ahead of me always cultivated me and encouraged me, so I did that. And then my brother Bob said let’s put a band together - so we found some other guys
and I jumped immediately from a four-string to a twelve string acoustic guitar,
got a big d’Armand pickup and an amp. We started a band and we used to go
all over the area, Portage la Prairie, Neepawa, Brandon, Oakville, Poplar Point,
High Bluff and play. And, right at that time as well, of course, The Guess Who
were making their mark - my brother Bob was more into them because he was a drummer.
He liked more rock and roll. So he was the guy who actually first turned me on
to The Guess Who.
Steiss: What was the name of this band - the first one - do you remember?
DALE: The first band that we had? Oh, god, I think
it was something terrible. The Latest Style, I think, was the first one.
Steiss: I specifically wanted to get into your jazz
background, that I’ve heard about - The Dale Russell...
DALE: Music Ensemble. Well, after playing with my
brother in bands, when I left high school I joined a band and went out on the
road, my first professional thing. I was underage and had ID that said I was older, and in order to make a living in those days you had to play a little bit of everything - even The Guess Who did - you played Johnny Cash, you know in those days Bob Dylan had gone electric and the Stones were out and the Beatles - you had to play some of that. You had to play some country music, you had to play a few polkas;you had to play everything. And so, I was in a band like that and we traveled around Ontario and Quebec and the drummer was a guy named Roger Baird, who had just gotten out of the air force - he was a fighter pilot, and helicopter pilot,a real intelligent guy. He was the drummer and played all manner of things. And we hit it off as buddies. And another friend of mine, Clare Mathews, who didn’t play, but he wound up eventually supporting a couple of bands that Roger and I were in - he would go work construction and pay the rent so that we could practice and play. Those were the days of the band house. So this all led together into kind of a homogeneous musicality; it didn’t really matter what you played as long as you liked it, enjoyed it. So we would listen to everything - we’d get stoned and listen to The Doors, and listen to Hendrix and Clapton and the Yardbirds and all those kind of things - John Mayall, Howard Roberts and Atilla Zoeller and Miles Davis - everything that we could get our hands on we would listen to. It all just kind of blended together, and we were really drawn to the freedom of jazz, and we were of course drawn to Jimi Hendrix and the liberties he took playing, and Cream was developing and everybody was into jamming and seeing where they could go with their own originality. So a couple of band changes had gone down, and I wound up moving to Calgary and phoned Roger and he came to Calgary and put a band together with a bass player from The 49th Parallel, and this crazy organ player, Tojo. And we were in a band called The City Works. We would have this band house and whoever came to town, like the Mandala was a famous band from ...
the Toronto area, and Domenic Troiano, who ultimately wound up in The Guess Who,
was in that band, and Whitey Glan and Roy Kenner, and they were playing in Calgary
and we went to see their show and they were a really great band. So we invited
them back to the house and they all came over and we jammed for the better part
of the night until about four or five in the morning. And that was my first total
exposure to guys that were there, musically, beyond
