, “jaw dropping,” is overused, like so many high-five clichés. But anyone, fans of funk or not, will be hard pressed when they first hear Betty Davis on her debut growl out the conflicted emotion on “Anti Love Song” without their jaw dropping and uttering, WTF! Sure, she was surrounded by class A musicians including Miles Davis (who she was once married to) and Jimi Hendrix, but there’s no doubt who was directing the show — Betty Davis commanded deep funk that was hardcore for its time and light years ahead.
SUZI QUATRO — Suzi Quatro (1973)
Before becoming one of the first females to front a rock band, Suzi Quatro, still in her mid-teens recorded with a successful Detroit garage band, the Pleasure Seekers. In the early ‘70s she moved to England and teamed up with Mickie Most, the mastermind behind numerous hits during the British Invasion era. Cultivating a rock ‘n’ roll sound and image that was one part rebellious glam and one part Detroit street tough, the Ramones made her a serious study. She cuts the deepest on her first record.
LINDA RONSTADT —Heart Like A Wheel (1974)
Before Linda Ronstadt became iconic with Southern California’s post-hippy commercialized Shangri-La, she had one of the most fascinating voices in country rock that drew on a vast number of influences, notably her Mexican heritage. Heart Like A Wheel was the breakout record revealing that sliver of time when a wayward group of cosmic cowboys supported her the best.
HEART — Dreamboat Annie (1976)
Sometimes referred to as Led Zeppelin’s counterpart, the band’s real essence is that they wore their Pacific Northwest heart on their sleeve, especially when they broke out. Crazy For You and Magic Man off their debut are still drenced with all the West Coast wonders of the early ‘70s.
KATE BUSH —The KIck Inside (1978)
Only 19 when her joyous debut, The Kick Inside, was released, Bush was a revelation to an audience who not only embraced the austure tales she spun but that her intellect was spilling all over. The future unravelled fast as Bush went on to choreograph her career on a brand new stage.
PATTI SMITH —Easter (1978)
There are many segues into the art of Patti Smith. In addition to her music, she is perhaps one of the most beautiful of modern American writers. And while she has experimented plenty with poetry and noise, Smith’s firebrand of punk is an urgent walk on the wild side mixed with her distinct literary howl and the primal thrust of a rhythm section. Easter was all of that, with Smith at the center of the storm.
THE PRETENDERS — The Pretenders (1979)
Chrissie Hynde once remarked how wonderful she thought the vocal style of Jimi Hendrix was because he moved from to singing and speaking and back again so effortlessly. That’s an incredible observation that hundreds of journalists and so-called music authorities never picked up on. Evidently Hynde comes at it from a different angle. In the midst of punk’s heady heyday, when she drank with the Sex Pistols and what other vagrants swarmed in and out of Vivienne Westwood’s boutique of tattered t-shirts, The Pretenders delivered a hybrid of rocker punk and pure pop intelligence. Chrissie Hynde is not too shabby of a singer herself.
BLONDIE —Eat To The Beat (1979)
Blondie was an OK punk band, but a stellar pop band. Eat To The Beat is the nirvana of new wave New York style with Deborah Harry holding high court.
PAT BENATAR —Crimes of Passion (1980)
From Greenpoint in Brooklyn, once flush with Irish and Polish descendants who worked on the docks, Pat Benatar was classically trained hoping to enroll at the prestigious Julliard. A stint at a Holiday Inn singing cabaret altered those plans leaving Benatar with the lust for life to front a real rock band full of loud blazing guitars. That she did, a real tough cookie who came out swinging Greenpoint strong, Benatar is arguably the first lady of arena rock.
JOAN JETT — Bad Reputation (1980)
Joan Jett survived the Runaways and ejected the privleded frontman out of position with her own gutsy version of rock ‘n’ roll. Understated, but incredibility influential to anyone in the know, Jett worked hard to rack up a few chart-toppers. While she’s known as a fierce performer, her back catalogue reveals she’s also a romantic heart that’s not always so black.
Hear Them
Kerry Clarke’s 20 female artists you have to listen to right now
This is my attempt to narrow down a huge list of compelling, creative and important female artists worth your attention.
ALISON RUSSELL: From her beginnings in Po’ Girl to her current Birds of Chicago and the new supergroup Our Native Daughters, her gorgeous voice and instrumental ease makes her a compelling, lovely superstar.
AMELIA CURRAN: She sings your hopes, fears and life with unmatched lyricism and turns of phrase. No hyperbole — she’s in the Top 10 of North American songwriters, with so many stick-in-your-head lines.
BASIA BULAT: Natural and ever-creative indie-folk multi-instrumentalist with a signature vibrato and major-key melodicism who makes the auto harp cool.
BETTY DAVIS: Heavy funk from the Miles Davis wife credited with planting seeds for his Bitches Brew-era jazz fusion and who was featured on an episode of Mike Judge Presents: Tales from the Tour Bus.”
BUFFY SAINTE-MARIE: What more can be said about this iconic and dynamic artist, activist and mentor who just turned 80? Her songs are stellar and her indefatigable spirit, vibrato voice and energy are that of someone half her age. She can’t stop creating and we can’t stop paying attention to her.
DIAMANDA GALÁS: Fiercely confrontational avant-garde performer known for her intense four-octave range isn’t for the faint of heart. Her litany against AIDS, The Masque of the Red Death trilogy, was performed live with her covered in red paint in a church. Start with her almost pop collaboration with John Paul Jones, 1994’s The Sporting Life.
EVELYN GLENNIE: The world’s foremost solo, eclectic, innovative and musical boundary-crossing percussionist and composer who has commissioned over 200 works — and she happens to be deaf.
by KERRY CLARKE
RHIANNON GIDDENS: Founding Carolina Chocolate Drops and Our Native Daughters member is a peerless, powerful 21st-century folksinger, fiddler and banjo player and mentor.
FRAZEY FORD: Former Be Good Tanya has soul: her molasses vocals and intimate, defiant lyrics are euphoric, self-affirming and healing. GRACE JONES: Pull up to the bumper of this style icon, disco queen, avant-garde rocker, Bond girl, provocateur and sphinx that doesn’t look anywhere near her 72 years.
HALEY HEYNDERICKX: It’s only been three years since her debut album I Need To Start A Garden; beautiful and unguarded electric-folk music featuring little, compelling stories.
MEMPHIS MINNIE: Country-blues, guitar legend recorded over 200 albums in three decades, beat Big Bill Bronzy in a guitar contest, had a powerful voice and a glamorous, bawdy and tough stage presence.
MERCEDES PEON: A Spanish one-woman tour-de-force, who modernizes Galician traditions as she sings, plays bagpipes and percussion simultaneously.
NUBYA GARCIA: Lauded 20-something UK tenor saxophonist brings an exploratory, energized spirit to new jazz that melds dub, cumbia and classic sounds. SAINT SISTER: ‘Atmosfolk’ created by two women with haunting, spare arrangements, perfect harmonies and subtle-but-observant insights. Sarah Neufeld: The solo violin of longtime Arcade Fire and Bell Orchestre member is virtuosic, mesmerizing, innovative and sublime.
PATTI SMITH: The seminal NYC punk poet laureate, American singer-songwriter, musician, author is still so relevant.
TOTÓ LA MOMPOSINA: Now-legendary, Afro-Colombian singer, dancer, interpreter and innovator was one of the early artists signed to the Real World Record label.
VALERIE JUNE: Rambling-yet-precise, regal-yet-downhome, earthy-yet-mystical, June’s musical imagination and multi-instrumental prowess weaves funk, soul and Appalachian music.
YISSY GARCIA: Part of Cuba’s sonic revolution, she leads her funky Cuban jazz band from the drum kit with pure joy and precision — plus is a go-to percussionist.
Kerry Clarke is the artistic director of the Calgary Folk Music Festival and hosts CJSW Radio’s Alternative to What? and CKUA’s Catch & Release programs. The musical tastes expressed here are hers alone and don’t necessarily reflect those of the organizations she’s proud to be part of.
MUSIC SONGBELLY, SOFT HEART
Heather Blush creates toys that hug back in homemade music
by MARY-LYNN WARDLE
Recently, the New York Times released a list of last year’s 10 most annoying toys, including a talking baby walker, a depressing chamber-of-death ant farm, and a creepy talking puzzle that stalks you while you sleep. Fat chance Calgary songwriter and music therapist Heather Blush will add to that list; instead, her business, Songbelly, creates delightful, hand-made Canadian stuffed toys that play a personalized song.
The toys – created with high-quality, soft fabric hand-sewn by Blush’s mom in Oak Point, Manitoba, using a pattern she came up with – come in four different styles: a classic teddy bear, a fox, a bunny, and a penguin. Speaking from her Calgary home with her 18-month-old toddler on her lap while her four- and six-year-olds are at preschool and school, Blush explains the reasons she created Songbelly.
“I’ve been a performer, music teacher, music therapist. I have lots of musical roles. Songwriting has always been sort of my thing, my favourite part of it all. I’ve written lots of songs as a performer, and I’ve written lots of songs in workshops for the kids at schools, and in therapy sessions, (including) specific songs for clients. So, it’s been on my mind to write songs for people as a service if they have a special event coming up and they want to have a special song for someone.
“But the problem has always been what do you do with a song once you’ve got it, especially when people don’t even want physical copies anymore. They don’t even want a download. You can send an MP3 to someone but what are they going to do with it? They are going to listen to it once or twice and then it’s going to go away.”
This led Blush to create a physical product that would hold on to that song for its owner. When the pandemic hit and Blush, like many musicians, found her work drying up, she decided it was time. At first, she considered personalizing each toy with a different song, but realized that would not be attainable pricewise for many people. Instead, she created three lullaby-like songs she personalizes by singing the child’s name, as opposed to some toys where you type a name in so it is repeated back in a robot-like voice.
While she may be able to place the name in the song with “one punch” of a button, as they say in recording, she prefers to make sure it blends in. “I can do a nicer job of working it into the song instead of having it totally disconnected. I can make sure it fits in smoothly with the song so it sounds like it was sung in there (originally.)” The first personalized Songbelly toys will be available in June.
Songbelly’s inspiration was a personalized record that Blush’s mom gave her as a child, a birthday song on seven-inch vinyl. She sings it back during the interview. “ ‘Hey Heather, it’s your birthday!’ It was a little birthday song they had personalized. I just loved it … We pulled it out and listened to it on my birthday every year. There’s something about something that has your name in it that’s special. So that kind of sparked the idea of going ahead with this.”
A university friend recently turned to Blush to write a song for a child who’d been born with a rare brain disorder and given months or a few years to live. The parents still sing the lullaby to the child, who is doing better than first hoped, each day. Blush plans to record a version of this very special song and send it to the family in a Songbelly. It’s one of the many ways her talent has helped make people’s lives more tolerable.
Some of those lives and future Songbelly recipients might include people in care or those living with dementia. “With people isolated and not being able to see their families, physically sending something can mean a lot. It’s a tool to help. Maybe it’s reminding you of something. It’s a reminder of, ‘Take a deep breath in and out,’ something that’s a tool. That’s something you do in music therapy a lot. A therapist working with someone might say, ‘Here’s a song for when you’re upset and need to calm down.’ I’ve done that as music therapist. Then it’s right there, it’s something (someone with autism or a behavior problem) has that’s already comforting them.
“Music is just so powerful.”
