EDGAR WINTER -- an interview with Edgar Winter by Christine Leonard

Just orbiting this planet...

Edgar Winter comes full circle

Distilling a complex musical genre like the blues down into its most basic black-and-white constituents is a mighty tall order for any artist, but for Edgar Winter, who was raised on a steady diet of the stuff, nothing could be simpler. Having benefited early on from the tutelage of his musically inclined parents, Winter began performing with his much idolized brother, legendary slide blues guitarist Johnny Winter, at a tender age. Never content with settling into a specific style of music, Winter soon moved beyond his homegrown country-blues background and began to explore other musical worlds including jazz, classical and rock ’n’ roll.

Eventually mastering the alto saxophone and piano, Winter’s willingness to push the envelope led him to form The Edgar Winter Group in 1972, along with renowned songwriters and players Rick Derringer, Dan Hartman, Ronnie Montrose and Chuck Ruff. By January 1973, Winter’s unique combination of R & B and synthesizer rock won over critics and mainstream audiences alike with the release of the band’s most successful album to date, They Only Come Out at Night, which featured the electric keyboard juggernaut “Frankenstein” and the feel-good epic “Free Ride.”

Some 35 years later, Winter is still actively composing, performing and recording and continues to bring the blues into the future.

    “I have a lot of fun doing what I do,“ Winter says of his long-running career. “I still enjoy it as much as I did when I was a little kid playing ukulele with my brother Johnny and listening to the Everly Brothers. My dad showed us our first chord; he played guitar and banjo, and sang in a barbershop quartet and in the church choir. He also played the alto sax and performed with a swing band back in the day. Mom played classical, too, so good music was always a part of growing up. I think that’s part of the reason I try to broaden people’s musical horizons.”

   Looking to the horizons — and indeed the heavens — for inspiration, Winter is a noted Scientologist who is well-known in Hollywood, where he currently resides, for his work as a soundtrack composer. His arrangements have been featured in numerous film and television productions including The Simpsons, Wayne’s World 2, Netherworld, Invincible, Tupac Resurrection, Queer as Folk and the movie adaptation of L. Ron Hubbard’s Mission Earth (Hubbard left explicit guidelines regarding the score to accompany the inevitable adaptation of his magnum opus). The fact that both Edgar and Johnny Winter carry the genetic distinction of albinism only adds to their mystique.

While Johnny shirks from interviews, tending to let his amazing slide guitar-playing take the spotlight (Jimi Hendrix once approached him for lessons), Edgar has come to embrace his public persona. He even hosts a congenial website (www.edgarwinter.com) where he repeatedly thanks his fans and invites them to shed their preconceived musical preferences and experience his sound with open minds and ears.

    “It is really senseless to have all these musical prejudices,” Winter explains of his philosophical approach to his craft. “All music is beautiful and all styles have their own validity and are continually evolving and merging together. The one common thread between them is the blues. I’m thought of as a rocker, but I also play jazz, classical, blues, ragtime, Dixie and more. People think the blues has already happened and is over with, but I believe it still continues to have an influence on the pop music of today. The same can be said of jazz. That’s what my album, Jazzin’ the Blues, is all about.”

    One of the many perks of having been a major name in the recording industry for so long is the pull that Winter has when it comes to putting together a wish list of artists to appear on the forthcoming Rockin’ the Blues. Everyone from Slash to Clint Black has been assigned a seat in Winter’s blues-rock arena. Winter intends to let the record develop in a natural “organic” manner, one that will ensure that things are done with what he describes as a feeling of “rightness.”

    “I’m a musical rebel in the sense that I never want to be categorized,” says Winter. “I think it has hurt music, to an extent, that record companies are so insistent on defining artists by style to make it easier to target their market audience. I really feel that things were better back in the ’70s. There was an open attitude (amongst musicians) of freedom and playing music they believed in. Bands actually went into the studio with two or three songs and created the rest of the album in the studio. There was a magic and immediacy to the process, as opposed to the control presently exerted by record companies that want demos of everything in advance. Today, it’s more about business than art. Rock, jazz, blues; I’m just glad to have trained in so many different theatres. It makes for a really interesting, fun, high-energy show.”

Originally published in FFWD Magazine, August 23, 2007  by Christine Leonard

MBP // MARK BIRTLES PROJECT -- an interview with Blake Betteridge by Christine Leonard-Cripps

Let’s get physical

MBP stages a pants-off dance-off

We'll be in the basement, Dad — the Mark Birtles Project wants to put the wreck in your room. 

For some artists, it’s the moment of truth. For others, it’s the pinnacle of their career and the realization of their lifetime aspirations. For Blake Betteridge, guitarist and keyboardist for Edmonton’s high-intensity rock ’n’ roll juggernaut, Mark Birtles Project, walking into an HMV and seeing his new album available for purchase is a quirky novelty. Hitting the shelves July 24, ART Crime is the group’s third recording in five years, but unlike the EPs it follows, the new album offers a full-length glimpse into the world of these hassle-free hipsters who refuse to take themselves too seriously.

    “It was cool seeing our CD at HMV,” says Blake Betteridge “I like the idea that it’s available on such a wide scale. Before it used to be that when we put together an album, we’d write the songs, then pay for them to be recorded. Then only a few people would get to hear it if they we able to come out to our shows, or get to the small cool record stores to buy a copy. It’s weird, now that we’re in mall stores it makes things official. It makes it legit. Of course, it also adds more pressure, because we’re very conscious of the fact that money is being spent and people are counting on us to fulfill our end by touring and playing and recording great music. The upside is all of the opportunities that are coming our way, and higher exposure for our CD. Masterpieces of art belong in a museum for the public to enjoy and appreciate, not just in someone’s private collection. That’s a true art crime.”

    As the lyric to one of the band’s ringtone-worthy songs goes, “it’s alright to feel nice.” And feel nice they do, largely because of the fact that the Mark Birtles Project takes their musical motivation from the positive side of rocking out. Betteridge, along with the band’s lead singer Mark Raymond, guitarist Brian Birtles, and drummer Sean Taylor (bassist Steve P. will be joining MBP for this tour) extend this sense of spiritual levity and resilience to their name, which is an homage of sorts to Brian’s father Mark Birtles. Talk about the ultimate teenage rebellion; naming your rock ’n’ roll band after the parent that ordered you to “turn it down” in your reckless youth!

Hovering halfway between a tongue-in-cheek poke at themselves and a heartfelt tribute, MBP’s unlikely moniker is an apt metaphor for the band’s unconventional approach to their material. Hashing out angst and blowing off excess energy with every lick, the lads throw themselves into one sonic smash-up after another, without any sign of hesitation or fatigue. Pouring on old school rock rhythms infused with a heavy-handed blues influence, MBP heats up the stage with a style that simultaneously channels elements of Jon Spencer and Eric Burdon in one tail-shaking bundle.

    “We believe in playing as hard as we can,” Betteridge explains. “We have a policy of not practicing unless we’re together. It’s about not thinking and just doing. It’s the same when we’re on stage. Pants will come off, things will happen. That’s how I wound up playing half of our Winnipeg show while naked.”

    Not afraid of getting physical, Betteridge and company trade in emo shoegazing for extreme ginch-gazing as they shed their clothing and inhibitions with equal aplomb. Stripped down to their bare essentials, it’s easy to see that Mark Birtles Project play every gig like it’s their last. And, given the unpredictable nature of their spastic melodies and explosive on-stage antics, it is entirely possible that any given show one or more Project members may succumb to a performance-related calamity.

    “One of the last times we performed live, our singer jumped off a PA onto my electric piano and smashed the legs out from under it!” Betteridge recalls fondly. “I guess it was a special moment, although I was kinda bummed that my keyboard never sounded the same again. We’ve just gotta do what we’ve gotta do. That’s our mantra. When we perform live, we try to leave it all out there. You shouldn’t leave that stage unless your panting and crawling or being helped off.“

Originally published August 2, 2007 in FFWD Magazine  by Christine Leonard

 

THE A-TEAM OF CALGARY, ALBERTA -- an interview with Pat Downing by Christine Leonard-Cripps

Zen and the art of rocking out

Calgary's A Team mix far-out philosophy with balls-out rock

According to Nietzsche, when you look long into an abyss, the abyss also looks into you. Standing on the outer edge of the universe and daring to gaze beyond its boundaries, Calgary-based hip hop-meets-hard-rock dynamos A Team take paradoxical philosophizing to a whole new level.

    “There are five outer zones of existence,” guitarist and vocalist Pat Downing explains. “Sphere, cube, pyramid, blob and exit shell. Exit shell is where the edge of the universe starts. It’s like we’re a bird inside a giant worm and we’re so happy to be gorging on worm all around us that we don’t realize we’re being digested. The same thing goes on between us and our audience. It’s beautiful.”

    After a lengthy absence from the local rock ’n’ roll scene, a newly streamlined A Team emerged from their jam space (which they amicably share with local punksters The Motherfuckers) in the basement of the Castle Pub to reclaim their title as Calgary’s favourite band named after a popular ’80s TV show. Stepping back in front of the mic, Downing (ex The Dudes) and fellow founding team member Andy Sparacino (Tron from Fubar) began a journey that would see a multi-EP project originally known as the Pegasus Evolution series morph into a full-length album appropriately titled The Rebirth of Rock Therapy. Not only does their new album mark their first release in seven years, it also showcases the duo’s eerily intuitive metaphysical connection. Even more impressive than their ability to collaborate on a subliminal level is the sheer audacity with which Downing and Sparacino face the self-exposure that comes from stripping an ensemble cast down to a skeleton crew of players.

    “We trimmed the fat and did away with a lot of the things we’d always relied on.” Downing says. “In live performances, we are capable of operating as a two-man act. We work it by filling in the sound with wacky drum machines and keyboards. Right now, though, we’re performing as a four-piece with Peter Moersch on bass and Visar Dukadjini on drums. When we work together, we’re a full-on rock. As a band, you build yourself a paradigm and you don’t have to speak. We just feel our way around, moving between temporal phases. It all goes back to spheres in an infinitely large universe. We use the finite to expand the infinite. It’s all rock and roll.”

    Mixing up moustaches and flowers, as they put it, the group that brought you the infamous “Labatt, Labatt, Labatt Wildcat” song continues to employ the same glee-versus-terror formula that has made them such a sensation. Like their previous release, Non Merci: Situations in the Key of Sound 1994-1999, The Rebirth of Rock Therapy integrates seemingly divergent aspects of rap and rock into one power primordial force. Silver-tongued wordplay and raw guitar gallops pay tribute to the glory of early Wu-Tang Clan and the ejaculatory rapture of Ween back in their God Ween Satan days. Leaving heartaches and earaches in their wake, A Team are accomplished experts at what they do; pumping out heavy-handed, head-nodding rhythms laced with cathartic lyrics, all amplified and enhanced by a magnanimous onstage presence.

    “It’s all in the name of entertainment,” says Downing. “Putting smiles on people’s faces and getting them to think about hugs and high fives. Having been around since 1994, we have a lot of original songs to choose from, so we’re known for playing for three hours at a time without doing any covers. Yeah, we get way out on the shell.”

Connect with and listen to Calgary's A Team on MySpace

Originally published in FFWD Magazine August 9, 2007  by Christine Leonard