By Steve Newton
I believe the guy in the above photo is playing an F barre chord.
I can play an F barre chord, too, but you might not want to hear it.
My limited abilities on guitar not withstanding, it’s far and away the musical instrument I enjoy hearing the most.
And I also love talking to the fantastic players who use guitars to create such wonderful sounds, whether in the realms of rock, blues, jazz, or what have you.
I’ve been fortunate over the years to have chatted with some of the most acclaimed guitarists of all time–most of whom, sadly, are no longer with us. These include Jeff Beck, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Danny Gatton, Gary Moore, Ronnie Montrose, Mick Ronson, and the recently departed John Sykes.
But being based in Vancouver meant that I was also able to seek out the vast array of talented pickers who call that city home–or at least did when I was talking to them.
Here are ten of the interviews I conducted over the years, between 1986 and 2021, with local guitarists who I reckon deserve as much recognition as I can give ’em.
Harris Van Berkel (originally published on March 28, 1986)
Skywalk guitarist Harris Van Berkel carefully ponders the suggestion that his group’s new album has sort of a West Coast sound to it.
“There’s a slight one… There’s a kind of a West Coast affiliation, I guess. We definitely don’t have an East Coast sound, you know what I mean. As a matter of fact, people in Toronto tend to put us down for that. It’s kinda weird.”
It will definitely be weird if people in the East don’t begin to rave about the Vancouver sextet’s second LP. L.A. connection or not, the music on The Bohemians is world-class, and is expected to do even better than their 1983 debut album, Silent Witness. That record went to number 12 on the Billboard jazz chart, and has been in the top 100 for over 40 weeks.
Van Berkel says the second album shows the band’s progress.
“The first album was made on a real shoestring and it was done really fast. With the new album we had a little bit more money and we took a little more time to get some sounds. As far as tunes go, it’s hard to write another ‘Silent Witness’. That’s a great tune.”
However, Van Berkel says the group is trying to forge a more original direction. “We still want to keep say ‘Jesse James’ and what we call our woodburning stuff, ’cause they’re nice tunes.”
The Skywalk lineup on their new disc is the same as it ever was. Van Berkel, keyboardist Graeme Coleman, bassist Rene Worst, saxman Tom Keenlyside, percussionist Jim McGillveray, and drummer Kat Hendrikse. Since recording the LP, however, the group has undergone a major change, with Hendrikse handing over the sticks to new drummer Daryll Bennett.
The switch came as quite a surprise to fans that have been following the band since day one.
“The basic problem with Kat is that he’s an insomniac, and he doesn’t like to go on the road ’cause he never sleeps. I mean we’re all a bit like that to a degree–in a strange room every night it’s hard, you know. And he’s got quite a career doing sessions in Vancouver here. He didn’t want to rock that boat.”
New drummer Bennett, “just a young guy” at 25, has previously played with the Mark Hasselbach Band, and the fusion group Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride. Van Berkel figures he’ll fit in with the group alright.
“Kat’s got authority to his playing, and it’s something to be missed for a while, for sure. But Darryl will come along just fine.”
Although an important factor in the Skywalk sound, Hendrikse was not a major contributor composition-wise. Coleman and Keenlyside write most of the music. In fact, The Bohemians is the first record to include a song by somebody else: Van Berkel’s “Larry”.
“I wrote a tune for the band and we were playing it, and Rene or somebody mentioned that it was kind of like a Larry Carlton riff. We were jokin’ around, and the name just stuck. It wasn’t really a tribute to Larry Carlton, although he is one of my favourite guitar players.”
As far as other faves go, Harris listens to “anybody from Jim Hall to Allan Holdsworth“, and counts among his local faves Ed Patterson and Brett Wade. Van Berkel is quite an acclaimed player himself, taking the best guitarist honours in Tuesday’s Tribute to West Coast Music. He had also been nominated in the best songwriter and best producer categories. Another group which he’s a member of, the Rick Scott Band, took best club act of the year.
Isn’t being in two outfits at once a bit uncomfortable?
“Yes. I don’t know how I’m going to deal with it when both of the bands start to take off. It’s gonna be tricky. Hopefully it’ll all work out, because Skywalk is a band that doesn’t work all that much. But it looks like this year we might be.”
The work for Van Berkel and his Skywalk mates starts at the beginning of April when they head out on a 17-date, 26-day tour of the U.S. Vancouver fans won’t be able to see the band again till June, when they’re slated to play the Landmark Jazz Bar.
For now, all fans can do is sit back and enjoy The Bohemians till the Bohemians that made it get back to town.
Lance Reegan-Diehl (originally published on July 8, 1993)
A few months back, a home-made tape by a local musician named Lance Reegan-Diehl found its way onto my desk. I’d never heard of the guy before, but from the photo on the tape’s cover—of a smiling longhair in a studded leather jacket, dangling a custom-made Strat by its whammy bar—it looked like yet another offering from the would-be guitar-god set.
But as soon as I heard Reegan-Diehl’s music, I realized he was the real thing—a player with an abundance of feel and a great ear for melodic rock hooks in the Joe Satriani vein. Yours truly hasn’t been the only listener to compare Diehl to Satch, either.
“I get that quite a bit,” says Reegan-Diehl. “They do say that. But I’ve had lots of comments, believe me, all the way from ‘Wow, it blows my mind’ to ‘Turn it off!’ ”
The few weak moments on Reegan-Diehl’s eight-song tape Widgets & Wooden Nickels come on the tracks that feature singing; it’s when Diehl lets his fingers do the talkin’ that his talent really shines.
The 23-year-old picker—whose trio is among the cavalcade of acts that play the Commodore on Wednesday (July 14) to raise funds for the B.C. Cancer Agency’s Relaxation Program—has been playing guitar since he was 10. His father’s love of music has had a strong influence on the classically trained player.
“My dad plays guitar and sings,” says Reegan-Diehl, “and he likes Bob Dylan and Ramblin’ Jack Elliott—storytellers. I can remember when we were eight years old he’d sit down and play, and just start tellin’ us a story. That was kinda neat.”
In recent years Reegan-Diehl advanced his musical knowledge with studies at Capilano College. His guitar instructor there was Ihor Kukurudza, who used to play in Skywalk before Harris Van Berkel took over.
“He was really good to study with,” says Reegan-Diehl. “I think he opened me up to versatility more than anything, ’cause that’s kinda the key to longevity in guitar-playing, you know—bein’ able to do more than one thing.”
Diehl does some teaching himself and has a small group of students between the ages of 10 and 30. But he’s not playing them Dylan tunes, as his dad used to do. That’s not what they want to learn these days.
“Nowadays it’s mostly gettin’ back to the rock of the ’70s,” says Reegan-Diehl, “and the biggest thing with the younger kids is the metal. They bring up names like [Megadeth guitarist] Marty Friedman and people like this, and I go, ‘Yeah, what band’s he from?’ And I guess the shoes get reversed when I ask them about Jeff Beck or Joe Perry or some of the older-generation guitar players.”
When he’s not teaching, playing pubs with bassist Jay Wittur and drummer Dave Berg in a cover band, or performing his own tunes—as he did with a nine-piece band at the Cultch last April—Reegan-Diehl works at Not Just Another Music Shop, which suits his music-loving interests just fine.
“Especially with the people I’ve met,” he says. “Aerosmith comes in to buy stuff, and it’s real nice to meet ’em on that level, ’cause they look you in the eye and talk to you like a person.”
Producer/guitarist Bob Rock and the boys from Mötley Crüe also frequent Reegan-Diehl’s workplace, as do some of the best local players around. In the liner notes to Widgets & Wooden Nickels, Diehl gives special thanks to all the great musicians he’s had a chance to jam with, and he claims there’s no shortage of them in Vancouver.
“There’s a guy named Blaine Dunaway who’s a great fiddle player; he plays in Gypsalero. I met him on just a studio-type level, ’cause he was doing violin tracks for me. And Al Wold—he’s an excellent jazz piano player. You know, they’re teachers of mine.
“And the Night of 1,000 Guitars [a guitar-based show at the Cruel Elephant earlier this year] was great, because everybody was there—Ron Samworth, Harris Van Berkel, Dan Tapanila, Ron Thompson. I mean, those guys are pretty cool.”
Devin Townsend (originally published on September 24, 1993)
Things have a comical way of working out for some folks in the wacky world of rock ’n’ roll. In the case of 21-year-old Devin Townsend—who came out of nowhere (well, Vancouver, actually) to claim the prestigious lead vocalist spot in Yankee guitar god Steve Vai’s new band—it’s amusing enough to make him laugh out loud.
“This is so funny, man,” he says at the start of an interview from his home in L.A. “Remember about a year and a half ago you did an interview with me for [local band] Gray Skies? That was fuckin’ great. And then I remember, about eight months or so later I came up and gave you a tape of my new band, Noisescapes. I was up at the Georgia Straight office and I said [in a dumb surfer voice], ‘Hey Steve, ya wanna listen to this, man?’ So things have changed a little bit.”
Changed a lot, more like. Though I didn’t quite grasp the potential in that Noisescapes tape, Vai certainly did. When he heard a demo copy that Townsend had sent to his record label in the hope of securing a deal, he was hooked. “The second I heard Devin, I knew his talent,” says Vai in his Relativity Records bio. But as Townsend tells it, a job in Vai’s band was the last thing he expected to come out of his demo submission.
“Here’s the scoop, my friend. Noisescapes is heavy, right? Steve is not. When I sent away my demo for Noisescapes, I did it on a whim; I had no idea that Steve was looking for a singer. I just sent it all out, and then all of a sudden we got flown to New York and Noisescapes got signed to Relativity. But before they signed me they said, ‘Hey, there’s this guy on our label that’s lookin’ for a singer. Do you want to meet up with him and see how it goes?’ And I’m like, ‘Yeah, all right, let’s give it a shot.’
“So I met up with Steve, and we talked, and…hey, I mean it’s like cuttin’ your balls off if you can do something and you don’t, you know what I mean? When people ask me, ‘Why did you do the Vai thing?’, it’s like, ‘Because it was there.’ I had no intentions of joining a band. I didn’t even hear the Vai music until the day before we recorded.”
In his bio, Vai describes his singer as “the epitome of the anti-rock star”, and the offhand way Townsend talks about his enviable position makes you believe it. When he’s asked to comment on the highly acclaimed guitar talents of Vai, there’s little brownnosing to the boss.
“Like I say to everybody who asks that question, guitar just doesn’t really impress me that much. He’s an amazing guitar player, but I play guitar, everybody and their dog plays guitar. It’s like, if he was a great bassoon player or something, I’d be able to say, ‘Wow, he’s the master of the bassoon.’ But as far as the guitar goes…yeah, he’s a good player. I just don’t really analyze his playing that much because it never meant too much to me.
“And I just think the guitar is a stupid instrument, man. I’ve just been getting into this whole ambient movement—I’m sort of moving from the Fear Factory, Grotus sort of thing to ambient now—and all of a sudden you realize how limited the guitar is, and how stupid it sounds, man. Goddamn!”
If Townsend sounds just a bit cynical about rock’s most popular instrument, some of it comes from the fact that he’s turned off by the music industry in general—especially what he sees of it from his vantage point in L.A. (He actually handles a lot of guitar live, as he will when Vai, the band, plays the Commodore on September 29.)
“Guitar sucks and the music industry bites my balls,” says the perturbed rocker. “I’ve only been in it for a year, and I’ll tell ya, man… You know what’s stupid? I went to this MTV music awards thing last night, dressed like I would anywhere. I was wearing a T-shirt and a pair of sweatpants, and I’ve got this dorky pair of black glasses, and these two people from some record company stopped me and said, ‘What a cool look! You’re starting a new, cool look!’ And I’m looking at these fucking morons in tuxedos and high-heeled shoes thinking that I’m trying to start a new look! So I smiled and went, ‘Yeah, well, thanks, I’ve been workin’ on it.’ It’s so stupid, because everybody is so bent out of shape about what you wear, especially down in Los Angeles.
“So I’m stuck in this city which I hate with such a passion, man. Other than Disneyland, there is nothing down here, and there are no seasons, ya know. Some people from Vancouver may say that it would be nice to get to a place where it’s sunny all the time, but guess what? It’s not. It sucks. I hate it.
“But I’ll tell ya, the last time I was in Vancouver I saw that Steve’s album [Sex & Religion] was on the Georgia Straight chart, and I was like, ‘Yeah, man!’ It doesn’t matter where it is anywhere else: back in Vancouver is the only place I care about right now, because I know that eventually I’m gonna have to go back there. And if people think I’m a dork then I’m gonna have to go live on Galiano or something, and that would suck.”
Townsend—who dedicated his work on Sex & Religion to the memory of slain Surrey musician Jesse Cadman—says that, even more than his current Vai gig, he’s looking forward to getting his Noisescapes project in gear. He is joined in that Vancouver band by keyboardist Chris Myers (“The guy is God!”), former Caustic Thought guitarist Jed Simon, bassist Jon Taschuk, and drummer Greg Price.
“We are lookin’ for another guitar player,” says Townsend, “ ’cause I don’t want to play the guitar live. If I have to stand there with my thumb up my ass, singing with the guitar in my hand, I am going to seriously become a lawyer. So please print that we’re looking for one more guitar player. If you know how to play lead guitar you can suck my dick, ’cause there’s not one lead part in this entire set that Noisescapes is doing. Its influence is from the Grotus and Fear Factory thing through ambient through Sonic Youth. We’re sort of ambient industrial noise, except we’ve got melodies! Ha! It’s gonna be fun, man.”
Townsend suggests that Noisescapes candidates send demo tapes directly to him (at 5940 Manola Way, Hollywood, CA, 90048). He is also willing to use the connections he’s made so far to help Vancouver players get ahead.
“I’ve been giving every band that I know addresses to send their stuff, and if anybody wants to send me any sort of tape, I’ll do what I can with it. I mean, if I’ve got my connections, then what am I gonna do with them? They look all nice in a book and everything, but I’d much rather help out people like I’ve been helped out in the past.
“It’s the same thing with Gray Skies,” he adds. “Remember when you were doin’ the interview, how psyched I was? God, the only thing I wanted to do was work, and that’s one of the shitty things about being down here. All of a sudden you get thrust into a situation where everybody’s going, ‘Relax. Take your time. You’re okay now.’ Fuck, man, I’d go out in a chicken suit with a sandwich board on if that’s what it took.
“And the music industry’s such a joke. It’s like everybody thinks that you’re revered once you get in, and that’s just such a crock of shit. It’s like if I start getting all high and mighty, buying flashy clothes and everything, and then all of a sudden the projects fall through and I’m back workin’ at A&B Sound, how am I gonna go back to my friends? Walk up to them in a big shiny jacket and go, ‘Hey, hey guys, ’member me? I was the guy that dissed ya.’ ”
With an eight-album Noisescapes deal in the can, including tour support and videos, it could be a while before Townsend is back stocking CD shelves. “It’s a worldwide deal,” he says, “so we’re not gonna pull a Sven Gali and walk around with attitudes because we’ve got a Canadian deal. I mean, ‘Wheee, guys. Hey—good on ya!’
“I’m fully psyched on the Noisescapes stuff,” he adds. “Steve’s project is Steve’s project, and I feel very fortunate to be a part of it, but as soon as this project is over I’m goin’ straight to Noisescapes. I’m not even gonna sleep a night. As soon as it’s over I’m takin’ a plane back to Vancouver and we’re gonna start rehearsing, then we’re gonna be on tour for as long as we can possibly be on tour. It’s gonna be really nasty.”
Todd Taylor (originally published on August 21, 2003)
On the sidewalk outside the Fairview Pub, dreadlocked hippies and shaggy snowboarder types gather in small groups as the familiar odour of B.C. bud wafts sweetly through the air. North Vancouver–based promoter Upstream Entertainment has drawn its typical jam-band crowd, portions of which get casually buzzed while improvisational jazz-funk quartet Garaj Mahal sets up shop inside.
Among the clubgoers is Todd Taylor, former guitarist for local blues-rock acts Two Trains and Brick House, who invites yours truly to hear his latest project, Todd Taylor & the New Vehicle. After jaywalking across busy West Broadway we pile into his pickup to play a cassette dubbed from a video shot at the Waldorf Hotel.
Although the sound is far from hi-fi, there’s no denying the fierce talent displayed on the tape’s original instrumentals, and on a fiery reworking of the Allman Brothers’ “Hot ’Lanta”. Soon after, Garaj Mahal keyboardist Eric Levy strolls by, and, at this scribbler’s urging, climbs into the truck to check out the funky sounds. What I didn’t know at the time was that Taylor’s rough recording included his new band’s version of the GM tune “B-Dope”.
“He loved it,” says Taylor, when we reconnect some time later. “He said he’s never, ever heard anybody else playin’ their songs, so that was cool. We do a couple of their songs, actually. They’ve definitely been an inspiration.”
Those with a similar fondness for the extended jam are urged to check out Taylor’s quartet when it plays the Fairview tonight (August 21) or the Yale on Wednesday (August 27). Along for the ride in his New Vehicle are keyboardist Dave Webb, bassist Darren Parris, and She Stole My Beer drummer Geoff Hicks. (Hicks also used to play in the local ’80s act Imamu Baraka, which included keyboardist-vocalist and actor Mike Weaver before he and Taylor hooked up in Two Trains.)
“It’s all over the map,” says the 31-year-old picker of his current group’s music. “I mean we funk, we blues, we jazz, we rock, we groove. I really don’t even know what to call it, to be honest with you; we cover so many different bases. But it’s basically a lot of groove-based improv jam.
“I’ve got about three or four lyrical songs,” he continues, “but we don’t play those ones too much, because they don’t fly quite as well. The instrumentals seem to be going over a lot better, and we’ve been tryin’ to get on to the Upstream Entertainment groove thing, get the jam-happy people. We hope to get recognized in that sort of a vein, ’cause we’re not just a blues act that’s been playin’ around town.”
When he’s not blowing six-string aficionados away at live gigs, Taylor gives lessons on guitar, both privately and through Tom Lee Music in North Van (previously known as Calder Music). He’s been teaching for seven years and finds it an endlessly rewarding experience.
“The best part about it is watching people grow,” he claims, “being happy for them. You watch them walk away after they’ve actually absorbed something, then they come back and they’re like, ‘I got it! I love it!’ ”
So what kind of licks are the guitar-crazed kids of today asking Taylor to show them?
“Believe it or not, it’s the same shit they were learning 20 years ago,” he relates. “I get tons of [requests for] Led Zeppelin, Cream—Hendrix, of course. That stuff really gets ’em goin’, ’cause it’s kinda what their parents have lyin’ around the house. But when they get around 15 or so they start getting into the heavier stuff like P.O.D., a lot of more alternative stuff—Sum 54 or whatever the hell it’s called. I don’t keep tabs on the alternative stuff.”
This October Taylor will take time off from his teaching duties to travel to New York City. His former bandmate Weaver is tying the knot and flying his old buddy’s New Vehicle out to play at the reception. Weaver should be able to afford it, as he recently scored a starring role on the TV sitcom The Mullets, which begins airing weekly on UPN this fall.
Taylor reveals that he’s never actually seen Weaver with a full mullet, but retro hairstyles notwithstanding, he’s psyched about the upcoming wedding gig. The pair might even resurrect some Two Trains material for old times’ sake.
“I would imagine!” Taylor enthuses. “I sent him an e-mail today and said, ‘So what’s up, man? Whaddaya want us to play? We can’t jam out Allman Brothers stuff all night.’ ”
Dave Martone (originally published on May 26, 2005)
Local instrumental-rock freaks have enjoyed recent Commodore shows by two of the genre’s best-known touring guitarists, Joe Satriani and Steve Vai; they should also know that a player of equal talent and similar style has been living (not so) quietly among them for more than a decade.
Dave Martone is the type of mind-boggling picker whose technical proficiency makes die-hard air guitarists give up in disgust, and, when he’s not on the road conducting master classes or endorsing guitars, footpedals, and amps, he lives in Vancouver with his fiancée, singer-songwriter Nenah Barkley. Fans of intense, fast-as-hell fretwork can get a rare look at the 34-year-old when he plays a free DVD-release party at the Media Club on Monday (May 30), starting at 6 p.m.
Originally from the tiny town of Beamsville, Ontario, Martone earned a degree in audio engineering at London, Ontario’s Fanshawe College and spent time in a Detroit thrash-metal band before enrolling (on scholarship) at the ultra-challenging Berklee College of Music in Boston.
“It was so excruciatingly, painfully academic that I only went for two years and I had to take a year off,” recalls Martone on the phone from his East Side abode. “It was taxing work, and I just got overloaded, so I got in my van and drove as far away from Boston as I possibly could, and ended up in Vancouver.”
Martone would eventually head back to Beantown and complete his BA (with a minor in music education) at Berklee, but his fondness for Vancouver convinced him to take up permanent residence in Lotusland. He currently teaches guitar here, both at home and at Tom Lee Music, and travels across the States conducting clinics for the National Guitar Workshop, as well as for manufacturers such as Digitech processing, Tonebone pedals, Vox amplification, and Parker guitars. He swears by the latter instruments, although they took a while to win him over.
“I was always a Stratocaster guy before that,” he relates, “and when I first tried the Parker I just hated it. They’re very, very light-they’re like three pounds-and I actually thought I would break it, ’cause I move around quite a bit. But I played it for about one month, didn’t touch any other guitars, and when I went back and played my Strat it felt like a railway tie with telephone wires on it!”
Martone’s beloved Parker is used to fine effect on his last two CDs-1999’s Zone and 2002’s A Demon’s Dream-and he took it with him on the road as a “sub-guitarist” for American rockers 3 Doors Down. Turns out one of the members was going through a family crisis at the time, but the band didn’t want to cancel the tour.
“I was like insurance,” notes Martone. “I didn’t actually have to play, which was bad and good at the same time, because of the situation. But I would do some sound checks with the guys, and it was like, ‘Just be prepared, be ready to go,’ and that’s it.”
His time with the major-label act yielded some connections with heavy hitters in the music biz, and he also scored a nifty gift from 3 Doors Down drummer Daniel Adair, who has since been stolen away by Nickelback.
“At the end of the tour Daniel gave me his iPod, because the Nickelback guys bought him the bigger new 40-gig, but the cool thing is that we have the same musical taste. It was like 1,400 songs of all this crazy, bizarre music that I love but could never find; there it was, boom, handed right to me.”
As well as the new Martone DVD-which features a concert shot last November at Surrey’s Central City Brew Pub-Martone has another 11-track CD almost finished, which he says veers away somewhat from the Yngwie Malmsteen madness of his earlier work.
“How fast can people play anymore?” he ponders. “I think it’s humanly impossible to go any faster. So I’m getting a little bit more into textures, and I want to integrate lots of different styles inside of the music, you know, like techno to country, flamenco to metal, and mix it all together.”
Although his music has been winning him praise among guitar aficionados, Martone doesn’t expect to become the next Grammy-winning guitar god. He’s happy to be filling the various roles that allow him to add new equipment to his expanding home studio.
“There’s all these little things that somehow keep my boat afloat,” he says, “and I don’t mind it because you meet all kinds of different people doin’ different jobs-whether it’s from hosting a clinic or performing or doing master classes, whatever.
“But ultimately playing and touring is the big love,” he adds. “And I know that the music isn’t going to be humongous commercially, I know it’s a small market. But it’s something that I’m gonna do for the rest of my time, anyway. I just love that freedom of being able to create and not be stifled.”
Scotty Hall (originally published on March 16, 2006)
Although Rez may be the finest guitar-based instrumental-rock CD ever to come out of Vancouver, the original meeting of the duo behind it was rather inauspicious. Guitarist Scotty Hall and drummer-keyboardist Phil Robertson hooked up when Hall attended a rehearsal for Idle Eyes, the ’80s pop-rock act known for the Canadian radio hit “Tokyo Rose”.
As Hall explains during a chat at a coffee shop on Main Street across from Neptoon Records, his workplace for 25 years, the band’s management was looking for a heavier-sounding guitarist at the time and he fit the bill. But more rewarding for Hall than his affiliation with that Juno Award-winning group was his introduction to then-Idle Eyes drummer Robertson.
“I was immediately blown away by him,” recalls Hall, “and I have been ever since.”
According to Robertson, the feeling is mutual. There is a bond between the two Rezmen as they, in the company of Chapman Stick player Fergus Marsh (violinist Hugh’s brother), cover uplifting numbers by Stevie Wonder (“Overjoyed”) and Indian guitarist Nitin Sawhney (“Immigrant”). The other eight tracks on Rez are world-class originals that often bring to mind the adventurous jazz-rock stylings of Jeff Beck.
“I have to own up to that influence for sure,” notes Hall, “I’ve been a big fan of Jeff’s ever since I can remember. I stayed up late a lotta nights workin’ on guitar records, going, ‘Shit, I’ll never be able to do that!’ And not just him. I was a Hendrix fan, too.”
Hall displays an abundance of taste and feel throughout Rez, and when it comes time to show off his chops he delivers some flashy neck-tapping on the fiery closer, “Hurricane”. It’s not a technique he picked up from the usual suspect, Eddie Van Halen, though. In the early ’70s Hall learned that trick firsthand from Harvey “The Snake” Mandel when Mandel was opening for Ike and Tina Turner at the Cave.
“I just walked backstage and no one said a word,” remembers Hall of that teenage encounter. “When I saw Harvey, the first thing he said was ‘Do you have some smoke?’ So we hung out and I asked him, ‘Hey, think I could try your guitar?’ So I started playing one of his songs–wrong–and he goes, ‘Here, kid. Here. This is how it goes.’ He started doing this finger-tapping stuff, and I went, ‘Wow, that’s cool!’ After that I rushed home to my guitar and stole everything that I could remember.”
Rez was recorded over the course of two years at Robertson’s home studio, Crawlspace, and surprisingly, Hall never went into the sessions with prearranged solos.
“I knew the chord changes really well,” he explains, “but that was it. It was almost a little game I was playing with myself, like, ‘Okay, nope, you’re not workin’ out nothin’, you’re gonna go in and you’re gonna play it.’ I really love that spontaneity thing, and I’ve always noticed as a session player that the more you labour on things, the worse it gets.”
As in-demand musicians for hire, Hall and Robertson have worked on hundreds of album projects, and they’ve both done sessions for video games as well. Hall is most proud of his guitar tracks on the racecar game Need for Speed, while Robertson points to his drumming on some “smokin’ material” for an NBA promotional video that was seen around the world.
“As a session player you gotta wear a lot of hats,” says Hall, “so with Rez we really wanted to do somethin’ that represented us personalitywise as players. We just wanted to go out on a limb and do it.”
Although the release of Rez was cause for celebration, right after it hit the CD shelves Hall discovered he is suffering from esophageal cancer. Last month, a benefit concert for Hall at the Yale Hotel, where Robertson performed alongside some of the top session musicians in town, raised roughly $15,000 to help Hall in his battle.
“It was so ironic that just when we finished the project I got diagnosed,” he relates. “But hey, I’m gonna fight it as hard as I can, that’s all I can say.”
True to that positive and determined vibe, the Hall-Robertson team has already recorded three tracks for another Rez album. “The stuff that we’re workin’ on now is slightly more jazzy,” explains Robertson, before Hall injects with a hearty chuckle: “Nothing that a Hiwatt couldn’t take care of, though!”
Don Alder (originally published on March 14, 2012)
Not long after turning 16, Don Alder went flying out of the back of a rolling pickup truck in Williams Lake, but managed to survive the incident unscathed. Not so his teenage buddy Rick Hansen: paralyzed in the crash, he’d go on to become the world’s most inspiring paraplegic.
A basketball star in high school, Hansen had forever earned Alder’s gratitude by showing compassion to the less-skilled player and helping him improve at the game. Alder’s indebtedness to his “blood brother” came to the fore in 1985, when he agreed to commit two years of his life to join his mate on the Man in Motion Tour, in which the wheelchair-bound Hansen traversed the globe to raise awareness of spinal-cord injuries.
But first, Alder—who has since become an internationally acclaimed acoustic-guitar virtuoso—suggested some musical accompaniment for the trek.
“I said to him, ‘Man, we need a song for this tour,’ ” explains Alder during an interview at a restaurant in Kits. “And he says, ‘Yeah, why don’t you and your buddy write one?’ I was going, ‘Well, we really need somebody big,’ and I had worked in the studio, so guys like [heavyweight producer-composer] David Foster came to mind. He said, ‘Okay, call him!’ and I was like, ‘Should I call Madonna at the same time?'”
“He didn’t understand that it’s not that simple,” adds Alder. “But the beauty of Rick is that, when there’s a wall, there’s a way over, through, or around it.”
As anyone who listened to commercial radio in the ’80s knows, Foster came through big-time for Hansen by cowriting and producing “St. Elmo’s Fire (Man in Motion)”, which went to number one on the Billboard singles chart in September of ’85.
With that uplifting number as its theme song, the Man in Motion Tour proved an unqualified success, visiting 34 countries and earning $26 million for the cause. When the tour finished in ’87 Alder relocated to Vancouver, but the move wasn’t a happy one at first.
“It was actually a pretty dark time for me,” he recalls. “I hadn’t really played guitar in two years. I didn’t have a job; had very little money to survive on. But what happened is it actually became a good time for music-writing. I had to vent, so I got an acoustic guitar and just sat there and started writing and writing and writing, and that was the beginning of it all.”
Inspired by the instrumental success of pickers like Don Ross and Michael Hedges, Alder—a former drummer—devised a compositional approach that incorporated speedy fingerpicking with simultaneous percussion, played on the guitar’s body, to create a vibrant wall of sound. Contest judges everywhere took notice, with Alder being the only player in the world to win all three major guitar competitions: the 2007 International Fingerstyle Championship in Winfield, Kansas; the 2010 Guitar Superstar Competition in Livermore, California; and, just last December, the Guitar Idol III contest in London, England.
After an hour-long chat, the ebullient Alder scoots across 4th Avenue to Rowan’s Roof, where he regularly keeps his chops up—and tries out new instruments—at a weekly open-mike session. He takes the stage with the same duct-taped guitar that he won Guitar Idol with, and his intense, off-the-wall playing has the small crowd instantly enthralled. Judging by the ecstatic response, you wonder why Alder hasn’t developed a larger following in his own back yard. Chances are, unless you’ve stumbled across one of his YouTube videos, you’ve never heard of him at all.
“I think I’m earning one fan at a time,” he points out. “But having said that, outside Vancouver I’m very well-known in guitar circles. People like Andy Timmons and John Jorgenson, all those guys are fans of mine. They love what I do.”
When Alder won the Guitar Player magazine–sponsored Guitar Superstar contest, the judges included such notable rockers as Elliot Easton of the Cars, Dokken’s George Lynch, and Reeves Gabrels from David Bowie’s Tin Machine. So obviously the electric players dig where he’s coming from.
“It’s the delivery,” says Alder. “In these contests the electric guys have the ability to go over the top with all this tapping and stuff, so my strategy was to come out in standard tuning and kick ass.
“I’ve been winning all these crazy contests,” he continues, “and it made me realize what I am. I’ve done studio gigs, but I’m not formally trained, so I’m not a professional player at all. I don’t even consider myself a guitarist, because the true guitarist is all about precision, right? I’m sloppy, I’m messy, but I love to create. So I went down the artist track, and with artists there are no rules—you just have to make people try to like and appreciate you. It’s creating your own kinda mystique, I guess. That’s where I’ve been lucky.”
Scott Smith (originally published on October 16, 2020)
The coronovirus pandemic is a global catastrophe that has led to massive death, economic ruin, and untold suffering.
But it hasn’t stopped Scott Smith from rocking out.
It did slow him down a bit, though, as he admits on the line from his home near Trout Lake.
“It’s been very different, obviously.” says the guitar specialist, who is also a singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist. “The first two months were especially frustrating ’cause we had all these fantastic gigs lined up for the spring and summer, so to have that just wiped clean was a tough thing to take. But then, it’s funny–if you’re a positive person you kind of find your groove, and you just start doing different things.
“So I’ve got my home studio set up, like fully professional. I always sorta had it so I would do demos here, but I got it set up so I can do anything, and started recording stuff for other people. We started doing some ‘basement live’ things, and then other gigs opened up–like Tractorgrease in Chilliwack, and some smaller gigs. Then just sideman stuff, playing with different bands. And I’m doing more teaching over Facetime.”
Smith also found time to make a third album with his blues-rock quartet Terminal Station, which sees him in the company of keyboardist Darryl Havers, bassist Jeremy Holmes, and drummer Liam MacDonald. Simply titled Brotherhood, the 12-track disc was recorded, mixed, mastered, and coproduced by Christopher Woudstra, who also fronts Rock and Roll Circus, another band rockaholic Smith plays in.
“He’s got just a great ear for sounds,” says Smith of Woudstra. “And also he’s comin’ from the same place as us, so he likes blues-rock kinda stuff. And he’s a big Stones fanatic, so he likes natural sounds. And with him being a singer, when it came time for me to focus on the vocal tracks, he was great for just pushing me and getting the best vocal take out of me.”
Brotherhood is loaded with killer blues- and soul-rock tunes, one highlight being the instrumental “Booker D”, which sees Havers going to town on the Hammond B-3 organ. You’d be right in guessing that the song is a tribute to B-3 ace Booker T. Jones, but wrong in thinking that it might be in the key of D.
“Actually that song is in C-minor,” points out Smith. “The D is in reference to Darryl. We call him Booker D sometimes.”
The tune features some wild rock ‘n’ roll sax playing from Dominic Conway, who is also a member of the local improv-jazz group Malleus Trio. Another guest is vocalist Colleen Rennison, who Smith has played duo gigs with and recorded for over the years. “She just one of the best voices I’ve ever heard,” he raves. “Just a natural. So soulful.”
When asked which song on Brotherhood might be his personal fave, Smith points to “One More Bottle”, a southern-tinged track that saw him trading Allman Brothers-style guitar licks with yet another guest, John Sponarski. So which Allman Brother was he thinking of while doing that?
“Actually it’s both,” he says with a chuckle. “Like the first half with the slide is Duane [Allman], and then the outro part is Dickey [Betts].”
With Brotherhood in the can, don’t expect Smith to slack off any time soon. The day after our chat he was set to fly out to Alberta to do drive-in gigs with country singer Aaron Pritchett, where people come and watch the gig in their cars.
“Music has to get played,” he reasons, “so we’re doing it however we can.”
Shaun Verreault (originally published on January 16, 2021)
Over the last few months I’ve been checking in with Vancouver’s top guitar players to find out how, as professional musicians, they’ve been coping with the COVID-19 pandemic. Back in October Scott Smith of Terminal Station explained how he was recording artists at his home studio and doing more teaching via Facebook; in November I learned how shredder par excellence and Joe Satriani protégé Dave Martone has managed to help pay the bills through his role as a music-technology and guitar instructor at Douglas College.
The latest local six-string ace under inspection is Shaun Verreault, whose name you may recognize for his many years as singer-guitarist with Canadian blues-rockers Wide Mouth Mason, which has released eight albums (two of which went gold) and toured with the likes of AC/DC and ZZ Top. As Verreault explains on the line from his Yaletown home, he was mostly immune to pandemic-induced financial fallout because of his full-time day job.
“I’m counting myself extremely fortunate that, alongside my career as a writing and recording and touring musician, for the past five years I’ve also worked at an amazing local guitar-based business called Graph Tech Guitar Labs. We design and manufacture and provide pretty much every guitar brand you can think of with the nut and saddles that they use, and machine heads and bridges and piezo pickups and stuff.
“So I’ve been very grateful that–after releasing a record and then having all of the gigs go away for what’s looking now like two festival seasons, not just one–I haven’t had to worry about where my mortgage payments were gonna come from. It’s interesting that along with breadmakers and Zoom, the guitar business has actually had a thriving last year. I think people, as they were at home wondering what they’re gonna do after they’ve watched everything on Netflix, have really found themselves picking up their instruments again. People have rediscovered the joy–even if it’s just in their bedrooms by themselves–of playing their guitars.”
While the global pandemic may have resulted in increased sales of Strats and Les Pauls, it has basically obliterated anyone’s ability to use those instruments in a concert setting. Verreault has used much of the time he would have spent on stage developing his “Tri-Slide” technique, which involves using three slides on his fretting hand while playing lap-steel guitar and dobro. He first tried the triple-slide approach about seven years ago.
“A friend of mine had given me a lap steel,” he recalls, “but playing standard style with one bar in my hand, everything I did sounded like an out-of-tune version of something that somebody else could do better. It just was really befuddling, because it’s a totally different set of muscles, and a totally different way of moving than playing bottleneck slide, which I had been doing for maybe 15 years at that point. It dawned on me that if I had more than one slide I could do more things, and it really sent me down a wormhole of experimentation and just making stuff up.
“It reminded me of when I was 10 and I first got an acoustic guitar. It hurt my fingers and it made me feel stupid and I wasn’t sure if I wanted to keep doing it. And then I remember one day home with a fever I just stopped looking at it as extra homework that I had to do and looked at it like a toy, and brushed the strings and blew on ’em and smacked the guitar and heard the sound that it made. I really started looking at it as just a thing that I could do creative stuff on.
“And so doing that with the lap steel, I went, ‘Well, what if I put a slide on my thumb and a slide on my ring finger and I pivot back and forth between those two and see what happens.’ And once I started realizing that I could have one note slide in one direction while another note slid in the other direction–with maybe one in between that’s staying the same–then it got really exciting for me.”
And not just for him. It’s amazing to see Verreault deploy three slides at once to explore new ways of creating music. He often posts short clips of himself on social media covering bits of songs he loves by the likes of guitar legends Stevie Ray Vaughan, Steve Vai, Eddie Van Halen, and Eric Johnson. The clips are rarely longer than two minutes.
“Part of the reason I’ve kept the videos so short,” he explains, “is that I know a lot of our fanbase is at the same point in their lives as I am, and you don’t necessarily have an hour and a half to sit down and watch a thing in between homeschooling and working from home and home stuff. So I thought these easily digestible little bits of entertainment for people that I could offer could keep our connection there.”
Hopefully it won’t be too long before guitar freaks–and music fans in general–will be able to safely leave their homes and see concerts again. If the pandemic were declared over today, Verreault knows where he’d want to experience live music tonight.
“Oh man, I have floated back in my head many times to shows that I’ve either played or seen at the Commodore, and I cannot wait for the next one of those, whatever that can be. Whether it’s been sitting in with my friends or the nights that the Masons have played there, or just going there as a concertgoer, I’m counting the minutes until that is a thing again.”
Paul Pigat (originally published on January 23, 2021)
When COVID-19 killed concerts last year, professional musicians who relied heavily on revenue from live shows were put in financial peril. That fact wasn’t lost on Vancouver guitar ace Paul Pigat, who normally chocks up plenty of gigs with his bands Cousin Harley, Boxcar Campfire, and the Paul Pigat Trio.
“There’s easier ways to make a living than being a musician,” says Pigat on the line from Murfitt Guitars in East Van, “and this has made it a lot harder. But honestly I’m doin’ alright, because I’ve been productive. I put out the Cousin Harley record, and I’m workin’ on a record with Kevin Breit–he’s my favourite guitar player in the world, pretty much. And my pastime is building guitars, so I’ve built a boatload of guitars. And then I teach as well; I’ve been teaching since I was 18. So that’s been able to keep me above water.”
As well as being skilled at making guitars and showing folks how to play them, Pigat is one of those musicians whose versatility keeps them ahead of the pack. If he’s in the mood to play some bluesy roots tunes he turns to Boxcar Campfire; when he’s got a hankering for jazzier stylings he’ll go the Paul Pigat Trio route. And when he wants to get in touch with his inner Stray Cat he’ll round up bassist Keith Picot and drummer Jesse Cahill and set Cousin Harley on the road to rowdy rockabilly.
“Having a [musical] diet like that is really important for me,” he points out. “If I do one thing and only one thing for too long I get a little stir crazy. So I’ve always had a few projects going, and it just keeps me interested in all of them.”
Pigat’s current project with Toronto guitar genius Breit is a remotely recorded, all-instrumental venture that will include drum tracks laid down by Damian Graham on Vancouver Island and bass licks sent in from Tommy Babin in Palo Alto, California. Pigat composed all the songs, except for one that Breit wrote. “I think we’re gonna call the record Hillbilly Circus,” he says, “’cause it’s kinda like hillbilly circus music, ya know. Anything that Kevin touches instantly gets weird and super fun.”
From the sound of the latest Cousin Harley album, Let’s Go, there’s plenty of fun to go around. The trio has been described as “the Motorhead of rockabilly”, and how it earned that moniker is a story in itself.
“We were in Holland on our first tour to Europe,” recalls Pigat, “and one of our gigs got blown out. A friend of ours over there put this makeup gig together in a tiny little club, and it was literally shoulder-to-shoulder, wall-to-wall. It can be pretty fierce with us when we’re on the road–we like to play hard and have a good time–and we were havin’ a really aggressive musical night. A Dutch guy came up and said, ‘You are like zee Motörhead of rockabilly!’ and it stuck with us ever since.”
Cousin Harley certainly does a good job of generating Lemmy-level energy on Let’s Go’s 10 Pigat-penned originals. One fiery tune that stands out in particular is “Merle the Gypsy”.
“We did a record in 2017 to commemorate what would have been Merle Travis’s 100th birthday,” explains Pigat, “and that album is all Merle Tavis. I have a lot of guitar players that I’m huge fans of, but I love Merle Travis and I love [gypsy-jazz guitarist] Django Reinhardt. So the melodic side of the tune is very much Django Reinhardt, and then I thought I would just adapt the interpretation and make it into a Travis-linking tune.”
Another guitarist Pigat cites as influential is Telecaster master and “redneck jazz” purveyor Danny Gatton, who he discovered in the late ’80s.
“There was a pretty important Guitar Player magazine for him in which he was featured on the cover with the Phantom of the Opera mask and he was called ‘the world’s best unknown guitar player’. I was into Albert Lee and all those country guys, but when I heard Danny Gatton I really loved the jazz influence in his playing, and the hillbilly influences.
“I haven’t really lifted any Danny Gatton,” Pigat says, “I just tried to emulate that kind of intensity. That’s what I really love about him, the sheer intensity of the way he played.”
When it comes to displaying his own intensity on guitar, Pigat almost always plays a Gretsch, the brand he’s endorsed since 2009. He actually owns a one-of-a-kind Gretsch that he designed with the company’s master builder, Stephen Stern. When asked who his all-time favourite Gretsch player might be, Pigat forgoes the better-known Brian Setzer in favour of “amazing” ’50s jazz guitarist Mary Osborne.
But when I remind him that Malcolm Young also played a Gretsch, he changes his tune pretty quick.
“You know what,” he reflects, “I’ll put Malcolm Young on the top of the list, ’cause I still love AC/DC. As a treat to my daughter, if we arrive at school before she has to go into class, we have an early morning ‘Thunderstruck’. So I don’t think there’s gonna be a band that will stick with me from when I was an early teenager until the day I die other than AC/DC.”
To read over 100 of my interviews with local Vancouver musicians since 1983, go here.