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these different things; and Lewsh and I; and then Dave Pybus used to come and play with us quite often, a horn player who is now in the Montreal jazz scene; Glenn Hall, who went on to do a couple of albums of his own. And Lavey was another horn player who used to sit in with us and Bill Summers, a trumpet player from Edmonton came in and we used to do a Sunday jazz thing with him at the Ting. And Stan used to come and sit in, and then whoever was going through town, like Lighthouse - some of their players would come down and sit in with us. So it was pretty loose; we had a little nucleus, and then whoever was around, we’d call them in and they’d play with us. So we tried to do this free-form jazz thing and wound up making, like, no money - literally no money. You know, the only people who would listen to what we were doing in those days were heroin addicts and people who were “out there.” We weren’t doing those kind of drugs but we were definitely playing in an outside kind of set of parameters - but loving it. It was some of the most honest, creative music I’d ever done. So we wound up having to learn pop music of the day to go out and make a living, so we were learning Steely Dan and Doobie Brothers and doing some Jeff Beck and different things like that. We’d go and do high school dances, a couple nights a week to make the money to afford us to play from Sunday to Wednesday at the Ting for nothing. We’d play there at night, we’d tear down, take the gear back to my basement and rehearse all day, and write, and then tear down, go to the Ting and play at night, and then on the weekends we’d run out and do these dances or things, and we lasted about a year or so. But we all learned a lot and grew. It was a very free band, anybody could bring up any idea and we’d try it, or add it to another idea, and write these songs. And it was great. It was a good time.
Steiss: When was this?
DALE: That would be ‘72, I believe. And then Ron Paley, another guy around the Winnipeg scene, he went to Berkeley, a great pianist and bass player - he wound up playing with Buddy Rich and Woody Herman for a while and then he came back to Winnipeg and he wanted to form a bigger band, so I played with him for a while. He went on to form a true big band and he’s been a father of music in Winnipeg the last twenty years; he’s remained there and all kinds of players have come up under Ron and worked with Ron. Then another friend of mine during that time period put together a recording studio called Roade Recording, and I wound up being sort of on the ground floor of that for a while, had a chance to learn to become a studio player and to produce and do different things, and of course The Guess Who were in town. That was the headquarters, so we would always go over to Kale’s place and party, or Cummings’ place, and got to know that circle of people. Kale and I became real good friends.
Steiss: You were playing jazz then still?
DALE: I was playing jazz, pretty much, trying to play a free-form kind of jazz and just sort of whatever I had to do to make a living, like - the Music Ensemble would go into these bars on Main Street, and play Johnny Cash tunes, and rock and roll, and then we’d break into a McCoy Tyner tune or something. We were way out there. But it was fun, it was a great musical experience to do all that stuff. I still am eclectic. Everyone in our band is eclectic, some of us a little more than others. I have a strong affinity for country because growing up in Portage la Prairie during the day the radio station played country |
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