ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED ON JAN. 19, 1995
By Steve Newton
Jerry Doucette said it best back in the ’70s when his hit boogie tune, “Mama Let Him Play”, urged parents to let their youthful offspring play some rock ’n’ roll.
Fortunately for 18-year-old guitarist-vocalist Dallin Paul, his folks took this approach three years ago when he formed Seventh Stone with younger brother Eric on drums and Oak Bay High School chum Richard Adams on bass.
His parents were still a little worried that their youngster’s rocking would affect his performance at school, though.
“They were a bit concerned,” admits Paul, on the line from his Victoria home, “and I guess it did affect it. But they’re into music, so they didn’t worry too much about it.”
Because Pop played drums in a rockabilly band, the young Pauls were lucky enough to grow up with a drum kit sprawled in the family basement. At first, Dallin took to whacking the skins himself, but he soon grabbed one of the guitars that were lying around and handed the sticks to his kid brother. The two started jamming along to albums, but unlike the upstart rocker in Doucette’s ditty, Dallin Paul wasn’t “too young for the blues”.
“We started off listenin’ to Stevie Ray Vaughan on the radio,” says Paul, “and then started looking at who wrote the songs. We’d see Howlin’ Wolf and stuff on there, so we bought those albums too.”
In the three years that it’s been performing, Seventh Stone has won numerous accolades, including first prize in Victoria radio station CKKQ’s Rocktoria contest and YTV’s 1994 Youth Achievement Award for best Canadian band. The trio spent two weeks touring with Toronto recording act Big Sugar and recently returned from Hogtown after filming the musical skating variety show Brian Orser: Blame It on the Blues, which also features performances by such Vancouver acts as Colin James, Long John Baldry, and Powder Blues.
For its appearance—which airs February 26 on CBC—Seventh Stone performed an original tune called “Live Alive”, which is also the title of a Stevie Ray Vaughan CD.
Seventh Stone’s youthful virtuosity dazzled local blues-rock fans a few months back when it opened for Vaughan’s big brother, Jimmie, at the Commodore, mixing slightly grunged-up blues originals with splendid covers of Hooker and Hendrix. The group should expand its following when it heats things up for Stevie Ray protégé David Gogo at the Town Pump next Friday (January 27).
“He’s a great guy,” says Paul of the Nanaimo guitar sensation. “We’ve known him for quite a while now; we opened for him a few times before. And as far as guitar-playing goes, he’s kind of the guy to match, I guess. He’s pretty wild.”
Gogo’s career got a serious boost last year with the major-label release of his self-titled debut, and the way things are going for Seventh Stone, similar accomplishments may not be too far off. With Dallin Paul and Adams having just graduated from high school—and 16-year-old Eric Paul taking correspondence courses—the group is now able to take on the music world full-time.
“We started this as a career sorta thing just recently,” says Paul, “so we’re just trying to get our stuff together here. We want to make a new demo, ’cause the last one we made was over a year ago and it’s kinda crap.”
Maybe so, but Seventh Stone’s crappy-demo days are numbered. And it won’t be too long before the majority of the band can legally enter drinking establishments in their pursuit of socks to rock off.
“When we were on tour, we didn’t have any trouble till Thunder Bay,” says Paul of the band’s underage status. “I guess Ontario’s got a bit stricter liquor laws than anywhere else, because everywhere else they let us hang out and stuff, but in Thunder Bay we had to sneak in to see the rest of the show.”
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