Songwriters Class reunion

           

            While getting ready to leave for the Tranzac on the Monday night of June 27^th, I could see big beautiful clouds dyed red by the sunset, but the colour was gone by the time I was en route.

When I arrived in the Southern Cross bar, the monthly event of “Chris Banks and Friends” was going on. This time Chris and his double bass were generating gravity for a piano player named Ryan Driver and a drummer as they performed “The End of A Love Affair” by Edward Redding. The drummer was using those soft tipped percussion mallets that look like giant q-tips, but he dropped one and switched to brushes in mid-song.

After Chris and his friends were finished with one more song, some of the open stage performers arrived.
            Robert Labell and Isaac Bonk were sitting together and discussing Bob Dylan. Isaac commented that one of the great things about Dylan was that when he wrote protest songs he never really indicated which side he was on. I’m pretty sure that’s not entirely true. Sometimes it’s subtle, but one can tell where Dylan stands on the issue about which he is singing.

There was also some discussion of Bob Dylan’s voice, and they both seemed to agree that he doesn’t have a great voice. I interjected that on Dylan’s first album he did some amazing singing and he has some of the best phrasing in the business. Robert and Isaac looked up at me briefly, but then returned to their contained conversation.

Robert told Isaac that he and his wife have an understanding that he won’t play any Bob Dylan when she’s around and she won’t play any Bob Marley when he’s in the room. He said that she couldn’t understand why someone couldn’t like reggae music. He told her that there’s a simple explanation: “It’s garbage!”

A guy I’d never seen before came up to me while I was tuning my guitar and tried to engage me in a conversation about how much fun it is to make music. I told him that I didn’t always find it enjoyable to play in front of other musicians.

Yawd Silvester was the host this time around, and he started the night off at the piano with one of his own songs – “Waiting at the top of your roller coaster, the train is set to roll with me inside … Remind me how to spell quarantine … fifty times I left you and fifty times I stayed …”

The first name on the list was Steven Lewis, but Robert said that Steven had called him to say he was “out of action”. It must have taken all his strength to telekinetically put his name on the list from several kilometres away and then he didn’t have the energy left over to travel to the Tranzac.

That meant that Robert Labell would be the first performer. 

My friend Cad arrived just as Robert was getting ready to play.

Robert started with a cover of Bruce Cockburn’s “Mama Just Wants To Barrelhouse All Night Long” – “I was up the road on easy street watching everybody stand around and cheat, Man comes up and says move along, back to the corner where you belong … I hear the city singing like a siren choir, some fool tried to set this town on fire, TV preacher cries, come on along, I feel like Fay Wray face to face with King Kong, but mama just wants to barrelhouse all night long …”

Cad asked what “barrelhouse” means. Robert suggested that it just means to have a good time. I think it relates to the kind of dancing that was done to the kind of music that was played in barrelhouses.

Robert told us that his next piece involved a lot of percussion, even though his wife tells him that he should stop hitting his guitar because “it looks really stupid”.

Robert took quite a bit of time to change the tuning before playing the instrumental composition, “Tribes”. He didn’t say who wrote it. I’ve heard Robert play this song on at least one prior occasion. As he said, it involves lots of hitting of both the body and the neck of the guitar. It’s actually a pretty impressive piece.

I was next, and began with one of my translations. I explained that the music for the song was written by a Nigerian drummer named Babatunde Obatunji, but that Serge Gainsbourg had taken the melody and turned it into a French song, which I’ve turned into an English song. I said that the geographical setting of Gainsbourg’s song didn’t make any sense because he’d set it in Louisiana, yet there were references to elephants and bananas. I decided in my English adaptation to take my lyrics back to the music’s country of origin – “Joanna is as large as an elephant, she is the biggest woman in Nigeria, oh yeah but Joanna, Joanna, Joanna, she sure can dance lightly, lightly …”

That went over well, especially with the guys at the bar, the most enthusiastic of whom was the guy that had spoken to me earlier about how great it is to play music.

I followed this with my own” Seven Shades of Blues” – “Freedom loving children, virgins to the thrust, that rips the hole in innocence, and frees the fire of lust, to temper the foundation, of a higher innocence, and raise the boundaries up above, for the diamond’s just ascent …”

After me came Isaac Bonk, beginning with one of his Dylanesque songs – “I saw one day the rook and the pawn, it’s for them I’ll sing on … As we stormed the shores of old Galilee … kill, they said … All the papers say … fighting for a cause … but no man should die for another man’s life …”

Isaac’s second song was the one he wrote about the mother that walked out on her husband and son, and then when the boy turned 21 the father gave the boy a gun with which he shot down his mother.

Then it was time for No MSG’s set. He started singing, “Dababadapa …” before he began to play, but when he first hit the piano keys, they were the wrong notes. Then he started to softly play something entirely different, giving commentary as he went along, “I didn’t know that was gonna happen, so that’s kinda nice! Maybe I’ll play on the black keys now!” What he played on the black keys was similar to before. Then, “So maybe …” He began to play a little more forcefully. “That’s cheating!” Hits another chord and declares, “Now that’s really cheating!” Another chord. “That’s not cheating as much!” He began to play more percussively, with less of a melody, until he called out, “I’m lost! I don’t know where I am! Ha ha ha ha!”

Cad said to me, “He’s at the Tranzac!”

No MSG played a little longer and finally said, “Okay, I know where I am. No Freudian slips!” and that was the end of his set.

Next up was Steve Coven, who was the enthusiastic guy who’d spoken to me earlier. He also went to the piano, and also improvised, but much faster than No MSG.

His second offering was another instrumental piece with lots of cascading runs up and down the keyboard.

Yawd looked at the list and called for “Cam”, but the person wasn’t there. So then he called Matt Gaylin.

Matt’s first song was called “Belief” – “ … Trying to figure out if I can see your mind …”

His second choice was a cover of “Good To You” by Marianas Trench, but first he wanted the monitors turned down. Yawd commented that that was an unusual request, since performers tend to want them turned up – “Everyone’s around, no words are coming now … I thought I saw a sign somewhere between the lines … Maybe I only see what I want … Just got caught between someone I’ve just invented, who I really am and who I’ve become …”

Following Matt was Joy, who, in a fake British accent requested that the monitors go back up to the same channel as before. I said to Matt, “Not the same Matt channel, but the same Bat channel!”

Joy began with her signature song, “Cheap Bottle of Wine”, which is about how she likes a cheap bottle of wind and to share it while talking about life with her girlfriends.

Her second song was called “You and Me” and she asked the audience to participate. Whenever she began the chorus with “You and me” the response was “Alright!”

Next was Lisa, who started with Anthony Dekker’s “Your Rocky Spine” – “I was lost in the lakes and the shapes that your body makes … Falling over your rocky spine, the glaciers made you and now you’re mine … I was moving across your frozen veneer, the sky was dark but you were clear … With your soft fingers between my claws like purity against resolve … The wind blows a venomous rage through your hair.”

I think that Lisa’s second choice was an original – “ … If this is love, why can’t you say you love me …”

After Lisa came Signe Miranda, who is friends with Joy and Lisa, though they hadn’t seen each other for a long time.

When Signe started singing, her voice suddenly transformed into a thick southern U.S. accent that almost sounded like a parody, even though the song was serious. Her song was entitled, “Did You Break Your Own Heart When You Broke Mine?” and it was lyrically very reminiscent of the Hank Williams song “You Broke Your Own Heart”.

Signe introduced her second composition by telling us that she wrote it while taking a seminar with the Coalition Music Artists Entrepreneurs program, in which participants were given one hour to write a song – “When you come round you always bring me down … Get up the nerve to call you but my heart won’t follow through … Chasing you down is making me tired …”

The last performer of the night was Joel, who played on the Tranzac open stage with a band and solo a few times the year before.

From Joel’s first song – “ … Desperate and yearning, your best effort is turning to ash on the cigarette tray you haven’t washed since you went away … Don’t sing no love songs until the love is gone …”

From Joel’s last song – “ … I see the freckles on your nose through the mailroom window, you’re a Bay Street beauty and a King Street cutey and I got a package for you …”

Joel’s set went over especially well with Joy, Lisa and Signe. It seemed that they and Matt all knew each other from having taken the same song writing course together.

When Matt left, he said to Joy, “I’m on Facebook!” and Joy joked that “I’m on Facebook!” is the new “Bye!”