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An Interview
with Jerry Holland - Cape Breton musician &
composer
October 21,
2000
My father was a real nice
fiddler. He wasn't a flash fiddler, but he was the type of
ear player who was taught that if you were to learn a tune
you were to learn it note by note--the way the person played
it. He would go through great pains to learn it just that
way. I guess a tune would mature to some extent over time.
Sometimes it could be a short period; sometimes it would be
a long period. But it would settle in, and he would get
comfortable with it, and usually if he was comfortable with
it, everyone else enjoyed it. He was a nice
player.
When I was born--I was the
first of his children--he wanted to pass something down. I
think he hadn't played for a period of nine years. He
started playing again. I guess, as he said, I took the torch
and ran with it from there. He went to great pains to see
that I got a start at it and learned what he thought and
felt were the basic rules. He certainly gave me my start. I
don't know if I'd have the patience to do all of what he
did. He was quite a guy.
When he started again, it
was mainly house playing. Before that, as a young person, he
played dances in the New Brunswick area, as well as Boston.
He went to places like the Greenville Café in the
Boston area, where a lot of the greats gathered. He played
with different accompanists. I don't know if they were so
much paying gigs, but they were places where you could sit
down and play a session. It was great. He had his own little
niche.
I guess one of his
earliest influences was Michael Coleman--the Irish style of
playing. And I think the next recording that he had heard
was Alex Gillis--the Inverness Serenaders. There was Angus
Chisholm and then Winston Fitzgerald. His attention went
from the Irish music directly to the Cape Breton style of
music. He was fascinated with the amount of ornamentation
and how clean, how confident, the music sounded. He loved
it; he thought it was his final love. And I wasn't to be
exposed to anything but that music--that was his view of
it.
We were living in
Brockton, Massachusetts then. They didn't have a clue what
Cape Breton music was. Cape Bretoners came to the Boston
area for different reasons, whether it was work or whatever.
But they had different clubs and party sessions, and they
were kind of a close-knit group. The area that I was brought
up in was Ukrainian and Italian. And to have been the style
of fiddler that I was then, well, it wasn't understood. When
I was in school, I told very few. First off, they wouldn't
understand that. And the ones that I did tell--well, I
learned to box real good! No, there wasn't a great
understanding of that particular type of tradition.
I guess at that point it
was a hobby. It certainly was a part of my home life. But my
life away from home, as far as being social with kids my own
age, and that sort of stuff--my music wasn't a part of that
at all.
When I started playing out
of the house, because they were non-alcoholic places that
were going, and because of the oddity of a young person the
age that I was, there were some exceptions made and things
overlooked. So a fellow was able to get in and, if nothing
else, hear what was taking place, hear some of the
performers who offered another version to the tradition and
so on. Dances such as Bill Lamey's dances at the Orange
Hall, as a for-instance, and Rose Croix Hall in
Roxbury--those were wonderful. Those were the building
blocks that I started out with. There was another place that
was owned by Tom Slaven--it was known as Slaven's. That was
in South Huntingdon Avenue in the Jamaica Plain-South Boston
area, just close to Brighton. I played guitar for Angus
Chisholm there for two-and-a-half years on Sunday
nights.
When it came to focusing
on Cape Breton, my father pretty well had that decision made
for me. I had interests in country music. I don't think I
ever would have made a singer only because the encouragement
wasn't there. But I enjoyed people like Merle Haggard and
Buck Owens and all that sort of thing. George Jones. I would
have a little transistor radio under my pillow--if I was
caught listening to it, I'd be chastised, as it were. "What
are you listening to that crap for?" It wasn't the thing to
do around home.
I did talent shows, from
the time I was maybe six years old, with my father. I'd
dance, and around the age of nine or ten I started dancing
and playing at the same time. There were some talent shows
that were done on television. I did quite a few of them in
the Boston area.
I also did the Ted Mack
Amateur Hour. I think the first year I did it I was thirteen
or fourteen. Then I did it the following year. Then the show
got pulled. I think I had the possibility, according to what
they said, of going up the ladder from there. I can't
remember what the actual offer was, but there was an offer,
a "your first kind of big break kind of thing," and my
father wouldn't let me go through with it. He figured if you
do that you're not going to get an education. And, you know,
sometimes when you don't answer the knock of opportunity, it
doesn't come back. I've been real fortunate, although in a
lot of ways maybe I didn't develop it as much as I could
have, or should have, later on in my early years--when I was
18, 19, years old. The John Allan Cameron shows--that
opportunity knocked, and we did almost three years of
television across Canada, which was wonderful.
That was with the Cape
Breton Symphony. I got quite an education from that whole
experience. It was an experience you can't buy. On top of
that, I got to play with my heroes. And as immature as my
talent was, I think my eagerness to learn and be part of it,
and to work at carrying my own load--that made up for the
difference with these old salts at it. You know what I
mean--the fellows that had done it all their lives and knew
all the stuff. They took some time, and they were real good
in helping a young fellow get off the ground with it. I
tried to pay them back with the interest and effort that I
put in it. It was quite an experience.
Winston Fitzgerald, Angus
Chisholm, and there was Joe Cormier, Wilfred Gillis, John
Donald Cameron. What it boiled down to, in the final aspect
of it, was Winston, John Donald, Wilfred Gillis, and myself.
After that, after I left that situation, they had many
different fiddlers as well.
I still lived in the
Boston area for most of that. I think that during the last
part of the series of shows I made my move here to Cape
Breton. It was something that I had made up my mind that I
was going to do at the age of 14. I figured I was going to
be here some day, no matter what it takes. And on my 21st
birthday I was waiting for my furniture to land; it was to
land there that day, the 23rd of February. I had bought the
house, or put a deposit on it in November of the previous
year--that was 1975. And I had got there the 21st, I think,
of February, and the furniture landed the 23rd, my birthday.
It was real neat. That was in Cape LeMoine.
I'd been coming here
before that, with my family. The initial trips were with
family friends, the Gillises . His name was Angus Gillis--he
was a fiddler as well as a stepdancer, a well-known
stepdancer in the Boston area during the period of time that
I was there, and before, I'm sure. I followed them down on a
summer vacation--1961 was the first year. The Cabot Trail
wasn't completely paved at that time.
That instigated another
trip the following year. I think for the most part it was
every other year, and it got to be an every-year thing up
until 1969. In '69 we were all ready to go; the day before
we were ready to leave, we went down the beach and I stepped
on a bottle in the water and got something like 14 or 15
stitches in my foot. And that kind of put a kibosh to the
trip for my father, as far as he viewed it. If I couldn't
dance, what was the sense of going? I had different views,
but . . .
The following year I came
down with them, and I really wanted to stay. There were
thoughts that there was a possibility of going to trade
school here. We tried, but it didn't work out. It could
have, but we didn't have enough time to follow through.
Anyway, it was shortly after that that the shows came along,
and I had made a couple of trips in between that, coming
down to see friends. Angus Gillis had eventually moved here.
I think it was in '72, and I would come down and see him,
and stay with them, and his wife, Josephine. And I'd get a
chance to get around to the different dances. My father had
bought a couple of places over the years in Cape Breton,
when he lived in Boston. It was kind of a temporary place to
come, as far as the way he viewed it. I'd seen that it was a
place to come. You were getting fresh air, considerably less
intimidation in comparison to what the city offered, and the
list goes on.
I guess the easiest way,
and the shortest way to say what it takes to live here--I
said to a friend of mine, I said, "Look, man--you have no
idea how much it costs to be this poor." If I chose to live
anywhere else I could most likely do so much better. But I
love the area here, I love my friends here.
It's a day-to-day
struggle. It's an incredible struggle. I'm a carpenter by
trade. I do cabinets. I've done mechanic work. You have to
turn your hand to some of that stuff--you wear many
different hats in the run of a year in order to pay the
bills and that sort of thing. It seems like there's always
periods of time through the year that you have to take your
lesson book out and chew on water. You know, things are
pretty lean. I haven't developed what maybe is possible as
far as a music career for myself.
A lot of that's because
I'm here. To get anywhere else from here is a considerable
cost. I've thought about leaving at different times, but it
wouldn't do any good. It wouldn't do me justice, and it
wouldn't do my career justice. It just wouldn't work out.
I've got a son here who I love dearly. He's my best friend.
I'll hang around until he's out on his own and takes some
direction in life, and when that happens and Dad is not so
important, and he's got his own family to deal with, well,
that will maybe be a different story.
I started working at the
age of fourteen. I wanted to work. It gave me an
independence, dollar-wise. It was great. It was wonderful.
In Brockton, I was in a school program where I worked half a
day and went to school half a day. I worked in a tire store
as a mechanic's apprentice and tire jockey, that kind of
thing, for about two and a half years. And during that same
period when there wasn't work there I could make good money
at the trade of vinyl and aluminum siding. There were
friends of mine and my father's who, if I had any idle
minutes at all, they taught me the trade, and there was all
kinds of work, whenever I wanted it.
It was quite a move. As I
said, I was here at the age of 21. I did everything from
work in little coffee shops, in some cases as a second job
and a third job. As a young fellow I could go on three and
four hours sleep. And I was just wired for sound; I was
ready to go, you know, as it were. I didn't have anything to
do with drink, or the smoking-up business, or any of that
kind of aspect, so I had all kinds of energy and all kinds
of drive to make a buck. I had a hobby of street cars--hot
rods, that sort of thing. Buy them, sell them, race them.
I'd build them. I did all that kind of thing, and on a
shoestring basis as well. It wasn't anything that was
elaborate. It was just something different. It was a hobby
that I enjoyed.
Now, in coming here, even
the very basics of making the adjustment took over a year. I
was a light sleeper, and it took a very short period of time
to rejuvenate the batteries as it were. In the Boston area,
when I couldn't sleep I'd go down to the coffee shop. You
could sit there and talk to the cabbies or whatever, sit
there for an hour, until you were tired enough to go back
home and go to bed. But in Cape Breton they rolled up the
sidewalks at 7 o'clock--where there were sidewalks. It was
incredible. I'm a smoker. If you ran out of cigarettes at 11
o'clock at night, you were in serious trouble, unless you
could get to sleep. Because gas was cheap, and I had a
couple of dollars--you'd have that craving and be that
wired, and you'd want to have something to do. I would go as
far as Port Hawkesbury--50, 60, 70 miles for a drive for a
pack of cigarettes. I've come to Sydney for cigarettes in
the middle of the night. I mean it was ridiculous. It was
more an excuse to get out and drive. Once you get to a spot,
you get a chance to meet people as well. I say you'd come
for a pack of cigarettes but you'd stand around and talk and
maybe visit at the same time, depending on the time of
night. There were all kinds of excuses to get out to
drive.
The actual transition did
take over a year. The situation in the city, as you can
appreciate, was if one store didn't have it, you'd go to the
next store. Here, there was only the one store. If they
didn't have it, it would take two weeks to order it. And the
idea of having to order something wasn't in my
understanding, coming from where I came from. To deal with
that kind of thing when you needed something or figured that
you should have something right then and there, and being
used to going and having that kind of stuff available to
you--it was quite a shock, a hell of a culture shock. There
were a lot of things that made up the difference, things
that were real neat about it. But there was some stuff that
was really tough
The music scene was quite
hot at that time. It was really good for me, especially
where I was considered as a television personality,
celebrity or whatever. I really didn't take advantage of
what I could have, and should have, done. I looked at it as
a hobby. I would have liked to have had a career, an active
career, I should say, in music, but I never looked at it
that way. I didn't think it was there for me. And I guess
there was a period of time that it didn't exist for Cape
Breton music in general, the semi-stardom, or whatever. The
shows were great, but there was no great follow-up to it. I
guess I didn't do anything then to help that along either. I
was maybe 22, 23, 24 years old, and I lived a very modest
life, and to some extent still do. As I say, there's periods
of the year that you take out your lesson book and chew on
water.
The music at that time was
really good. There were all kinds of dances, year round and
Saturday afternoon matinee-type things that you could go to
play. The Knights of Columbus in the Cheticamp area was
really a hot place to go. It was nothing to see 100, 150,
200 people in there. The Doryman took it over. For a period
of time there were two and three places going. It was
wonderful. The evening dances, the square dances--I played
dances in the Cheticamp area for years. Some of it was
fiddle music as well as a country crossover kind of thing
for round dancing in between times that you'd have square
dances. But from the mid-70s to the early 80s, that stuff
died out. The extreme interest in it died out. I find
there's a certain age of people that missed out a lot
because of the drinking laws. They weren't allowed in where
there was drinking, and what dances always had survived with
no alcohol died off because the interest was to be able to
go to a dance where there was alcohol. So, there's a lot of
our young people here that don't have the experience of
being able to go to a dance and take part in the square
dancing. That's too bad because, you know it was just the
opposite way before that, and there's a gap there of people
who don't have an understanding of what this stuff is and
what kind of fun you can have from it. There's not many
dances left that run year-round. The only one I can think of
off the top of my head would be West Mabou. That's a sin.
There were so many, and we're down to one now. That's just
heart-breaking.
I've started a session
here in the North Sydney area on Thursday nights. It's more
on the idea of an Irish session, where you sit in and
everybody sits and plays at one time, versus individuals.
It's a nice time; it's a meeting place for everybody. For
folks here in the area, if they have company and they want
to entertain, they can take them there for a meal and listen
to music. It's a good place to go and practice. It's a good
place to try out new tunes. For me, being a composer, it's
"Hey guys, what do you think of this? Do you think this
works?" It's a good place to meet new fiddlers and musicians
of all kinds. We've had people from Texas. We've had them
from the southern states. We've had them from overseas
there. And the thing's only been going a year.
There's so many Irish
tunes that are in the Cape Breton repertoire here, that are
not so much played with the Irish embellishments which
defines the styling. I think if you were to take the Irish
tunes out of the Cape Breton repertoire you'd have a pretty
bare-looking skeleton. You'd be taking at least a minimum 35
to 45 percent of the tunes away. You'd be taking the biggest
part of the jigs away from here, and a lot of the reels.
Again, people like Angus Chisholm and Winston Fitzgerald,
who were very influential to the music of today, looked and
learned tunes from, say, the Coleman era, and Morrison, and
McGuire. They heard their recordings here, as well as away.
I'm talking 78 rpm recordings. Of course they were available
here. And they adapted them to their own style and
techniques.
So, I'd say Cape Breton
music in general is a stew pot, in a sense--there's no one
music that stays exactly the same, as least that I'm aware
of, as far as traditions go. It all will evolve. It will all
grow. As my father said, "Look--you don't have to like every
fiddler you ever see, but there's something you can learn
from every fiddler you see and hear. And take the best of
what they have to offer and develop it."
I guess my own style, in
just a very few words, went from quite clean to quite ornate
over the years. The television shows, as a for-instance,
being maybe the biggest influence in my playing, demanded a
cleanliness, and I also looked for a confident sound, a
relaxed sound, as well. The more I've learned and
experienced, I've added considerably more
ornamentation--drones (as I say to some of my students,
groans). The pipes were quite influential in this music, as
you can imagine or appreciate. Simulation of that type of
sound is acquirable as a form of coloration to the music.
There's ornamentation that's out of this particular
tradition, such as in the Irish tradition, that's usable and
that does get used in this kind of music, and was used long
before I came along. There's a few diehards that don't want
to admit that, but there's still documentary proof such as
old wire recordings, cylinder recordings, as well as tape
recordings, and obviously the disks--78s and so on--of our
own players from Cape Breton here applying some of the Irish
techniques.
There's quite a bit of
coloration that I've added, depending on the setting that
I'll play in. If you're playing for a dance, there's only so
much coloration, because of the amount of accompaniment that
you may have. I choose to have one, no more than maybe two,
accompanists that know each other's stylings real well, to
where there isn't a chord clash, to take my attention away
from what I'm doing. I really like to have a rock solid kind
of accompaniment to add to my playing, and I like to be able
to count on that so I can put everything, my full undivided
attention, into playing. I think, in a lot of ways, that's
why I often go with one accompanist versus two. In playing
with two, you don't have to play with as much coloration, or
I feel you don't have to play with as much coloration.
You've got to let them breathe and have their spot, too. And
they'll shine. With one accompanist, you look to thicken it
up a little bit more.
So there's quite a wide
range of coloration that can be used, and I do use. It's
selected, as it were, to portray different eras of style,
even in some case just plain emotions. For the uneducated
ear some of the stuff that sounds like it's sloppy playing,
so I'll look to play something that's considerably cleaner
to show that there's a considerable contrast.
My concerts are kind of a
teaching session, indirectly, to educate my audience in a
place that I haven't been before. I think that's more fair
to them, and it's more fair in their having an understanding
what my abilities are. It's quite thought out, and I have a
great interest in it. I have a great respect for what the
music is and was. And being an influential person in this
particular styling of music, in Cape Breton, I feel a
responsibility to help direct it in a very careful kind of a
fashion.
I'm a very simple person.
I haven't got time to put on airs for anybody. I'm just me,
and I don't change if you meet me at the grocery store or if
you meet me at the airport or in under the car, you know?
I'm the same person, and I won't try to let on I'm anybody
but myself.
I believe there's a thing
out there--that people play for the wrong reasons. I spoke
of that last night until 2 o'clock with friends of my son. I
said, "Look, what I think is the heart of this stuff is that
you play to please yourself, and what pay you get back from
that is what the response is from other people that appear
to enjoy it or get enjoyment from it." I said, "That kind of
response you can't buy; you can't pay for it. And you can't
put a value on it for what it does for you." There's people
that have and do make a business of it and play specifically
for that one reason. In some cases you can immediately hear
it in their music. In other cases, you'll eventually hear it
in their music.
There are a lot of
different influences in our music here today. I suppose
there's got to be room for growth, but I think it's growing
at a rate, with such different influences, that it's getting
distorted. That scares me, because I see a lot of the young
people that are hearing what I consider as somewhat
distorted music today and thinking that that's the way it
should sound. And that's where they're starting out--that's
their starting point. There's a lot missing in their having
an understanding of what the music actually was and where it
started, how it evolved. I think a lot of parents are
looking for their children to be the next superstar.
The point that I'm getting
at is that they're playing for the wrong reasons. And
there's a lot of immature fiddlers out there, ability-wise,
who have been viewed as wonderful. People say, "Aren't they
wonderful for their age" and all this sort of thing. Well,
once they start believing that, which some of them do, the
learning process stops. The growth process stops. And some
expect to get the same kind of response when they're 19 or
20, but they haven't grown since they were 12 years old or
something like that, as far as their abilities. All of a
sudden it's an awful shock to them.
One fellow made kind of a
crude comment, but it was funny. He said, "My God. I think
that fellow's father must keep a cement block on his head,"
he said, "to keep him small." That's awful. But you hear all
kinds of things, and I haven't got time to comment on a lot
of that kind of stuff. But I will say that it does scare me
to see this evolve at the rate of speed that it is, without
any real thought going into it. A lot of it is to broaden
the appeal of a show out beyond the Causeway, as it were. It
opens the door to a bigger appeal factor. But a lot of our
young people are seeing that here and thinking that that's
what it's all about. There's other music that has been out
there, and it's labeled as Cape Breton music, and some come
here and realize that, "God, it's something completely
different.
It worries me where this
music is headed. I guess I was one that would look to put my
foot out and say, "Well, let's try this, see if this will
work. Will this open more doors? Will this open more doors?"
I was like that in my early years. Today I'd be more the
type who'd say, "Let's think about this a while. Let's hold
back and look the whole situation over." I'd be more
conservative, although I learn new stuff every day, and
that's what I look to do--acquire new technical stuff or
whatever.
It's just a tough go when
you have to be a carpenter, work on everything else to pay
the bills while you're trying to do that kind of thing. I've
never had a real opportunity to sit down and really work at
what I'd like to work at, as far as music goes. I'd love to
have the time, to not have the worries--are my bills going
to be paid this month or next month or that kind of thing.
You know, could I have some breathing space to sit down and
really do what I think is up there in my poor brain, and to
actually sit down and develop some stuff with friends that
are accompanists. And really put some time into putting
something together that would, hopefully, be a legacy for my
son to have.
I think I could offer so
much more if I had a little bit of time stress-free. I think
I have offered the tradition here something. I won't put a
value on it because to one person it may be worth a lot and
to the next person it may not be worth two cents. I'm sure
I've offered something. I've done my share to put it on the
map, and I work hard at being respected for the fact that I
get to a place on time and that I'm where I'm supposed to
be, and all that sort of thing. Whether it's here or whether
it's across the waters or whether it's stateside or
whatever, I think I've got a good reputation. And having a
good reputation puts a good color on what I stand for and
what I play. And that's important. It's important to me,
anyway. And it's a hard job. It's a damn hard job
today.
My very most popular tune
came out in about seven minutes. "Brenda Stubbert's Reel"
came out in about seven minutes. Other tunes that are
getting quite popular came out in about that same amount of
time. But other tunes, such as a tune I wrote for my mother,
took two and a half years. If it's there and ready to come
out, it's like a chick coming out of an egg shell. When it's
ready, it will come.
Sometimes, I try to force
it, and it won't come. I look at what I forced, and I say,
"How could I have been so stupid?" The better of the tunes
come within about five minutes. But how can I say it?
There's a little bit of a preparation that your mind goes
through that I guess you really can't develop. It's got to
be there. I guess that's the easiest way of putting it. When
it's ready, it will come out.
I don't necessarily have
to have the fiddle in my hand. I've been driving truck or
whatever, or working out on the job, or that kind of thing,
and all of a sudden you'll start a phrase and that's not
like anything else but you can build off it. Next thing,
you've got a tune.
In some cases I write it
out right away. I've written one out on a board, so I
wouldn't forget it. I was on a job up on a roof. A lot of
that stuff, that's the way it happens. But I find, as I was
saying, that the different life stresses that you have, the
more that you've got coming at you, dries up the time that
you'd like to be saying, you know, "What about this? Or what
about that aspect of it?" I don't even have time to think
about the fiddle, even when I'm teaching it. It's a
different thing all together. You haven't got time to work
at what you'd really like to be at.
In this business, you
can't bank on anything until it's in your pocket. Like I
say, I am blessed with the abilities to turn my hands to
many different things. The older and stupider a fellow gets,
the more scared I get of damage to my hands. I've had carpal
tunnel operations and that sort of thing from ripping and
tearing and hammering all my life. And I guess after one
operation I made up my mind that maybe I should look at
fiddle music as some bit of a career, and see if that will
pay the milk bill, as it were. It's a struggle. It's a damn
hard struggle. I wish there was somebody out there that had
all kinds of money far more than they knew what to do with,
that would look to invest in the tradition and give a fellow
a little bit of stress-free time to develop stuff and to
preserve what we have here for how good it really
is.
There's no one aspect of
work that's available to me here year-round, or that I can
bank on, and it's just a juggling act continually. "Well,
what's going to come in this week, and how, what hat do I
have to wear in order to bring in this week's worth?" It's
quite a piece of work. It also keeps a fellow's mind quite
active.
The wit of some people
here is just outstanding. There's nothing like it. And I get
such a kick out of how dry some of the characters can be.
The wit is incredible. I just love it. You can be cut down
so quickly, or somebody can get cut down so quickly. With
just even a look, or a one- or two-word comment that says so
much, knowing the character that's saying it. I just live
for that kind of wit. Some work at it, and some just have it
right on the tip of their tongue all the time. It's there
all the time. Look, I just love it. Just love it.
There's times when I've
been away two and three weeks with playing, and I'm real
glad to get home, and I might be home a few days and go down
to talk to a couple of real characters, down the road here,
that I think so very dearly of. I'll only go in for five
minutes and be there the whole afternoon. And can't get
clear of them. And they're funny. Oh my, my, my, my--they're
funny. And they're brothers. Their son is out here with my
son today. My God, the wit of those fellows. They've got the
biggest hearts in the world. They'd give you the shirt off
their back, and they're like ourselves--they've got nothing
themselves, you know. But whatever they've got, they'd give
you. There's no end of what they'd ever do for you.
My second tune book will
be out soon. Paul Cranford's been an incredible friend. I
think he's the best friend a man can have. He's truthful,
he's honest, he's extremely dedicated to this music, and an
absolute workaholic at it. He doesn't let up for a second.
I've been working on this book with him over the years--the
last twelve years. But the last year has been just so
intense. Every spare minute that I've had he's been working
the butt right off of me to get this thing as clean as
possible a book as it can be. There's always some little bit
of an error here or there. But he's gone over this so often,
and we've all been over it so often, my hopes are that it's
glitch-free. But you always find something. It's taken every
second of time that I thought I was going to have to do
everything from mowing the lawn to painting the trim on the
eaves of my garage here. Just in the last week and a half I
bought paint for the eaves on the garage, and I want to
paint the bathroom. And the cans of paint are right still at
the door where I brought them in and dropped them.
The phone doesn't stop
here. There's usually anywhere from two to seven visitors,
in fairness, a day. But some days there's ten people in and
out through the door here in the run of a day. It takes
time. You want to be gracious and kind to everybody that
comes through the door.
There's a difference
between years ago and today. That was the difference in
playing years ago and playing today. You waited until the
phone rang before you'd go to, or before you'd get, a gig.
And the type of person I am, I find it almost impossible--I
can't call and say, "Have you got any spots open?" I could
sell Joe Blow down the street, you know, ten thousand times
a day if I believed in what he was doing. I could sell him
ten thousand times a day, and I wouldn't hesitate in calling
the Pope. But to sell myself, I just can't do it. Now, I've
had management of sorts for a short period of time, and a
booking agent for a very short period of time, but that
stuff just didn't work out. It just didn't work out. When I
say a short period of time, it was under a year in both
situations. Now whether I was being fair to them and trying
to develop all what they could have for me possibly is
another question. It is a small community that would accept
the type of stuff that I offer as far as it's being an
instrumental type of evening, whether it be a concert or a
dance away from here, whether it's workshops. You'd have an
accompanist--it's such a specialized thing. And the
management that I had dealt with considerably different
types of music where they didn't know how to deal with it as
far as I'm concerned.
I guess there were
possibilities of farming out some of my publishing. I
thought about it--I guess I'm getting a hundred percent of
no publishing, to some extent, if you know what I mean--no
active publishing--in doing it myself, versus fifty percent
of little or nothing that farming it out would do. I think
part of the thing that I'd like to have stress-free time to
do is to develop a little bit of the stuff that never got
developed, such as publishing. Getting it into the hands of
people that would have interest in recording it and so on.
There's that aspect of my music that I'd like to see
developed. I'd like to see the right kind of management
program for myself, something that would give me a little
bit of time at home that I owe my son. But I'm still willing
to pay for that in the aspect of travel--whether it takes me
to the moon or not, it doesn't matter as long as I can make
some little bit of a living and have some little bit of a
home life. That's all I want. And a little bit of time to
develop what thoughts and possibilities are open for what I
think music can be, and what it has been for me, and what
I'd like to see it be. That would be the ideal of it
all.
When you're trying to make
a living in the fashion I am, it all circles around having
to eat and how scarce work is here. It's a real depressed
area, work-wise. It's rare to hear of new jobs, taking into
consideration all the jobs that are being lost, from lack of
security or just companies pulling out of here, and so on.
So, it's a real tough place in a way.
But in the summer the
opportunities for music here are wonderful. I said to one
fellow, "I've made x amount of dollars because I've played
these amount of nights, and I did a couple of gigs in the
day." And he said, "Jesus, that averages out to be this
amount." He said, "Jesus, that's damn good money." And not
being from here he thought it was year-round.
I said, "You have to work
like hell. You've got two months to make it." He said,
"That's a lot of money in two months." I said, "Yeah, and
we've got ten months to spend it in." In other words, that
was your whole living. He didn't quite grasp that--it went
whoosh, right over the top of the head. He called me about
three weeks later. He said, "I didn't get it when you said
this to me." He called me three weeks later to tell me that.
I got an awful kick out of that.
It's so little that I play
here any more. A friend of mine said, "Jesus, have you
priced yourself out of playing here altogether?" I said,
"What the heck are you talking about? I'm playing for less
today than I did fifteen years ago." You know, actually I'm
playing for less than half of the ones that are playing. But
there are so many here. I don't know what the answer is.
There's dances that I play for here--not so much a concert
setting, unless you go to the summer festivals and play at a
concert there. I teach at the Gaelic College, or have taught
at the Gaelic College the last couple of years. Teaching
there and playing nights, there were a couple of weeks that
I played every night of the week while teaching. You get to
the end of some of those weeks, boy, and I'll tell you, you
don't know which end is up. You don't know which end of the
fiddle to blow in.
In the fall, winter, and
spring, I'll teach privately. I keep that down to a minimum
because first off, from what I understand, I charge only
half of what is considered average for the Halifax area, as
a for-instance. I know the people here haven't got it. I
know if I went for lessons in something that I was
interested in, whether it be musical or computer-wise, or
whatever, I'd only be able to afford so much, being what I
am and who I am. It's the same thing. I could only afford
about the same kind of thing as what I'm asking. I try to
keep it all within one day, for what amount of students that
I have, so it doesn't screw up the rest of the week, as far
as the possibility of making a living. I enjoy teaching as
long as I see the people have the interest and show progress
and that are taking it serious.
This interview, it's a
treat for me, too, because it gives me a chance to sit down
and drink coffee and talk. And I don't do much of either. I
drink a lot of coffee, but I don't get a chance to sit down
or to chinwag like I am. So, it's my pleasure.
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