Music lessons, how to be a musician, a musical artist, or a player in a band.
I saw Jimi Hendrix when I was 17, and within a year I dropped out of high school,
leaving behind a grant from Sheridan College, new that year, and a bursary from the University of Toronto.
My high school teacher took some of my drawing and paintings, entering them in a Brock contest,
where I won first place. That was architectural. Brock offered me free tuition.
I saw Deep Purple in Toronto next, Ritchie Blackmore being the next man on this planet,
to be playing a Fender Stratocaster, between 1960 and 1964, through a Marshall stack,
only plugging straight in, not using any electric guitar effects.
After dropping out of high school, I got an Atlas Steel factory job, full time,
and bought a '64 Strat, a 50 watt Marshall ordered from England,
when they wouldn't sell a 100 watt head to just anyone, especially a Canadian,
yeah, being very British.
That means I was playing a Strat through a Marshall with effects,
for seven months, when Jimi Hendrix was still alive.
Other musicians, travelling pros in bands in Niagara Falls, would visit,
to try my guitar out, my amp, putting their guitars through my amp,
and those were some of the best guitar lessons, learning guitar parts.
Of course, some guitarists would just be shaking their heads,
saying I don't know how you're making music with that monster.
Sitting with my mother, an exciting singer in the church my parents were founding and charter members of,
we decided I should order the songs I liked to sing and play on harmonica, like 15 year old Little Stevie Wonder.
That was more about getting the songs in the keys they were written in, just how I heard them.
"Misty", by Erroll Garner, "Strangers on the Shore", theme from "The Sandpiper"
and "The Days of Wine and Roses", from a movie of the same name.
Yes, standing in line while shopping with me as a kid, had a lot of people talking with my parents,
wondering why this little boy was playing harmonica, and singing the notes he couldn't find,
to such sad, slow songs. That was easier than fast ones.
I could play the theme from "The Chipmunks", the TV show, "The Sweetheart Tree", from "The Great Race",
and a couple of Herman's Hermit tunes, oh yeah, and "On Top of Old Smoky".
My mother was right. If I learned to play those songs properly, I could play anything.
But I had a big and constant worry, about playing my Stratocaster, being left-handed.
I was playing right-handed guitars, my brother would let me turn the strings around on his,
to be lefty like Jimi, but I found that having the bass strings on the bottom was far, far better.
My friend Kelly Blair, who became a professional flutist, guitarist and vocalist,
hitch-hiked with me to Toronto, over a 100 miles away, to see Mr. George Benson.
He won the annual Best Instrumental Guitarist Survey for Downbeat Magazine, all about jazz,
for five years in a row. Just knowing that, not having any of his music, probably not hearing any,
made me think that if someone else was going to help me make up my mind, he could.
It wasn't easy, unable to get on his side of the club, talking loud over his four bodyguards,
until he turned, to say "did you really hitch-hike over a 100 miles, to ask about your Stratocaster?".
And then he got up and waved me in, taking me to his backstage dressing room.
I have to say, it was all white, hippy looking people, on one side,
with the non-whites all dressed up and acting more polite, on the other side.
A small wooden railing was the separation.
To keep this short, too bad, Mr George Benson really helped me make up my mind.
He was laughing a lot, at what I said about him, even if I never said the name Jimi Hendrix.
Neither did he. He laughed some times, because he could move my fingers into big chords,
the chords he said he had a hard time with, and then he'd say try to move it up or down,
and I could, when he said he couldn't. This is what it came down to.
He said I didn't have to scrunch up my fingers to play lead, reaching up with extended fingers,
and the pad of my barre chord finger was holding the bass to keep it from feeding back,
so it was just a matter of turning the noise off to have any kind of bass I want, while I'm playing.
He was right about that. That's how I play, no more right or upside-down right-handed.
He suggested ordering a left-handed bridge from Fender, saying he knew some lefties, all good players,
so I did, in 1972, sending away $150 plus taxes with a one year wait, doubling the order after three months.
Those are the parts that are still in the guitar I play, now inventive.
Sitting there with Mr. George Benson, playing his 1955 Gibson L5, all black,
he explained about pickups, saying the most string action is in the middle of the strings,
where you can't put a pickup on the neck, so having one at the bottom of the neck,
will give you the most string response for the pickup.
Instead of looking for a band, or new musical friends in my home town,
I decided to build my lefty. Kim Mitchell, of Max Webster, and I did something together.
We tried to put a humbucker on an old Jazzmaster with Strat single coils,
wanting the Strat sounds, only Jimi, and the humbucker, Santana, Jimmy Page, Jeff Beck,
yeah, and I'm thinking Mr. George Benson.
It was knowing Peter Traynor and his guitarist Len Jeffries, music store employees,
coming out to watch me plug in and play, who drew out a wiring diagram for us.
When that came together, it was time for me to look for a band.
Sitting in Central Music, where I almost lived after dropping out of high school,
without ever taking even a penny out of the store, helping to build Bill's business,
I heard that "I could play anything line" again.
A country recording act came in, on a Saturday afternoon, all dressed up, talking Fort Erie.
It was Skip Neilson and Blue Creek, always playing in Fort or Niagara Falls, the tourist bars, American.
I was sitting with my back up against a big bass drum, feeling it vibrate while I made some sounds.
Skip was saying his guitarist called to say he wasn't showing up for the matinee, and that was it.
He said if he could find another guitarist to fill in right away, he could play that night,
and he'd give him all the other guitarist's pay. I said I've never been in a band, and didn't play country.
Skip just leaned down to look in my face, and said if you can play like Jimi Hendrix,
you can play anything. He was right. I left with him and stayed in that band for over six months.
Blue Creek came with a beautiful five string banjo the guitarist was supposed to play,
but I couldn't, left-handed, always a nice reason not to be able to do something I didn't want,
so he got Al, the owner of Thorold Music, to put a six string neck on a banjo body, with a pickup,
just for me. That was crazy, finger-picking and picking away on a six string banjo.
Sitting with an American country guitarist, in Niagara-on-the-Lake, a Shaw Festival event,
he was getting off on my six string banjo story, and said would you like to hear a guitar tip?
I said sure. He said I could take a piece of cigarette box foil, and fold it up, showing me how,
saying I could weave it around the strings by the bridge, folding it around the top and bottom strings,
loosely, and it would make my Strat sound just like a banjo. That was incredible, yeah,
playing a six string electric banjo with a tremolo unit, a string and spring bender.
Al kept telling me to sell it, so many musicians were making offers, so he could make a nicer one,
but I never did.
I decided to buy some guitar lesson books, to keep learning for real.
Mel Bay, books 1 and 2, plus another bigger book, written by a hippy guitarist,
that was supposed to have every single version and every single chord,
that a guitarist was supposed to be able to play.
Sometimes, just being able to play one of those chords, inspired a song.
After that, sitting around during the day with band players,
visiting local recording studios, radio stations, television stations,
got me being as much of an entertainer as a musician, having fun with it myself.
And when I say TV stations, here in Canada, up north with lots of magnetic rock,
little towns would have their own cable TV, usually two stations, one for information,
so I'd be sitting in the car, leaning on the hood, or sitting on the couch,
while the owner made his advertisement, and I'd be waving my guitar, uh, somehow.
As a total non-smoker, non-drinker, no tea or coffee, vegetarian wannabe like me,
it wasn't easy making a living on the road, when society was so stoned and drunk.
Strippers and topless were everywhere, and total nudity was legal in Ontario,
long before it was in New York State. I stayed straight, and now, I still sing anything.
That's how I kept my sanity. I never told people I sang. I just auditioned as a guitarist,
and when I started singing, if I felt like it, the leader would say you never said you could sing.
I like to dance and move around, jumping offstage onto the dance floor if I could,
whipping people with my extension guitar chord, especially bassists,
who only played bass because they couldn't make it on guitar, my room-mates.
I could make scary sounds that made people drop pool cues, if they were still playing,
or locomotive sounds by the train station in Niagara Falls, making people drop drinks,
thinking the train was coming through the wall. I was told only once a night, first set.
The Redmere Soloist, custom built in Scotland, 1977, $2,750.
Custom ordered speakers from Electro-Voice in Michigan, S.R.O.'s, two separate 12"s on stands,
150 RMS, 200 maximum, with 25 pound magnets.
If you remember "Let's Dance" by David Bowie, that's not a synth making those big sounds.
It's a Redmere Soloist on the third channel, a 60 watt overdrive system,
with the flanger set, the chorus, five-band E.Q.ed, with controlled stereo panning,
using floor switches I made myself. $15 each, for double-pull, double-throw on and off switches.
Parallel sound control with lighting to see what is on and what is off.
But I am the biggest loser. I lost two years of my playing life, and my heart.
I fell in love with a woman, a white light, love at first sight.
We were together for two years, but she had been the victim of a drug-overdosed gang rape,
by five men from a big family, a crime family, who get government grants and dominate this city, un-elected.
She had a baby, where her parents made her go to a home in Hamilton to have it, never seeing it.
I thought this was upsetting her more than the rape. These criminals are now world famous.
I didn't play in bands because she would see the women sitting up front,
and what happened when I was walking across the dance floor, thinking I would never marry her.
After two years, one day, after an outdoor rock concert at the bandshell in Port Colborne,
where I was a guest singer-songwriter, playing acoustic while other bands changed onstage,
the first year it was built. She dropped me off and drove away. I didn't phone and she didn't phone, it was over.
I still feel like I'm growing old with her, and loving her, helping her, understanding her, made my love deeper.
That's what people feel when I sing and play, the love, the horrors of the new blues, cancer, radiations from above,
the new ambivalence towards sexuality, addictions to technology, the wars over oil and resources for more online electricity,
even if I'm making them wiggle their toes in their shoes to make them get up and dance, what I'm there for.
I am now almost 66 years old. I still play guitar everywhere I go, singing my little heart out,
and no-one calls me an old man. Backstage, if others are surprised at my haunching down on my ankles,
waving my guitar, in and out between my knees, reaching out with a foot for the wah, or effect,
when I get up I say, you didn't hear any bones popping, did you. That's when others stop and say,
you're right, how do you do that? I just say that's how I play, and I need the exercise.
I know my ancestors didn't go through the Dark Ages, so easy to see the difference with my native friends.
So, after all that, the Niagara Peninsula, Ontario, eastern and western Canada, what was left to learn,
and even Mr. George Benson was now singing and putting out a new standard of jazz, funk and pop,
taking over the whole world, for a couple of years, until his production values got played out by others.
A local Mohawk in Niagara Falls asked me to start a band with him, playing for a year and a half.
I knew I lived in the land of the beaver, becoming Mohawk land, but I had never met anyone who shared that.
More than any geographic travels, playing with Ben Hewitt, his English name, and his friends, made me a Canadian.
I was asked to join Drastic Measures, a family with professional players and friends from Dominique.
They won the Toronto Caribana Best Parade Band Prize, their first year in Canada. I've got photos and cassettes.
But this is about my music lessons, what I think, what I say, what I've got in my brain, and what they made me to be.
If other people, young people to seniors, can ask me how to make their lives better,
what greater respect can a musician have? I walk the walk and talk the talk, and it's not being a rock star.
I always say, as a player, that no-one ever threw a drink in my face, slapped my face,
poked a cigaratte burn in my shirt, poured a drink in my lap, and I never had sex with strippers or employees.
In fact, I've never had sex with a stranger, had sex in a bathroom, or knocked over a drink at a party.
Sometimes, listening to the feelings you get when music is all around you, musicians you never heard before,
a player with virtuoso technique, playing like you've never seen, elevating you, uplifting you, inspiring you,
creating a state of grace inside that space, for listeners, for musicians, extending the beauty of our lives,
so we all are part of it, joining it, jamming along if we can, but carrying it, taking it away,
such a state of grace, that continues the energy to make you play, you, what you've got inside you,
and what you've done with your fingers and throat, your environment, and how you treat yourself.
If you're not nervous when you get up onstage, you might as well go home.
You're not feeling it, and you probably never will. You're there just to show off,
and when people are down, spending their budget on entertainment,
no-one likes someone who is just there to show off. Dancers can't get off on that,
unless you are a vainglorious fool wrapped up with your own technology.
When someone says I'm getting up onstage but I'm not sure what to do,
I just say don't be shy, you've made it this far, just be more of yourself.
So, what is my biggest musical lesson, and it's always a freebie?
I say you have to move your body to the beat, bopping up and down with it,
if that's all you can do, so that your body is on the beat, and your hands can play around it.
When I see bands grooving together onstage, that's when I want to stop and watch.
Look at the pre-acid Beatles, bouncing up and down, being bobble-heads, very British,
or think of trumpet lines, or back-up singers, in soul bands, moving around together,
dancing together, everyone on top of the music, and dressing up as part of the show.
Tom! Tom Feldmann! Hey boy, where's'yer hat, or you one'a da hatless ones?
A Value Village shirt, faded old jeans, not even torn or ripped, with a parlour guitar,
that might be Gibson, a nice antique, but I'm seeing wood for a neck that isn't rosewood or ebony.
A too light tone to start with, and no separate, adjustable bridges for the strings, untunable,
unless you only want to work with tempered tuning musicians, like symphony players.
Time to saddle up and play the electric you haven't roped in yet, yessiree Tom!
However, you are invited over for dinner if you ever visit the Niagara Peninsula.
That's only fair.
oh... oh... it's so nice, so nice to be able to make up your mind, and do it.
I've been using the same guitar picks that Jimi and Richie said they used,
playing with the same picks since 1970,
playing with the same strings since 1970...
what a feel... always waiting for me... and if I'm just sitting with it, not feeling it,
it leads me on, and if it's not leading me on, trying to play more all around the neck,
it makes me want to make it better, build a new body, build some new sounds....
You Tube "John Watt semi-solid-body", if you want to.
May All Peace Be Upon Us.