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Local Guides
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HAMILTON MUSIC NOTES
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by
Ric Taylor
October 21 - 27, 2004 |
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three decades ago, mild–mannered Edgar Breau was
fronting the eclectic and eccentric band known as Simply
Saucer. The band may have faded into history never
having released a CD during their lifetime, but recent
reissues of their Cyborgs Revisited garnered
international critical acclaim. With the increased interest
in his music, Breau, who had resigned himself to writing
and performing acoustic songs for himself for the better
part of the last two decades, was finally encouraged to
return to the stage and studio. The end result is a
collection of 12 songs from three recording sessions that
reintroduce a local legend. Edgar Breau celebrates the
release of Canadian Primitive (Songhammer/Sonic
Unyon) this weekend.
“I’m glad that there’s finally new material out and I can
get that Simply Saucer monkey off my back, so people
can hear what I’ve done more recently rather than
listening to music from 30 years ago,” laughs Breau.
“The reissue of the Simply Saucer recordings was part of
the reason to release a new CD. In 1999 or 2000,
(producer/musician) Paul Reimens had discovered the
tapes that I made in 1991 at Grant Avenue. I knew Paul
from way back. When he took over the studio, he gave
me a ring and asked me if I wanted to finish these tapes.
Now, I had accumulated an awful lot of songs so I
thought I should clear the deck, so to speak.”
With a voice somewhere between Tom Verlaine and
Paul Simon, Breau’s quirky, rootsy presentation can
envelop listeners. Ripping a page from John Fahey’s
folk approach, Breau naturalizes the sentiment and has
created a Canadian folk album that alludes to his roots
in music like the Velvet Underground as much as his
new–found muses. Breau’s originals are powerful songs
with a distinct lyrical bent. With the influce of some of his
favourites—like W.B. Yates, Hillaire Belloc and Edith
Sitwell—Breau offers a literary and lyrical tour de force.
“Fahey called his guitar style American Primitive,”
muses Breau. “I like primitive music. I like Appalachian
ballads, roots and folk music. I tend to like pure forms of
music in their original state, and now I am exploring
this…
“I like to call my music more folkadelic,” smiles the
singer. “There is a thread that runs through it all.
Lyrically, rock music became very politicized in the ’70s
and ’80s, and I found that I wanted to be a free agent in
terms of what I believed and the way I lived. I didn’t
identify with pop culture anymore after Saucer, and my
influences came from other places.
“But the songs have got to be there first,” he adds. “It’s
no good using them as a vehicle for your ideas if you
don’t have the music there first. I might be an amateur
philosopher, but as a musician I have a responsibility to
make good music.”
While the Simply Saucer material slowly makes its way
back into the live show, as do former Saucer members
(SS bassist Kevin Christoff and backing vocalist
Compton Roberts join Breau this Sunday), Breau is
invigorated by this release, figuratively and literally. A
new jazzy folk album, tentatively called Patches of Blue,
is already being contemplated, but Breau is simply
happy to have a his career back on track.
“For the CD release party we’re doing a three–piece
because the music I do now can be played very
stripped–down, which is something I really like,” Breau
says. “With Saucer, I needed a band to play it. Now I
want to have the songs stand up musically and lyrically
on their own and build up from there.”
“It’ll be a fun show and possibly the best concert of my
life,” Breau beams. “The show will be worth every penny.
Andre Segovia played until he was 90, so if I go that far I
can still have a 40 year career.”
Edgar Breau celebrates the release of Canadian
Primitive at The Casbah this Sunday, October 24. Doors
open at 8pm with Paul Reimens opening.
A man with a song in his heart and a new business
venture in his mind, Aaron Wrixon isn’t resting on the
laurels of his recent CD, The Year of Longing
Dangerously. The initial run, with elaborate “tin can”
packaging, has been recently reissued in standard jewel
cases and is currently being sent to radio stations
around the country. Meanwhile, Wrixon is in the process
of recording a new live album this weekend; it could help
capture the best of Wrixon’s 12 years of performing solo.
“I guess I first got the idea when I found out you could
record shows at the Casbah,” Wrixon explains. “I kind of
filed it away and thought ‘Hey, that’s good to know.’
“I’ve been really happy with the way my live show has
been going lately,” the singer adds, “so I figured, ‘Why
not?’ Plus the whole live album idea gives me a chance
to debut some new songs and play some reworked
versions of older ones—things that might not otherwise
be released for a while, or even at all. And I’ll get to
cherry–pick from all the records I’ve done too, so the
whole night will end up like a retrospective, I guess.”
Aaron Wrixon records his new album live at The
Casbah this Saturday, October 23 with The Clumsy
Lovers and Matthew de Zoete also on the bill. The early
show has doors opening at 7:30.
Robert Gordon discovered Elvis Presley while growing
up in Washington D.C. By 15 he was leading his own
band, but it was 1970 when he moved to New York and
joined the seminal CBGB’s band Tuff Darts. He’d record
countless records, and help lead a rockabilly revival with
the likes of The Stray Cats. A consummate performer,
Gordon may be most famous to Canadians for his guest
spot on SCTV, or his perennial return to the area (last
time with Hamilton’s The Shakers as his backing band)
but he still packs them in around the world. A rockabilly
legend, Gordon returns to Hamilton this weekend with a
new band and a new CD, Satisfied Mind, in hand.
“I waited a long time to get back in the studio and I’m
very happy with it,” Gordon says of his new recording. “I
was looking for the right material and I guess I wasn’t
ready. I did it down in Nashville, and it’s actually more
keyboard–oriented, which wasn’t my intent. It just
happened that the owner of the studio, Johnny Neil
originally of the Allman Brothers, came down and just sat
himself down at the piano and started playing on some
of the stuff.”
With New York’s The Rockats backing him this time out,
Gordon hopes the new album will rekindle interest for an
American label negotiation.
“I hope it gets me to the next level—a label here in the
States—and gets it out there so people can really hear it.
It’s on a small independent label, and to get that in the
public eye is really what’s important to me.
“That was a major turning point and that’s probably the
only thing I really regret,” Gordon says of his 1981
decision to leave RCA. “I think I had maybe one more
album to go with them, and of course that was when
MTV was happening, and that would have opened some
major doors. So I just missed that by a hair.”
Speaking of hair, “I haven’t been one to shy away from
the camera,” laughs Gordon on his hallmark hairstyle.
“Well, it’s a little more tame these days. I don’t get as
crazy as I used to, but that’s not to say I’m tame but
things change. Christ, I’m 57 years old and I’ve got to
sort of act my age these days.”
But that’s not to say Gordon has lost any of his inherent
talent. The magical voice still barrels through the songs,
while his performance and wit still make him an
attraction where ever he goes.
“It still gets me off, doing that kind of music, and that’s
what it’s really all about,” muses Gordon on his three
decades performing rockabilly. “It’s the way I’ve always
sung—it’s not an act. Although I don’t try to recreate the
exact records live, I’ve always tried to make them more
powerful. I guess it’s a feeling that you find in the
singing; I’ve been doing it since I was 15, so it comes
kind of natural these days. In fact, as you know I’m
coming up to Hamilton and the next week I go to
Japan—so I still get around.”
Robert Gordon plays The Corktown this Saturday,
October 23, with Hey Stella and Sam Lawrence 5.
Tickets are $15 in advance and $20 door.
Ray Dalan passed away suddenly this past
Thanksgiving weekend (October 10) and Hamilton lost
someone many referred to as the “Dean of the Hamilton
music scene.” As a striking visual presence in the city,
Dalan’s Mick Fleetwood–esque physique was recently
best seen as John The Baptist in a local production of
Jesus Christ Superstar. Invariably, however, Dalan could
most be seen behind the live soundboard, or at his own
recording studio. A member of the YMCA for 25 years, it
was there Dalan passed away in the midst of his work–
out regimen. But this weekend, friends and fans gather
for a memorial celebrating his life in music.
“We called him ‘Cosmic Ray’ and it seemed to fit,”
remembers Gavin Dianda. Performing with The Flashing
Lights and more recently with his new band Saffron Sect,
Dianda looks back fondly at the early ’90s when his
band Thee Gnostics would hang out at Dalan’s
Receiving Door Studio on Barton Street. “Ray was a
veritable silver–haired giant, tall and lanky and had a
sort of wry black humour we dug very much. We really
hung on every word.
“Thee Gnostics used to practice at his space and he
even recorded a few of our songs, he was very patient
with us, as we tended to play very loudly,” Dianda
recalls. “There was a big Gnostics Halloween psych–out
gig there around ‘93 where Ray decked the place out
with a giant model airplane and flags hanging from the
ceiling and acted as compere/ host/bartender and
procurer for the evening.
“I was really pleased to hear he’d opened up a new
studio downtown and particularly shocked and
saddened to hear of his recent passing,” Dianda
confides.
As one of the founding members of the Church of the
Universe with Michael and Walter Baldersero, Dalan
was recording music in the area since 1970. After a ten–
year run at TRW as an electronic technologist, he was
diagnosed with an aneurysm and focused his attention
on his musical loves, paying special attention to
nurturing budding talent and friends in need.
“I met him when I was 15 years old, back in the ’70s,
and Ray was living in town,” recalls Hamilton guitar
legend Tim Gibbons. “He was quite the sight to see—
black hair down to his butt, six foot seven. He had done
a set of 200 on the rowing machine at the Y, so he
definitely wasn’t thinking of dying when he cashed in his
chips. I heard there was this torrential downpour when
they put him
in the ground. I heard that same storm flooded the Red
Hill Valley. That’d be Ray. He liked to have an effect. He
was pretty big—larger than life.”
“He was a great friend of Hamilton with a generous
spirit,” recalls musician and Hangar 18 Assistant
Engineer Mark Foley. “Ray was all about the community,
all the time. He would give you anything you needed.
Anything he could afford to give you, he would. He was
unfailing in his in that communal belief.”
After The Receiving Door met an untimely demise with a
fire gutting the studio, Dalan returned undaunted three
years later gathering Terry Bramhall, David Manto, Kevin
McNeil, and Foley to create his new studio Hangar 18.
“I met him six years ago through a mutual
acquaintance,” recounts Foley. “I just showed up one
day and met this big tall guy with a long joint hanging out
of his mouth and a straw hat. We hit it off and just started
hanging out. Hangar 18 started when Ray came up to
me and said ‘I know some other guys that want to get
involved and how much trouble do you want to get into?
and it went from there.”
“I always thought Ray was the best engineer in
Hamilton and he was fun to record with because he had
such a sardonic sense of humour,” Gibbons smiles. “He
was a really great guy who helped out everyone he met.
He was able to draw a community of people around him
that kept one of the best studios in Hamilton afloat. There
was quite the parade of talent going through Hangar
18’s doors and a lot of the interesting Underground
music came out of that studio.”
“Eclectic and smoky—that’s how I’d describe Hangar
18, and that’s the way Ray liked having things,” says
Foley. “Most musicians in Hamilton had played on
sessions there in the last five years, so the list is long.”
Nestled in the downtown core at 105 1/2 James Street
between York Boulevard and James Street, Hangar 18
saw a variety of area performers would come to Ray’s
place for recording time including Gibbons, Lighthouse’s
Skip Prokop, Mike Trebilcock, Rita Chiarelli, Mike
Williams Band, Tone, Solemn Oath Band, All Fall Down,
Punch Buggy Yellow, George Belmore, Kelly Grrrl,
Bobby Hebert Band, Federal Yellow, Disciples of Mood,
The Sapphire Fly Band, George Petko Band and others.
As a musician, Dalan recorded previously as Slan and
the Land, a name he took from a ’50s sci–fi novel, but
had been working on a new solo record recently.
“He had been working on remixing some of his music,”
Foley says. “He had a song called ‘Wet Dope’ that we
were thinking of marketing—with a name like that, it’d be
a great novelty tune. For the memorial, we’re going to be
getting a band together performing it live for the first time,
but without Slan unfortunately. There’s about ten songs
in the can for a new album from Ray and certainly all the
surviving members would like to see it get out because
that’s what Ray really wanted.”
With some live recordings in the can, tentative talking
books and even Dalan’s own unreleased solo album,
the studio remains active.
“The greatest accomplishment for Hangar 18 is that it’s
still there,” laughs Foley. “Ray was a great guy, my best
friend, and I don’t know what the hell I’m going to do
now. All I know is we’re going to keep Hangar 18 going
in the Ray Dalan spirit! He just wanted to have a rock
and roll studio and be an asset to the community. That
was his big focus. Anytime you talked to him, it didn’t
matter what was happening, the whole place could be
falling apart with ‘shut off’ notices everywhere, he’d still
be saying ‘I’m still living my dream, man!’”
The Ray Dalan Memorial happens Sunday, October 24
at Pepper Jack’s, with live music, spoken word
performances and video footage of Dalan performing
live. Tentative performances include Jack Street, Kim
Koren from Punchbuggy Yellow and Solemn Oath Band,
as well as Tim Gibbons, Jack Pedler, Mike Williams and
Mark Foley in a special tribute set.
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