The Bands #

Before I get into my first band that I put together I need to talk about a very special second cousin that I was very close to. His mother was my Dad’s first cousin and we used to visit them a lot and they would visit us a lot. We would also meet up on vacation like Banff, Jasper, and Revelstoke. These vacations always seem to be close to Sulfur hot springs. We did all sorts of things together with this cousin. I did think of him as a best friend and wanted to include him in everything that I did. He was a trumpet player and was also taking Organ lessons. His family had an Organ setup in the living room and I remember the two of us playing together on it.

I was probably about 14 or 15 when I put my first band together which consisted of a couple of cousins that lived in Barrhead. I taught one of these cousins how to play guitar so that we could have two guitars and his sister played the piano. My brother sang and put the least amount of time and practice into this small band that I put together. When we first started to perform, we never had a name so they started referring to it as my brother’s band. This ticked off my cousins more than me, but I was not happy with that choice either because of the little effort that he made with the band but he was the singer.

Now, I am going to bounce back and forth here a bit to try and give some context on how things unfolded. I remember when we were at my second cousin’s house a few times when we were listening to Herb Albert and the Tijuana Brass. For young teenage boys, this was cool stuff and had the elements of what would now be thought of as a stage band. I liked the sound of a rhythm section backing up a brass section. My cousin gravitated to the brass and I to the guitars, bass, and keyboards.

One Thanksgiving weekend my band was scheduled to play during an afternoon Thanksgiving service. Every Thanksgiving our church hosted a Thanksgiving Dinner right after the morning service which then went to an afternoon service. My second cousin and his family were also going to be there so I talked him into bringing his trumpet so we could add that to the band. I think that was the first time that I added the brass element to my band and this was the start. The jazz and blues influences all came later but I think we can say that this is where those seeds were planted.

When I was 16 I was asked by the Gladtones, an adult singing group in our church to join them. I started out playing both guitar and saxophone on some numbers. It seemed that every year they would have to regroup because people were leaving and moving on to other things. In that first iteration, I was playing an electric guitar from one of the other members of the band, Jerry who usually played bass. Jerry was a couple of years older than me, so he would have been in his last year of high school. I think it was a Rickenbacker of his that I played, it was cool. At that time did not have my own guitar I was still playing those acoustic guitars that I found at home. After Jerry left because he finished High School and was moving to Edmonton, I had to get my own Guitar. It was Jerry who also told me about a music school that had just started up that year in Edmonton at Grant MacEwan Community College. Years later I went there but more on that later.

While playing with the Gladtones I also played in my band and kept it going. However, my band only played in and around Barrhead and usually shared the same stage as the Gladtones so I would jump back and forth between the two. I was young and it was fun and more and more of the music that my band was playing was my original music. The Gladtones was all cover music from other gospel bands and they worked very hard to nail the arrangements very similar to the artists that they were copying.