Recent Vintage 2004/05

1. Whales Ahoy! .... published in Westworld Magazine, spring 2005
2. The Mead Squad .... published in Eat Magazine/Victoria, August 2004
3. White Christmas ... published in the Calgary Herald's Swerve Magazine, Dec. 10/2004
4. Top Listens/2004 .... published in Western Living, December 2004
5. Artist Biography: Madviolet .... written in June/2004


Whales Ahoy! The Pacific Rim Whalefest
Published in Westworld, spring 2005

Braced against the steering platform of our Zodiac, I scan the restless sea for the v-shaped explosion of mist that will signal our quarry. The twin 110-horsepower engines have been stilled and we’re rocking gently a kilometre out from Tofino’s “whiskey dock,” which Cheryl Brown, our skipper, tells us is sailor-speak for the wharf closest to the liquor store in any port. The sky is cloudless as a cold wind kicks hard from the west. I’m indebted to the thick sweater beneath my red all-weather suit, but regret not packing a flask of fortified coffee.

Hunched beside me, a young newlywed from Paris moans quietly in the arms of her concerned husband. So far she’s the only casualty of the eight-foot chop that has made the trip a bone-jarring carnival ride. A clutch of excited Japanese students comprise the rest of our party, and two of them have joined me as designated watchmen, each of us monitoring a horizon that rises and falls with each ocean swell.

In turbulent waters like these, patient reconnaissance is the only way we’ll catch sight of Eschrichtius robustus. From this point in mid-March through the end of May, an estimated 20,000 mottled, barnacle-encrusted gray whales will pass the open Pacific coast of Vancouver Island en route to feeding grounds off Alaska and Siberia. The 16,000 kilometre trek from mating and calving lagoons in the Baja Peninsula rates as the longest marine mammal migration of them all.

Steve Dennis of Tofino's Seaside Adventures has warned us there are no guarantees in the whale-watching business, particularly in the early stage of the migration when the alpha males are leading the pack north with bullish determination. (Translation: They’re not hanging around waiting to have their picture taken.) Odds improve significantly when the rather more placid females and new-borns meander by later in the spring. And by mid-summer it’ll be all but impossible to miss the small group of resident whales who sojurn in these waters for half the year.

This is day two of the Pacific Rim Whalefest, however. Being modern tourists with high expectations and short attention spans, we’re primed for a dramatic encounter. The spring break celebration, jointly hosted by Tofino and Ucluelet, has been held annually since 1986. Sister festivals take place elsewhere on the unofficial “whale highway,” notably in Puerto San Carlos, Mexico, along California’s Mendocino coastline and in the Alaskan towns of Kodiak and Sitka.

The “Moby Dick Parade,” as Jacques Cousteau once termed the migration, is a big deal indeed for those alarmed by patterns of animal extinction. (UCLA physiologist Jared Diamond, for one, believes that half of all existing species will either be extinct or endangered by 2050.) A century ago the whaling industry, with its high-speed “catcher boats” and exploding harpoons, had reduced the grays on this coast to less than a thousand. Sanity prevailed in 1946 when the commercial hunt was outlawed. It was too late for the North Atlantic population, which was gone forever circa the American Revolution. But their spectacular rebound in this part of the world is trumpeted as one of the conservation movement’s great triumphs.

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THE MEAD SQUAD
Bees do it at Tugwell Creek
Eat/Summer 2004

Buzz: As trend-watchers worth their weight in iPods will confirm, it’s critical for any new enterprise. Well, the buzz is loud and literal at Tugwell Creek Honey Farm and Meadery, a dozen or so wiggles of the West Coast Road beyond Sooke. Hundreds of thousands of docile honeybees reside here along with owner/operators Bob Liptrot and Dana LeComte, their 18-month-old daughter Teagan, three goats, and the resident cat Ootak.

Collectively this menagerie is making a joyous noise indeed. A year after securing a license as British Columbia’s first meadery, Liptrot and LeComte are running a promising farmgate business split evenly between sales of connoisseur-grade honey and their initial batches of mead -- the honeyed nectar that has been intoxicating humans since prehistoric times. Tugwell Creek’s limited-edition offerings are available at Victoria restaurants Brasserie l'école and The Temple, while bottles (when available) can be purchased at Liberty Wine Merchants in Vancouver and via email order.

It’s at Tugwell Creek’s 12-acre farm overlooking the Strait of Juan de Fuca that the bulk of sales are made to daytrippers compelled by the same kind of sweet tooth that hooked Liptrot on honey as a boy. A neighbour in East Vancouver kept a beehive and, in exchange for honeycomb, Liptrot became his apprentice. After earning a master’s degree in entomology (i.e., the study of insects), he spent 15 years on the staff of Vancouver’s Mountain Equipment Cooperative before he and Dana, a fashion industry veteran, chucked city life and followed their beekeeping dream to Vancouver Island.

That was eight years ago, and the outdoorsy Liptrot loves the work despite the occupational hazards (he estimates his annual sting count at about 100). Each spring, some 60 hives (which at their peak population will hold 50,000 residents apiece) are on the property under Liptrot’s stewardship. By June, when the traffic gets busy along the narrow lane leading to their picturesque shop-cum-home, most will have been relocated to prime foraging areas elsewhere.

“Here we’re a little too close to the ocean and the weather can get nasty,” says Liptrot. “The bees won’t fly when its wet, of course, and the flowers don’t produce nectar.” Many hives are moved to forestry lands further inland, where the bees sup on the fireweed and wild flowers that flourish in clearcuts. An apiary at the Sooke Potholes offers a feast of blackberry flowers, while a precious few hundred kilos of rare Linden tree honey is harvested from Tugwell Creek’s queen-bee mating facility at nearby Malahat Farm.

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Dreaming of a Technicolour Christmas
Calgary Herald: Swerve Magazine

Bing Crosby is once again crooning “White Christmas” in shopping malls across this great land. Rather than being massaged subliminally by it while loitering in a food court, I’m listening closely, keen to understand why it’s second only to Elton John’s “Candle in the Wind” as the most popular recording of the last century.

Raised loud-and-proud in the rock era, I once viewed Bing Crosby as the devil in plaid golf slacks – the definitive square, a dead white patriarch who, according to his embittered son Gary, was far from the mellow dude seen on stage and screen.

Now rather mellow myself, I can’t deny the charm of Der Bingle’s greatest 188 seconds. The oceanic strings at the outset. The slippered entrance of that velveteen voice. The way the Ken Darby Singers hijack the middle verses so that our hero can essay his Hunk Finn-in-a-parka whistle. Finally his wish that all our Christmases be, well, you know the rest.

Written by Irving Berlin in 1941 and released a year after Pearl Harbour, “White Christmas” kindled hope on the home front at a time when sentiment wasn’t cheap and the casualties were mounting at a distressing rate.

It topped the North American charts for three months, then became a holiday perennial over the next four decades. The single sold 30 million copies. Various albums containing it sold 50 million more.
Even today, when music-store racks groan with holiday listening choices, “White Christmas” still lights up the request lines at radio stations.

“Nearly every contemporary musician you can name has recorded a holiday song, but people still want to hear the classics,” says Vince Cownden, program director at Calgary’s Lite 96. Standards like Nat King Cole’s “The Christmas Song,” he adds, “obviously have a resonance missing when Britney Spears sings the same material.”

Lite 96 switches to an all-Christmas/all-the-time playlist at a TBA date in the near future (an early Nov. 22 greenlight on holiday tunes last year was spurred by the foot of snow that blanketed Calgary). The oldies will pop up occasionally amongst seasonal fare from usual suspects like Josh Groban, Celine Dion and Harry Connick Jr.

Over at Breeze 103, music director Mike Shannon tells me that while Crosby is too moldy for his format, “White Christmas” endures in renditions by Babyface, Kenny G. and the king of neo-Bing crooners, Michael Bublé.

The musically erudite among you will find your lips curling at the mere mention of those names. But schmaltz is never more palatable than when the aroma of roast beast is in the air. Critical facilities go south, the inner scrooge falls silent and peace reigns even when Uncle Sid has put John Tesh’s Family Christmas on the stereo.

Chalk it up, in part, to the persistence of memory. Whatever was playing on the (take your pick) gramophone/eight-track/CD player/iPod when you were a kid is likely to have a special place in your heart everafter.

If it was Miss Piggy’s version of “Christmas Is Coming” with John Denver, then The Muppets’ A Christmas Together (1979) is your ticket back to dewy-eyed innocence. *Nsync’s Xmas disc may one day do the same for kids raised in the ‘90s. And who knows how many impressionable 10 year-olds in the coming weeks will fall under the spell of Jessica Simpson’s breathtakingly bad rendition of “Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow!”

Cool, credible Xmas music? Today there’s no shortage of it on such new compilations as The OC Mix 3: Have A Very Merry Chrismukkah (featuring The Ravonettes, Jimmy Eat World) and Maybe This Christmas Tree (Pilate, Death Cab for Cutie). Coldplay, the Flaming Lips, even the late Joey Ramone have cut holiday tunes.

Whatever its status as a memento mori of the war years, “White Christmas” thrived in an era when holiday music was still a novelty. It remained so through the early ‘80s, when young adults like me had to get by with John Lennon’s “Happy Xmas (War Is Over),” Phil Spector’s classic A Christmas Gift For You and little else.

The floodgates opened in 1986 with “Do They Know It’s Christmas,” which saw U2’s Bono and a host of U.K. stars singing out for African famine relief. Nashville stars had been cutting Xmas albums for years, but suddenly mainstream pop acts realized there was a sizeable market for their own versions of “Winter Wonderland.”

Lite 96’s Cownden claims Christmas music has never been more popular. “The world, at least the radio world, changed dramatically on 9/11,” he says. “In times like these, people tend to be celebrating the holidays in a fuller, more complete way.” With the grim headlines piling up, the world evidently needs to keep hearing that famous benediction: “May all your days be merry and bright/And may all your Christmases be white.”


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Western Living
Best Music 2004

Another year, another 25,000 or so good, average and numbingly indifferent albums. Here’s nine of the year’s finest drawn from that many-backed beast called “popular music,” along with a tenth slot highlighting a few of 2004’s best single-track downloads.

FAITHLESS
No Roots (Arista)
The designer lounge movement that brought us the Café Del Mar series and others of its ilk has grown stale as a back issue of Wallpaper. This U.K. troupe, however, remains resolutely au courant by melding massive techno beats with soul melodies and the Marvin Gaye-on-ecstasy croon of singer Maxi Jazz. Highlight: The soaraway title track, which features Faithless alumnus Dido.

IRON & WINE
Our Endless Numbered Days (Sub Pop)
Peering out from above his full red beard, Sam Beam looks like a candidate for reality television’s Amish in the City. Instead, he’s a former college professor and father of two from South Carolina with a sweet, understated voice and the literate reach of a poet. Look to Nick Drake for a ballpark reference, but on this aching, quietly profound disc Beam is an artist unto himself.

KIA KADIRI
Feel This (Maximum Music)
A west coast answer to American thrushes Jill Scott and Kelis, this force of nature from Victoria brings lightning fast wordplay and an unshakeable melodicism to her exceptional debut. The sound roams from hip-hop street anthems to ballads and groove-driven jazz/funk. Yet Kadiri really finds herself lyrically by eschewing urban music’s standard bling-bling themes for provocative musings about war, poverty and the new world order.

KEANE
Hopes & Fears (Interscope)
This year’s Coldplay hails from the south coast of England. With no guitars in earshot, the material is built around singer Tom Chaplin’s theatric tenor and heaping layers of keyboards. The candied tunes are lilting and uplifting, the choruses beg for singalongs. Perhaps a tad too rococo for some tastes, but shameless crowd-pleasing is rarely so satisfying.

KINGS OF CONVENIENCE
Riot on an Empty Street (Astralwerks)
Like countryman Sondre Lerche, this young Norwegian duo is part of a new generation of urban folkies who found an identity via thrift-shop Simon & Garfunkle LPs. Soaring harmonies and ripe major-chord melodies mark a dozen songs highlighted by the madly infectious I’d Rather Dance With You (which will resonate with anyone forced to lip-read in noisy clubs). Albertan Leslie Feist is among the guests.

SCISSOR SISTERS
Scissor Sisters (Universal)
More fun than you can shake a spangled Elton John jumpsuit at. Mixing Day-Glo pop with electronic beats and falsetto choruses, this New York quintet has wrung the cheesy, sleazy best from the ‘70s and emerged with what today sounds excitingly brand new. Recasting a languid Pink Floyd standard (“Comfortably Numb”) as a Bee Gees cover scored them early attention, but it’s salacious anthems like “Take Your Mama Out” and “Filthy/Gorgeous” that make this such a gleeful romp.

TED LEO & THE PHARMACISTS
Shake The Sheets (Lookout)
A bracing wake-up call for adult listeners who thought they’d never again have reason to plug in their trusty air guitars. Brawny, politicized and furiously uptempo, Shake the Sheets has a vigor and intelligence that recalls Elvis Costello and Joe Jackson circa 1980. It should make an unlikely star out of Leo, a tall, skinny singer-songwriter from New Jersey whose years as an indie-music cult hero will soon be behind him.

TEGAN & SARA
So Jealous (Superclose)
Discovered four years ago by Neil Young, the Calgary-born twins are now in their mid-20s, living apart in different time zones yet still effortlessly attuned to one another’s sweet-and-sour psyches. On their fourth album, they wail alternately wise, lovestruck and disgusted passages from what reads like their private journals. The producers behind Vancouver’s New Pornographers, meanwhile, deliver a buzzsaw wall of lo-fi sound that reinforces the women’s claim that they “love the rock and roll.”

BRIAN WILSON
SMiLE (Nonesuch)
The maestro’s voice is a ragged yelp next to the surfin’ choirboy of old. And remaking the pop perfection of “Good Vibrations” is sacrilege, plain and simple. Yet this is the event release of 2004, a mythic lost masterpiece made flesh. In an election year peopled with mock heroes and villains on both sides of the border, SMiLE’s naivety, innocence and honest craftsmanship is a wondrous achievement indeed.

DOWNLOADABLE

The iPod era has arrived in earnest, and odds are you either have a cool, slimline Mp3 player by now or have notified Santa of your fervent desire for one. Herewith ten must-hear downloads: Mark Knopfler, “Song For Sonny Liston”; Loretta Lynn, “Have Mercy”; William Shatner, “Common People”; Ben Charest, “Belleville Rendez-Vous” (from The Triplets of Belleville soundtrack); The Divine Comedy, “Come Home Billy Bird”; Sara Harmer, “Almost”; Air, “Alone In Kyoto”; Nick Cave, “Let The Bells Ring”; Chicks on Speed, “Wordy Rappinghood”; Ben Harper & The Blind Boys of Alabama, “Take My Hand.”

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Madviolet
biography: April 2004


Providence, destiny, karma, kismet: Call it what you will, there’s an undiluted element of it in the Madviolet story. Brenley MacEachern and Lisa Marie MacIsaac use those terms when recounting how two small-town girls with shared Cape Breton roots hooked up in Toronto four years ago. That same certain something explains the series of happy breaks that led to working relationships with premier U.K. producer John Reynolds, Sinead O’Connor’s backing band and Indigo Girls manager Russell Carter. And it’s clearly alive in the camaraderie and connection the duo feel when writing together, performing live and racking up the miles in their beloved tour vans (the first named Charlie, now the sleek, late-model Blanche).

The evidence is ingrained deep in the musical DNA of Worry The Jury, Madviolet’s debut full-length CD. Led by the rousing opening track and first single, “Light It Up,” the album documents a six-week recording blitz in London, England that Brenley calls “absolutely magic, a dream creative experience.”

John Reynolds, best known for his central role on O’Connor’s classic albums and whose dazzling C/V includes work with U2, Peter Gabriel and Simply Red, helmed the warm, intimate sessions at his Notting Hill home studio 18d (formerly Ghost Rooms). His close-knit circle of musicians – among them guitarist Jon Klein (Siouxsie & the Banshees) and bass players Claire Kenny (Indigo Girls) and Matthew Seligman (Tori Amos, The Soft Boys) – served as Madviolet’s backing band. Vocal tracks were recorded in the same tiled bathroom where O’Connor sang “Fire On Babylon.” Among the guests who dropped in for a taste of Reynold’s post-session cooking was his neighbor Brian Eno.

“We got over being starstruck pretty quickly – it was such an everyday, down-to-earth atmosphere,” explains Brenley, an equally earthy type raised in Kincardine, Ont. Not that there was any shortage of pinch-me moments. “One day I looked up from recording a part and there’s Sinead sitting in a chair and listening,” says Lisa, the youngest of Cape Breton’s celebrated MacIsaac family of fiddle players and the quieter, charmingly sardonic one in Madviolet. “That was a bit freaky.”

Fate showed its hand long before Brenley first met Lisa in 2000 and invited her to join her trip-hop band zoebliss. It turned out that their fathers had known one another as teenagers back in Creignish, Nova Scotia. Lisa went to school and played hockey with Brenley’s cousins. Although the young Brenley spent her summers in Cape Breton, she never crossed paths with Lisa, who by the age of 12 was winning local Miss Congeniality crowns and playing fiddle at country fairs.

Brenley formed zoebliss in 1997 and recorded two well-received independent albums that earned her comparisions with Beth Orton and Portishead’s Beth Gibbons. A second-stage Lilith Fair gig in 1999 was a definite highlight, in part because she met Reynolds, then touring with the Indigo Girls.

Lisa, meanwhile, had moved on from teaching step-dancing to become a first-call touring musician gracing stages with her brother Ashley, Bruce Guthro, Mary Jane Lamond, Gordie Sampson and Adam Gregory, among others.

After meeting by chance in Toronto bar The Green Room, Brenley and Lisa became fast friends and were soon forging a creative partnership after band rehearsals. “I was comfortable enough to bring out songs that I’d never play for the band,” explains Brenley. “The tunes were a little more folky, even a bit country-oriented, and that was a total change from what zoebliss was about.”

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A selection of recent freelance work:

1. Billboard magazine feature on the Vancouver music industry
2. Salt Spring Island getaway for Westworld Magazine
3. Article on producer Garth Richardson for Applaud! Magazine
4. Profile of Nettwerk's Terry McBride for the 2003 Juno Award program
5. Biography for rock group Sonic Bloom
(signed to 604 Records/Universal/Def Jam label group)

BILLBOARD MAGAZINE
Canada Special edition, 2003

Vancouver arrives as a world-class management centre


“Vancouver has got a fantastic scene. It’s a very cool and happening town,” says Virgin Records president Roy Lott, referring in particular to his recent U.S. signing of Battle Axe Records rap acts Swollen Members and Moka Only. Michael Stipe agrees. “It's an amazing city,” the REM singer said recently of the band’s on-going sessions at Bryan Adams’ studio The Warehouse. “Not to be a hippie, but there's an energy there that I'm really enjoying.” Adds EMI Music Canada president Deane Cameron: “Vancouver is a great, great musical part of Canada.”

There’s no questioning the depths of talent the west coast has produced over the years, from Terry Jacks and Bachman Turner Overdrive a generation ago to such contemporary acts as Sarah McLachlan, Nickelback, Nelly Furtado, The Be Good Tanyas, Default, Hot Hot Heat, Gob, Bif Naked, Radiogram, Matthew Good and such most-promising newcomers as hip-hop artists Kyprios and Kia Kadiri.

What has always been in doubt is whether Vancouver would develop into a bona fide music industry centre, a Los Angeles counterpart to Toronto’s New York. That possibility is still a long way off in a reeling music economy. Yet after a Grammy 2003 night in which the city's music managers could lay claim to a staggering 31 nominations, the local scene has evidently reached a new level of clout and maturity.

Throughout the ‘70s and much of the ‘80s, Vancouver was the near-exclusive fiefdom of A&F Music’s Bruce Allen and Sam Feldman. They remain at the top of the heap, only now the power structure has grown sufficiently to add two managerial faces: Steve Macklam, Feldman’s globe-trotting partner in Macklam/Feldman Management (Norah Jones, Diana Krall, Joni Mitchell, Tragically Hip); and Nettwerk Management CEO Terry McBride, whose fast-growing roster is topped by McLachlan, Avril Lavigne, Dido, Barenaked Ladies and Coldplay.

“There has been such an incredible amount of international success from such a small circle of managers,” exclaims Macklam, “that when you’re in the middle of it you can’t help but shake your head and go ‘wow, how did we get here?’”

Both Macklam and McBride emerged from the city’s early ‘80s alternative scene and they agree that long years of experience, of small victories and lessons learned, has bred success.

“You’ve got a group of people here who’ve stuck with it long enough to be in a position to make a real impact,” says McBride. In that statement he includes his own squad of responsible managers, among them Pierre Tremblay (BNL), Shauna Gold (Lavigne, Adrienne Pierce), Dave Holmes (Coldplay) and Jay Clark (Gob, Swollen Members). “We’ve built this team from within and now our hit ratio is getting better and better.”

Grammy night was particularly sweet for Feldman as both management and agency clients made repeated trips to the podium. “We’re at the pinnacle for the moment,” says the CEO of full-service entertainment agency S.L. Feldman & Associates. “This is a business about relationships and over 30 years we’ve developed enough good ones to make things happen for the amazing talent we represent.”

Bruce Allen, now putting his muscle behind Reprise/143 crooner and native Vancouverite Michael Bublé, believes the management pool will continue to grow. He doubts, however, that the city will ever develop a label and publishing infrastructure comparable to Toronto. “We don’t need it. We’re a significant talent centre operating in a world market, and that’s good enough.”

Beyond the big four managers, the other potential industry heavyweight is 604 Records, a Roadrunner/Island/Def Jam-financed label run by Nickelback frontman Chad Kroeger and the band’s lawyer Jonathan Simkin. Operating outside a high-pressure
A&R environment has given 604 an edge in scooping western Canadian acts like Theory of a Deadman, Sonic Bloom and Marianas Trench.

“Some reps keep their fingers on the pulse long-distance, but we’re able to establish relationships and act on the spur of the moment,” says Simkin. “Personally, I find there’s an air of desperation in most industry cities you don’t get here. I do my job more efficiently when I’m not in the thick of it.”

The label division of Nettwerk Productions remains the city’s leading imprint. Mint Records has moved into its second decade with such acts as Neko Case, The New Pornographers and, in a joint venture with 604 Records, moody Vancouver girl group The Organ. The jazz scene is centered on the Maximum Jazz label, original home for Verve Music Group/Blue Thumb fusion band Metalwood and now to be distributed nationally under a new pact with Universal Jazz.

The local club scene remains skewed to dance and DJ venues, though the return of the beloved Commodore Ballroom in 1999 after a three-year closure has again brought A-list touring acts to town. “It’s critical for local musicians to see bands like The Vines to get inspired and fired up,” says club buyer Jason Grant. “We definitely missed that excitement when this room was dark.”

West coast musicians rely heavily on the annual NewMusicWest festival (May 21-25) for national and international exposure. “All credit to the big managers here, but they’re so focused on an international level that they’re not all that aware of what’s happening on the street,” says festival director Frank Weipert. “We have an amazing plethora of unsigned, pre-mainstream artists that we shine the spotlight on.”

Weipert, Grant and other local observers rate Stabilo, Bottleneck, Mark Browning's Ox, P:ano, Three Inches of Blood, Alarm Bell, The Nasty On, Buttless Chaps, Kellerman Portfolio, The Gay, Wil and Streets as leading lights in the next wave of Vancouver talent.

For now the city’s powerbrokers are enjoying the rewards of their labor. “Everyone has stuck it out for the fabulous lifestyle, the climate, the fact you can walk your dogs on the beach and raise the kids in a great city,” says Janet York, VP of Film Music at S.L. Feldman & Associates. “That we’re also able to hold our own with any business centre in the world is a bonus.”

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Westworld Fall 2003
Getaway: Salt Spring Island

Home to 10,000 retirees, nouveau hippies, B&B operators and just plain folks who treasure a bucolic community life, Salt Spring is the largest and busiest of an otherwise sleepy chain of B.C. Gulf Islands. The island was settled in 1859 by a rainbow coalition of pioneers – Australian, English, Hawaiian, African Americans - seeking a fresh start in the furthest reaches of the British colonies. Most farmed 80-hectare tracts in Ganges, the island’s focal point then and now. Folksy and slow-paced until recently, the town has become increasingly urbane with the performing arts venue ArtSpring and a new wave of funky coffeeshops and bookstores. Traffic can be snarled at times, but locals proudly note there’s still no stoplight anywhere on Salt Spring.

To experience island life in the raw, hit the backroads, stopping at farmstands for honey, garlic and free-range eggs or dropping into a few of the 31 stops on this year’s tour of home studios and galleries. Every turn brings a fresh postcard view – a heron drifting over Trincomali Channel, a mythic white horse grazing in rolling hills, an exhausted squad of cyclists . Public footpaths abound, so ask for maps at the Chamber of Commerce and take a trail to Southey Point (at the island’s north end, curiously enough) or high above scenic Fulford Harbour on Reginald Hill.

The Hideaway

Your retreat begins as Tamar Griggs pulls up to the Burgoyne Bay wharf in her Silver Streak runabout. A breezy five-minute ride takes you to the dock at Salty’s Cabin, a rustic, architect-designed bolthole embraced by the blue waters of Sansum Narrows and 1040 hectares of provincial parkland. With a wave, Griggs roars off, disappearing from view as she heads for the main site of Bold Bluff Retreat’s 1940 lodge and garden cabin. As the sound of her motor fades, you’re left with your luggage and groceries, awestruck by the sensurround view and already lulled by the lap of high tide against the cabin’s foundations.

Utter solitude and a sweeping ocean perspective are fine reasons for a minimum two-night stay. Luxury is not on the menu, not when you shower in an outdoor stall (with hot water and a view of the cove) and utilize a compost toilet fuelled by lashings of peat moss. But for some of us the simple life is more rare and precious than any five-star resort. A generous deck allows one to watch the boats sail past, the kids sleep in bunk beds and a wood stove cuts the evening chill. Bring the doorstop novels, sure, but expect to spend hours gawking at the wildlife -- seals, kingfishers, eagles, jellyfish, otters and, if y ou’re lucky, pods of orcas.

$175-$235. Available April 1-Oct. 31. Toll-free 1-866-666-4377; www.boldbluff.com.

Salt Spring: Inside Track

Weekly highlight: Island-made food, crafts and artwork at the legendary Saturday market in Centennial Park, Ganges (until mid-October).

Don’t miss: The annual fall fair (Sept. 13-14), featuring sheepdog trials and a “hoof and woof” race pairing dogs with horses.

Best eats: House Piccolo rates highest for quality, while Moby’s remains top pub with a view.

People watching: Check out the parade of colourful locals while sipping first-rate java at the Salt Spring Roasting Co. or devouring ginger scones at Barb’s Buns, both on McPhillips Ave. in Ganges.

Soar with the eagles: Bump-bump-bump your way on the dirt road to the peak of Mount Maxwell, then ogle the see-forever views while hiking the cliffside trails.

Hidden gem: Easy to miss if you’re racing for the ferry, Fulford is a haven of unique shops (Jambalaya, The Phlying Phish) and galleries.

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Applaud! Magazine
Fall 2003

GGGARTH
The Richardson Family Tradition Continues

The idyllic view from the control room looks southwest over rolling hills to the choppy blue waters of the Georgia Straight. Deer and the occasional bear roam the 14-acre property, owls nest in the forest and a colony of bats take wing at dusk. Over at the band house, the guys from Buffalo, N.Y. band Level 4 pause from sessions for their Sony debut by watching a DVD on the 56” monitor.

Welcome to Plumper Mountain Sound, a newly constructed studio retreat on British Columbia’s Sunshine Coast just north of Vancouver. Open, airy and a few steps from his own home, it’s exactly what Garth Richardson has dreamed of after a quarter-century inside what he laughingly calls the “submarine” – the typical windowless and vacuum-sealed L.A. and Toronto recording studio in which he’s plied his trade as engineer and producer.

Like Vancouver’s best-known studio landmark, the now-defunct Little Mountain Sound, PMS (so named, in part, because Richardson has two daughters) is fated to be home to the hard rock hits.

Whereas Little Mountain was utilized by AC/DC, Aerosmith and Bon Jovi in the 1980s, PMS will be hosting the new generation of modern-rock and metal acts that look to Richardson for the crunch and live intensity for which he’s been famous since producing the first Rage Against the Machine album in 1993.

Noted for his ability to craft exceptional major-label debuts, Richardson (aka GGGarth, a nickname based on his stutter) has in the last two years helmed U.S. gold-certified albums for the Chicago brother act Chevelle (Epic/Sony), the Los Gatos, CA. quartet Trapt (Warner Bros.) and Peoria, Ill. rockers Mudvayne (Epic/Sony).

They join a vast list of credits that range from the Red Hot Chili Peppers and the Neville Brothers in his days as an up-and-coming engineer to producer gigs over the last decade with L7, Jesus Lizard, The Melvins (for which he won a Juno Award in 1997), Catherine Wheel and Ontario grrl-rockers Kittie.

Richardson accepts the typecasting as a hard rock specialist despite his work on such change-ups as Since When, 54.40’s ode to the analogue era, and the emo/power pop band Watashi Wa (not to mention early engineering credits for Jennifer Warnes and Mary Margaret O’Hara). “That’s just the way this industry works,” he says with a shrug. “You’re known for what you’re known for, and with me it’s Rage.”

And he’s perfectly happy to promote his rep as a benign taskmaster who can bring out the best in young bands. “There’s something magical about doing a band’s first record. I hate doing somebody’s third or fourth – they’re bitter, tired and tend to be writing the same record over and over. It’s very hard to teach an old dog new tricks.”

Richardson himself learnt his tricks from two of the best – his dad Jack Richardson and Bob Ezrin (Pink Floyd et al.). In a golden era at Toronto’s Nimbus 9 studio in the 1970s, they cut classic LPs for the Guess Who, Alice Cooper and Peter Gabriel, among others.

Young Garth was a fixture at the studio from age five onwards, earning pocket money as a teenager by doing janitorial work there. His first serious credit, as a pint-sized tape operator, was no less a classic than Bob Seger’s Night Moves (1976).

Oddly enough, he couldn’t find permanent work in the Toronto studio world because “everyone thought I was living off my dad’s reputation.” So he moved to L.A. and worked under mentors like producer Michael Wagner (Extreme, White Lion, Skid Row). After a dozen years in California, he and his family relocated to Vancouver in the mid-1990s for a few good reasons.

“I didn’t want to raise my kids amongst guns and violence,” he says. “And there was the fact that Bryan Adams had opened up a studio (The Warehouse) that is unlike anything else in Canada.”

Richardson continues to haunt The Warehouse, where he cut the Chevelle, Trapt and Mudvayne CDs, and another world-class Vancouver studio, The Armoury, to record drum tracks and do final mixes. But the guts of his sessions – rigorous rehearsals, which he insists on, and all overdubs – are now slated for Plumper Mountain Sound.

“It’s great that the commute to work takes two minutes,” he says. Being paid upfront for studio rentals doesn’t hurt either. “I still want (producer) points on albums, but the labels just aren’t making money these days and the back-end is increasingly no longer there.”

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JUNO AWARD PROGRAM
Profile of Terry McBride


“It’s a real honour, but I’m not ready for lawn bowling just yet,” says a deadpan Nettwerk Music Group CEO Terry McBride of the Walt Grealis Industry Builder Award. “I’m not retiring until I’m 50, so people are going to have to put up with me for at least seven more years.” He concludes that surprise announcement by laughing emphatically enough to prove he’s kidding. While McBride is among the youngest-ever recipients of the award, he’s likely only at the half-way point of a career that has seen him evolve from the archetypal indie label street urchin into one of the foremost artist managers and visionaries in the business.

If McBride was the sort to strategize a freedom-50 plan, he could have done so with impunity at the turn of the decade. Sarah McLachlan had finished the third of her Lilith Fair tours and was starting a family. Barenaked Ladies were likewise wrapping a four-year period of recording and touring that had made them a premier North American attraction. Instead McBride shifted into overdrive. First he steered Dido to international success, then oversaw the explosive growth of a management division that now represents, either directly or in co-management scenarios, no less than 50 artists and producers – Avril Lavigne, Coldplay, Sum 41, Our Lady Peace, Gob, Stereophonics and Chantal Kreviazuk included.

“We’ve just come through what should have been our driest period,” he explains, “and instead it’s been a hugely exciting one.” With a Lavigne tour to coordinate and new albums due this year from what he calls his three “heritage” clients – McLachlan, BNL and Dido – the pace won’t be slowing down anytime soon.

“Terry is, in my opinion, one of the world’s best managers for many reasons,” says McLachlan. “He has always shown complete devotion and passion for the business of developing and breaking an artist; he asks that you work very hard but certainly no harder than he himself works. He is kind and decent and loyal but can be the bulldog you need him to be when necessary. He’s in it for the long haul, for all the right reasons. There’s no one I’d rather have on my side.”

BNL’s Steven Page credits McBride with turning the band’s fortunes around. “Without Terry McBride, I would most likely be working in retail or be very, very drunk. He gave my band a second chance when nobody else thought we deserved it. He saw through the schtick and the lousy imaging and saw a really good band who were willing to work hard. He is a master of marketing and promotion, and has taught the entire music business more than it may even care to admit.”

Adds Page: “Every day, when I’m not cursing his name, I look around my house and silently thank Terry for helping me to find my audience. Silently, though, cause I would hate for him to get a swelled head over all of this.”

Born Dec. 4, 1959 in Vancouver, McBride is the second child of a homemaker mother and scientist father who worked for the federal government, then taught at the University of British Columbia. He was an introspective kid, silenced to some extent by a speech impediment. “December children are usually the smallest ones," he says. "I was the one that bullies always chased."

Music was his outlet and passion. He spent hours entranced by AM radio (Terry Jacks’ Seasons in the Sun was an early favorite) before developing a teenage obsession with U.K. punk and new wave. Work as a lifeguard and wedding DJ helped pay for four years of university, but the prospect of more years of study and an apprenticeship period soured him on plans to become a civil engineer.

McBride became part of Vancouver’s tight-knit alternative music scene of the early ‘80s while working at an import record store. “There were maybe 50 or 60 of us all told. We knew each other, we’d go to the Pointed Sticks shows and talk about Depeche Mode, New Order and Joy Division.” Mark Jowett and his band Moev hooked up with McBride, who served as their de facto manager while admitting today that he was making it up as he went along. Together they launched Nettwerk in 1984 to release the band’s first vinyl single. The rest is a distinctive slice of Canadian music history, one that continues to be written on label, publishing and management fronts from offices in Vancouver, Los Angeles, New York and London.

It was tough slogging for a decade. “There’s no legitimate school for this and we learnt from our mistakes. Nobody made any money. It was remarkable during the Sarah litigation trials (in the late ‘90s) when we looked back at the books and saw how little money was around. We probably could have gotten welfare if we weren’t working for ourselves.” To pay the rent, McBride held down a variety of odd jobs ranging from pizza delivery to gutting fish at a Steveston, B.C. processing plant.

Nettwerk survived the lean years, says McBride, “because we were stubborn. We were the outsiders back then. That gave us our identity. It happens every generation. The bands we were into like U2 weren’t getting commercial play. And you know what? My tastes haven’t changed. Radio has changed.” That some in the mainstream industry didn’t take Nettwerk seriously at the outset was fuel for the fire. “People were constantly saying, ‘You’re not going to make it, you’re going to fail.’ I wish now that I had my favorite Sum 41 salute to call upon: ‘See you later buddy.’ It was motivating in some ways, but really it just pissed me off and made me work harder.”

In time, McBride found a handful of industry mentors he could trust. Foremost are two men: EMI Records Canada president Deane Cameron, who facilitated the March, 1986 distribution deal that kept Nettwerk alive; and Roy Lott, the right-hand man to Clive Davis at Arista Records during McLachlan’s first decade with the label and now president and COO of Virgin Records in New York.

“Deane was the first person I dealt with from Toronto,” says McBride. “Above all he taught me about passion. And Roy definitely sharpened me on the business side and showed me how to be patient, how to get the ship out of the harbour first before you steam ahead.”

EMI’s Cameron recalls being thoroughly impressed with the energy and vision of the Nettwerk partnership triumvirate of McBride, Jowett and Ric Arboit. “They were always cautious and curious, ‘What are these major label people like? They’re easterners, so they must be evil!’ But when I met them I was an A&R guy and I believed and still believe in the same values as they do. I was fascinated to pass on whatever I knew about the mechanics of the business.”

While McBride cut his teeth as a manager with Moev, industrial-rock icon Skinny Puppy and the Grapes of Wrath, it was his tenacious grassroots development of McLachlan that finally paid dividends with her Fumbling Towards Ecstasy album in the mid-90s. “That was the first full success with how we were attacking the business – which was under the radar, one buyer at a time. People were going, ‘No way, that’s not possible’ when they heard about our sales. But if you sell 10,000 copies a week for 150 weeks, well it adds up.”

Touring drove the sales, but McBride also credits Nettwerk’s early forays into
new technologies with keeping the artist connected to her fans. Nettwerk established a primitive web site in November, 1993; two years later McLachlan’s The Freedom Sessions CD was the first enhanced disc from a major-label recording artist. “I was interested in technology from the time I was creating computer programs with punch cards at school,” says McBride. “Numbers and math are a second language to me.”

McBride also pioneered the strategic use of the hard data provided by SoundScan and Broadcast Data Systems, creating break-out regional successes for his acts. This kind of “micro-marketing” was “just common sense to us,” he says. “Whereas the majors were always looking for sales bumps of 300 or more units, we got excited at 15 units and would do our best to exploit it.”

The radar certainly took note of McLachlan as she launched Lilith Fair in 1997 and released Surfacing, which now has sold over 8 million units world-wide. With McBride as executive producer, the caravan clocked 12,327 miles over the course of 139 shows and struck a major blow for women artists previously denied much access to the festival circuit.

Expanding the management division has been McBride’s priority in recent years. “I basically manage the managers,” he says in reference to a team of responsible managers that includes Pierre Tremblay (BNL), Shauna Gold (Lavigne), Jay Clark (Gob, Swollen Members), Dave Holmes (Coldplay) and Coleen Novak (Kreviazuk). “It’s a matter of being available for these people, providing my advice and helping them through situations. We haven’t added a lot of managers here, it’s the same team, only the team is now nailing it consistently. Everyone has become very good at what they do.”

Stepping back from every artist save McLachlan (whom McBride continues to manage personally) has allowed him to develop a modicum of a private life after years of 80-hour weeks. He and his wife Cathy had their first child, Mira, a year ago. “I’m at my desk by 7 a.m. but I try to get home by 5 p.m. so I can spend some time with the family. After she’s in bed, I usually get back on the computer by 9 p.m., get my emails done and make some calls to the Asians and Australians.” Retirement? Lawn bowling? Not in this man’s immediate future.


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SONIC BLOOM
Biography/ 2002

Never mind the gardening analogies. Winnipeg five-piece Sonic Bloom selected its handle as a pun on the explosive noise aircraft make when crashing the sound barrier. "The name has been around since the first line-up of the band back in 1994," explains singer/lyricist Michael Allen Zirk. "Although it may not be the coolest or craziest name ever, it was the first one we rolled out that nobody laughed at." The sonic half of the equation delivers soaring contemporary hard rock laden with inventive twists, provocative lyrics and spoken-word grooves. As for the bloom, it could well be the mushroom cloud of airplay and interest generated by their independently released CD Hurry and its first-strike single Neopolitan.

Sonic Bloom co-founders Zirk (aka MAZ) and Steven Kray (percussion) first hooked up in Winnipeg at the height of grunge 11 years ago . After working in cover bands on the bar circuit, they formed Sonic Bloom in a trio format with Zirk handling bass. Two years later Zirk’s younger brother Fish steps in to fill the guitarist slot as the band went through its early growing pains. Eager to focus on his singing, Zirk pushed hard in 1999 to recruit bassist Phil Robinson; the Rush disciple with a five-string bass immediately made "a night and day difference," says Kray, in terms of the band’s cohesion, songwriting and newly heavied-up sound.

This quartet wrote and recorded Hurry with their Juno-nominated co-producer Brandon Friesen last year. Long-time cohort Phil Cholosky has recently stepped in as a fifth member to fill out the live sound as a second guitarist now that Sonic Bloom is moving onto bigger stages with the likes of Default. Cholosky, like everyone else in a thoroughly democratic band, will be contributing on a creative level in the future.

The seven songs on Hurry were originally meant to be shopped as professionally produced demos. Each was selected because it was a proven crowd favorite from the band’s steady gigging at home turf venues like Crowbar, The Zoo and the Pyramid Club. Once a decision was made to release the demos as a CD, the tracks were fused with clips from various movies near and dear to the band’s heart (i.e. Planet of the Apes, The Godfather, Part 2 ) and excerpts from a bantering interview helmed by Winnipeg campus radio DJ Sarah Stasiuk.

"The idea for the inserts came from an old NWA album I owned," explains Kray. "A lot of rap and hip-hop acts do it, Eminem does it, but you never hear it on a rock album. So we thought, ‘Why the hell not?’" It’s Kray, in fact, who delivers many of the jokingly wiseass remarks on the album, not least the amusing broadsides at classic rock in general and Canadian rock institution Trooper in particular.

Sonic Bloom’s overall sound is heavy melodic rock with a progressive bent, but nobody in the band is keen to pigeonhole themselves more precisely than that. "We’re so close to the songs that we don’t know where they fit," explains Fish, an Eddie Van Halen/Nuno Bettencourt wannabe as a kid who learned (in part from his high-school pal Cholosky) that playing "60,000 notes a minute" was secondary to disciplined team play and the dictates of each song. Adds Robinson: "The guitar players provide so much atmosphere while Steven and I are as tight a rhythm section as you can get."

Neither is Zirk one to analyze his lyrics too closely. "In a larger sense most of the songs are probably down to the fact that I’m getting older and still want to be a rock star," says the 33 year-old. Definitely he has a knack for edgy narratives laced with humor and film-noir menace. Forbidden Planet takes us on a hot-wired voyage to Venus as a metaphor for the band’s long-standing policy of going for it when faced with "go long or go home" career moments. James Spader is an anthemic set-closer with a jazzy opening section (to mimic the actor’s sleepy approach to even the most aggressive of roles) and a popular (in the live show) shout-along chorus written in seconds flat. ("Gord Downie’s a champion of this sort of crazy thing," says Zirk in open admiration of the Tragically Hip frontman). Bum Rush The Motorcade (the one lyric written by Kray, a Public Enemy fan) was penned circa the Oklahoma bombing and is a ferocious response to the "reptile tears" then-President Clinton shed over the tragedy.

It’s Neopolitan, however, that has given Sonic Bloom that vital first exposure to a widespread audience. The cut sparked radio interest in the spring of 2002 following a riveting showcase at Canadian Music Week in Toronto that caught the A&R community completely off guard. Spearheaded in part by hometown believers at POWER 97, the song has evolved into a national hit with solid airplay across the country.

The song’s title came first. "I was hanging out with Phil one day and we were looking at some diet shakes," says Zirk. "We found it odd that a beverage would have a Neapolitan flavor, so we decided right there that this would be the title of the next song we wrote together." The resultant tune is a tongue-in-cheek fantasy that resonates with anyone who’s been demoted, downsized or sent to the minors. The song’s protagonist himself identifies with Burt Ward, the actor who played second fiddle to Adam West as Robin, the Boy Wonder, on the Batman television series.

Fittingly given its theme, Neopolitan was always the "underdog" song in Sonic Bloom’s repertoire, explains Kray. "It was written originally in a weird time signature that Michael couldn’t really rap to. We almost shelved it at least ten times and finally recorded it really cheaply. And now here it is playing in between songs that have cost a couple of hundred grand each to record."

Zirk’s vocals are key to the band’s distinctiveness. He’s confident enough as a singer to throw "caution to the peasants" (to quote a line from Forbidden Planet) and do what comes naturally. "In any one song I figure it’s okay to sing, rap, scream, sing falsetto or slow it down to spoken word," he says. "In the same way it’s fair game to talk about Robert Downey’s nipples (during the closing rap on James Spader) or whatever."

Despite the years of rehearsals, songwriting blitzes and hometown shows, these are still early days for Sonic Bloom. Band members continue to finance the dream with day jobs, but the impact of Neopolitan’s success has raised the stakes. "We have people turning out at shows now that we don’t recognize," says Kray with a laugh. "We were going ‘who are these people?’ before it dawned on us that they were actual fans. That people appreciate and respect what we’re doing is just the coolest thing."


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