April 3-7, 2003
Pan-ea Ma'at Light Centre
Salt Spring Island, British Columbia
Canada
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With the number of Stick seminars steadily on the rise, three locatons in
North America have become synonymous with these events. Southern California,
Southeast Michigan, and Western Canada are all places that have hosted
multiple events and are all places that continue to raise the bar of these
events. This year's Western Canada event took an old familiar theme but,
again, added some new twists and turns to it turning the whole weekend into
one of the most memorable events to date.
The event was held on Salt Spring Island near Vancouver Island in British
Columbia. Our destination was the Pan-ea Ma'at Light Centre, a bed and
breakfast set on beautiful grounds up in the hills. Our hosts, Mhora and
Joy, ran the centre and what hosts they turned out to be. One of the things
that set this event apart from the others we've had so far is that, over
the weekend, we all turned this place into a home. We all lodged at the
centre, we had our meals together (three a day, cooked by our hosts),
and our seminar took place right there. This changed the way we operated
since, instead of a set schedule (although we DID have a schedule), we
could play in our group or in sub-groups pretty much any time of the day
since we were all right there. So for four days, we managed to pretty much
shut out the outside world and simply work on making music in one of the
most beautiful settings imaginable.
This year's seminar attendees were as follows:
Greg Howard - Charlottesville, VA
Jim Reilly - Kamloops, BC
Jim Meyer - Vancouver, BC
Winston Berger - Davis, CA
Dave Bole - Sacramento, CA
John Edmonds - Eagle River, AK
Louis Hesselt-van-dinter - Bothell, WA
Jim Parker - Las Vegas, NV
Mitch Polgar - Montreal, QC
Glenn Poorman - Novi, MI
Scott Schurr - Portland, OR
Matt Tate - Chicago, IL
Thursday
Things pretty much got going on Thursday. Greg and Jim Reilly, along with
several of the seminar goers, arrived in town prior to Thursday though.
Greg and Jim were booked to perform at the Cellar Jazz Club in Vancouver
on Wednesday evening so many came early. By all reports, the Wednesday night
performance went really well and Greg was accompanied by local drummer
Kyle Radomsky who did a great job.
I came in on Thursday morning with the intention of getting to the island
pretty early. My alarm started going off at 4:00AM that morning and I
reluctantly got up at about 4:10 to start my travels. After flying to
Vancouver via Minneapolis, I met up with Jim Reilly outside Vancouver airport.
We still had to wait for Jim Parker to fly in from Las Vegas before we could
leave so we ran some errands. By the time we met Jim P, we checked the time
and thought we were doing pretty well. We could catch the ferry to Vancouver
Island at 3:00PM and catch the ferry from there to Salt Spring at 5:00PM.
Already, things were moving later than I thought because I had completely
misjudged how long the ferry ride was. We were one of the last cars onto the
Vancouver Island ferry. After the first ride of about an hour and a half,
we sped over to the Salt Spring ferry and were happy to get over there before
5:00PM. Unfortunately, that ferry was full. What was even worse was that
every car in front of us got on. When it was our turn, the guy's hand went
up and that was that. We were the first car to NOT get on. That meant that
we left it parked there and waited until the next ferry came which would be
in two hours (7:00PM).
Shortly after 8:00PM, we finally made it to the centre and everyone was
there. On the first night, our seminar area was setup with a PA right in
the middle of the room that we all stood around. Greg had started looking
at instruments one at a time doing some setup work and showing people how
to do the same. By the time the three of us arrived, this part of the
evening was well under way. Our first order of business, however, was to
get some grub. That would be our first introduction to what would become
a constant stream of wonderful meals that Mhora would prepare for us.
By the time the three late comers finished eating, the rest of the crew
were winding down also. Greg wrapped up his setups for the evening and
then retired. Greg, along with Jim Reilly, Jim Meyer, and Karen Meyer,
actually stayed in a smaller cottage several yards behind the main house.
The rest of us at the main house scattered to four bedrooms. One of the
downstairs rooms slept two. A second downstairs room slept one and had no
heat. That was the room John Edmonds slept in as, coming from Alaska, every
other room in the house felt hot. Upstairs was a single bed that was actually
more of a cubby than a room and then the last of the four was the largest
bedroom sleeping six very comfortably. Upstairs, there was also a large
living area that they called the library. Prior to turning in on Thursday
night, many of us gathered in the library just to talk for a while. This
would become a nightly event.
Friday
The plan for Friday was to seminar all day and then head into the town of
Ganges on Friday evening to take over a local open mic night at a small
bar/cafe called Anise. Still being on eastern time, I woke at about 5:30AM
finally getting up at about 6:00AM. The first thing that greeted me when
my eyes opened was a large bedroom window and some incredible scenery
outside. Since we had arrived in the evening, we didn't get a chance to
catch the scenery that surrounded us so this was my first glimpse. High
hills, lush foilage, and the water close by. I cleaned up and decided to
take a short walk before breakfast. Outside, I met up with Joy and she took
me on a tour of the grounds including a high spot up behind the cottage
with a killer view of the water. Somewhere in there, we ran into Louis
who was coming back from a lengthy walk. Louis would get up and do this
every morning for the duration of the event.
Back in the house, everyone was up so we decided to get started while
breakfast continued to cook. Once we were all plugged in and the sound
was good, we went right to work. Right off the bat, we started to run
a chord progression that Greg had composed the night before. He said
that the surroundings had inspired him and several new ideas started
pouring out during the late evening hours. He ran his progression for
us once. Purely bass side, two hands, solid hits. Then we all played the
chords as a group. We ran the progression a few times getting the timing
down and cleaning it up. Greg alluded to the fact this these chords were
the beginnings of something we would work up for our final Sunday night
performance. By this time, we were an hour into our work and our hosts
announced that breakfast was officially ready. We setup a couple of large
tables and sat down to some french toast and fresh fruit. Glorious! Once
breakfast was over, we went right back to it. We spent the rest of the
morning hours working on memorizing various versions of all the intervals
in both hands and also worked on playing unison lines in the melody and
bass. With 4ths/5ths tuning, playing in unison becomes a lot more tricky
than it sounds and I found this to be a cool exercise.
At lunch time, we took an extended break. Pat Burkette, a feature writer
from the Victoria Times-Colonist showed up along with a photographer to do
a story about our weekend. During lunch, she talked to everyone involved
to get their story and shot several photographs as the afternoon wore on.
We regrouped and continued to work on various excercises as well as
revisiting the chord progression we'd started the day with. During the
afternoon session, Jim Reilly took over for a theoretical session. Jim
covered an array of basic and very useful theory topics including all of
the basic chords you can use within any given key (and why) as well as
simple triads that can be put together to form more complex chords. Before
we broke for the night, Greg left us all with a single homework assignment.
Everybody was to take a shot at coming up with a melody to play over our
chord progression. With that (and with the smell of wonderful food
permeating the room), we broke for dinner. After that, it was time to pack
up and head to our first performance night.
We arrived at Anise at about 8:00PM. Jim Meyer ran in to talk to the people
already there and came out telling us that what they did was actually
more of a jam night than an open mic and also that several locals had
already come to play. What this meant for us was that we would probably
all play first, shorten our sets down, and then leave the stage to the
usual crowd. We hauled our gear inside and set things up in such away
that we would be able to move from player to player pretty fast.
Once we were ready, Jim Reilly took the stage as MC for the evening. He
briefly described what we were doing on the island and what people would
be hearing. From there, he began introducing players. In order, the
performers for the evening were Matt Tate, Jim Parker, Winston Berger,
Jim Meyer, Louis Hesselt-van-dinter with Jim Reilly, Mitch Polgar, John
Edmonds, and myself. It was a nice variety of players and the material
covered a range from original to jazz and a couple of Beatles tunes. Jim
Reilly and Louis called up the local drummer who was part of the jam night
and did an open jam. I came prepared to do one looped tune with Louis' looper
but cut it short when I couldn't get the output volume of the looper up
nearly high enough. Note to self: soundcheck gear before launching into a
performance.
With the Stick invasion over, most of our group started heading out pretty
fast. I had actually just ordered a beer and so had Jim Reilly so we stuck
it out for a while. This was when the real jam night started. Things began
innocently enough with the usual guys (or so I was told) playing Neil Young's
"Rockin in the Free World." A good Canadian boy to start the evening. From
there, however, things pretty much disintegrated into a drunken stupor.
There were a couple of women in the place who, as they drank more, kept
dancing closer to the stage. Once their blood alchohol reached critical
mass, they jumped onto the stage, started playing percussion, and made some
attempts at singing. It was actually pretty funny and I enjoyed myself but,
after about thirty minutes of it, we decided to head out.
Back at the ranch, most of the residents were back up in the library having
that pre-bedtime discussion. Things were sounding pretty political when I
went up (something I hadn't heard much of up to that point). Luckily, I was
only there a short time before things switched over to loftier topics like
Spinal Tap and Ninja movies.
Saturday
On Saturday morning, we were back at it prompty at 8:00AM. The material
on Saturday really focused on playing together as a group. We started with
some cool basslines and unison excercises. Then we split the room up into
two halves and started doing some of the excercises as rounds with the
different halves of the room starting at different places. This created
some really interesting polyrhythms. Some of those polyrhythms were easy
to nail while some took quite a bit of work to find. Once we found the
difficult ones though, they sounded great.
Again, we took an extended lunch. Before our meal, we piled into cars and
went down to the outdoor market in the town of Ganges. We'd been down there
for the performances at Anise but didn't get the full spectrum of scenery
Ganges offers since it was dark. The town was right on a harbor with a lot
of little islands in view. The outdoor market was pretty much what you would
expect with the main area by the water littered with booths selling food
and crafts. We were down there for a little over an hour before we headed
back to have lunch. During the afternoon hours, Greg moved over to the cottage
where he took people one at a time for one-on-one lessons while Jim Reilly
worked with the rest of the group. We continued to go over various chord
substitutions until finally Jim said "let's just play some music." He fired
up the drum machine and started playing a groove in G. The plan was that,
one at a time, we would each add a part over what was currently playing.
Once we were all going, we could change our part whenever we wanted. This
ended up going on for quite some time and the music coming out was
exceptional. Once we decided to end it, we broke for the day. We had quite
a bit of time before the evening's activities so everyone moved off into
their own corners and practiced. This was about the time that some smaller
ensembles started to work on material for the Sunday evening performance.
At 8:30PM we re-gathered and headed to Moby's. Moby's is a restaurant and
bar down in Ganges and is one of the hot spots in town. The plan was for
Jim Reilly and Greg to perform. A local Salt Spring percussionist named
Laurent Boucher would also perform with Jim and Greg. When we arrived,
Laurent was already setup. Jim and Greg didn't take long to setup and then
Jim kicked off the evening running a mix of original tunes and improvisations.
He played really solid and the addition of the percussion really brought the
performance to life. Greg went up next and played a good chunk of his show
in the Stick X36 prototype he'd brought along. He seemed to be taking a real
shine to this instrument over the weekend and it sounded great. Greg pulled
several tunes from his grab bag that I hadn't heard him do in a while
including "Black Orpheus", "Here, There, and Everywhere", and a good chunk
of the "Sol" record. Hearing these tunes with the live percussionist was
exceptionally cool and Laurent did a fantastic job of performing the tunes.
Greg commented later in the evening how well Laurent anticipated changes
considering he'd never heard most of these tunes. In addition to the tunes,
Greg also launched into a handful of extended improvisations and even managed
to incorporate his new chord progression we'd been working on into his
performance drawing howls from those of us who knew what it was. During the
course of the evening, Jim and Greg each played two sets alternating between
the two. To wrap up, all three (Greg, Jim, and Laurent) played a rendition
of "All Along the Watch Tower." The show at Moby's turned out really well.
There was a good crowd in there all night and the performers really held
their attention. Once it was over, we packed everything up and headed back.
Again, we ended up back in the library talking until very late. With the
time change (spring forward) that occurred at 2:00AM, we ended up going to
bed at about 3:30AM.
Sunday
On Sunday morning, we started an hour later (9:00AM) to make up for the
time change the night before. The plan for today was to get our group
pieces ready for the evening's performance. We knew that one of the pieces
we would play would be based on the chord progression we'd started the
seminar with. We also worked on polishing another piece that revolved around
a bass groove that Greg had written about the same time as the chords we
started the weekend with. Lastly, we worked on a nice ballad taken from an
exercise in "The Stick Book" simply title "Vibrato." Over the course of the
weekend, several ideas were added to the original chord progression so we
decided to make that progression our theme for the evening and repeat it
several times varying the style and accompaniment. Along with the group
pieces, we would also included any solo or small ensemble pieces anyone want
to play.
We broke for lunch around 1:00PM. After that, we worked on getting the
room setup for the performance (scheduled to take place right at the centre).
The plan was to set ourselves up in a semi-circle of chairs. We would all
stay there for the entirety of the performance all standing for group tunes
and sitting for individual tunes (except, of course, for the individuals
who were performing the tunes). We didn't all need to work on setting up
the room so just about everybody used the time to practice. This turned into
a really cool scene actually. As I mentioned earlier, the grounds around the
centre were beautiful. As Greg and Jim worked on the room, I noticed that
various players had scattered around the grounds (both inside and outside)
practicing through their headphone amps. It seemed like no matter where I
looked, there was a Stick player in the garden, a player on the front porch,
the back porch, on the hill overlooking the harbor, in the library, etc.
This break also gave me a chance to check out the new Stick X36 prototype
that Greg brought along for the weekend. The silver laquer finish really
made the thing look space age and cool. With the hollow construction, it
seemed louder unplugged than your average Stick. It had a cool feel to it
overall. The strings Greg had on it were much heavier than what I'm used
to playing which I really didn't like and made it hard to get an accurate
read on the instrument itself. Greg seemed to like it though and his
performances on it sounded stellar.
Once the room was setup, we re-grouped and used the time we had left to
sound check and to run some problem spots. At around 4:30PM, we stopped
in order to clear the room for arriving guests. Several of our group went
back into their corners to practice. I went back to the cottage where Jim
Reilly was working on a set list for the evening. He and Greg were trying
to title Greg's original chord progression with something meaningful from
our weekend. They settled on "Madrone" which is the name of a tree that was
growing in abundance on the island.
At about 7:00PM, our evening began. There were about 20 people that showed
up for the performance. We all took our positions and led off the evening
with our theme "Madrone" running the simple chord progression with no
additional decoration. From there, we ran the D bass groove (appropriately
titled "Bass Groove") and nailed it. This was about the time that Jim Parker
became our multi-instrumentalist for the evening. Jim spent years as a
drummer and when we found out that Karen had brought her djembe along, Jim
agreed to play it on several of the tunes that required rhythm. He also
played with several of the small ensembles and his rhythm accompaniment was
excellent adding a really nice touch to several of the tunes. After the bass
groove, we moved on through our set list. Mitch Polgar and Matt Tate ran a
duet accompanied by Jim Parker on djembe followed by Jim Meyer doing his own
solo rendition of the Ron Baggerman tune "Golden Age". After that, we did our
next version of Madrone. Things began to fall apart a little on this one when
we came to our second time through the progression. We held it together
though leading up to the next solo performance which was given by Greg. His
tune really brought our audience to their feet and left them good and warmed
up for a bit of a talk. Greg described the instrument we were all playing and
described the event we were all taking part in. Next up was another duet with
John and Louis followed by a solo performance from Scott. Scott's performance
was really a pleasant surprise. We all knew he planned on running a couple of
cover tunes and singing. We didn't know until then how powerful a voice he
had. No mic. Just pure power vocals and Stick. It was really nice. After that,
Jim Reilly ran a solo piece which led us into yet another version of Madrone.
This one had Jim Meyer playing his own melody over the first progression and
all of us playing a pentatonic scale pattern over the second time around.
Again, it was a little sketchy but we got through it. With that, we took a
short intermission allowing us all to relax and catch our breath.
After about 10-15 minutes, we started up again. Greg led off the second
set with his own rendition of Pachelbel's Canon that really got everyone
going again. Another group piece followed. The exercise titled "Vibrato."
This one worked really well. As we all played the riff, we started at one
end and took solos one player at a time. The idea was that, after your
solo, you were to make up a simple part that went with the tune and you
were NOT to go back to playing the original riff. The result was that, by
the end, Greg was the only one left playing the original theme and the
rest of us were noodling parts in that key. In both our rehearsal and at
our performance, this resulted in some really amazing music created right
on the spot and never coming out the same way twice. Kind of like a random
looper. Very cool. That was followed by more solo pieces. Matt Tate ran one
of his own tunes and then the surprise happened. Dave Bole had opted out
of playing by himself but, at the last minute, decided to take his first
ever stab at it and did a rendition of "My Funny Valentine." He did a nice
job and his audience was really supportive. Winston ran a solo piece after
Dave was finished and this led us into our next "Madrone" rendition. This
time we added a funky bassline (played by Greg, Louis, and myself) and
Jim Parker's djembe rhythm while Jim Reilly improvised on a blues scale over
top of it. This was much improved over the last two renditions although we
started with a little confusion as to how the piece was to begin. We ran
three more solo performances after that with Jim Parker, myself, and another
duet with Mitch and Louis. Next, we re-created the jam we'd done the day
before with Jim Reilly and it came off really well. Instead of using the
drum machine on this one though, we called Jim Parker back into service
to deliver our rhythm on djembe. As the jam was ending (but still playing),
Greg quietly counted us all back into the original "Madrone" with just the
chords and that marked the end of our evening. Several people stayed around
after the performance to talk with us. Once they all cleared out, we stayed
up for a while patting ourselves on the back and throwing down some beers
and dessert. Around 11:30PM or so, everyone began heading for bed.
Monday
On Monday morning, the exits began. Jim Parker and Dave Bole both had early
flights so they left to catch the 8:00AM ferry before anyone else got up.
The rest of us planned on catching the noon ferry. We packed up pretty
leisurely and had breakfast. At about 11:40AM, we said our goodbyes to Mohra
and Joy and headed for the dock. The trip back to the mainland (again via
Vancouver Island) went pretty smooth and we didn't get shut out of any ferries
this time. We did have an incident on the ferry from Salt Spring when, as we
were getting close to Vancouver Island, a woman on the boat realized that
one of her tires had gone completely flat. In a matter of minutes, she was
flanked by a whole group of Stick players trying to get her spare on before
the boat docked. This, of course, prompted the question of "how many Stick
players does it take to change a tire?" Regardless of the answer, her spare
was on and she drove off of the ferry when the doors opened.
Back in the city, Scott and Louis immediately headed south to the
US and home while Jim, Jim, Karen, Greg, Matt, Winston, Mitch, John, and
myself went into Vancouver. Matt, Winston, and Mitch went to find a hotel
for the night while the rest of us went back to Jim Meyer's place. John and
I both had to get to the airport early enough where having dinner with
everyone else was out of the question so Jim dropped us both at the aiport at
about 6:00. My flight wasn't actually supposed to leave until 9:00PM but I
had a nice surprise. Horizon told me they could get me to Seattle on the 8:00
flight and I could wait there. I decided to take them up on it and discovered
it was the same flight John was taking before heading back to Anchorage. Plus,
the flight wasn't anywhere near full so we sat together and talked music. Once
we hit Seattle, we parted company. It didn't seem like that long of a wait
before I was on a plane bound for Detroit. The amazing thing was this. I got
a seat close to the front of the plane and the flight was full. By the time I
got on, the only overhead that had any space for my Stick was right over my
row. In addition to that, the only two seats that weren't sold were both right
next to me. So ... I stretched out a little and slept all the way home
arriving in Detroit at about 6:00AM. I stayed up the rest of the day and
jolted myself back into eastern time when I finally caved and passed out
at about 9:30PM Tuesday night.
In Conclusion
While many aspects of this seminar stayed true to our past seminars, many
aspects were also different and made for a really cool event. First of all,
it seemed like the overall level of play was a bit higher this weekend
making it possible to do some pretty meaty exercises as a group. The retreat
setting changed the whole dynamic of the weekend. Usually we have a set
schedule for a day. After that, the attendees retreat back to their hotels
or homes until we all meet up again the next day. In the retreat setting,
we lived there. That meant we practiced during off hours. That meant that
the duets that performed Sunday got together and composed during off hours.
That meant that sometimes our group sessions ran later, or we took long breaks
making it up in the evening. The possibilities seemed endless and it made
for an intense weekend where 24 hours of each day were about making music.
It reminded me very much of my days attending the National Music Camp at
Interlochen. It's hard to call this the future of Stick seminars as I don't
think this setting would always work. But for this particular get together,
it worked great. Again, our friends over in Western Canada have raised the
bar on Stick events. Thank you Jim Meyer for putting together a really
special weekend. Thank you Greg Howard and Jim Reilly for your teaching,
performing, and inspiration. Thank you Mhora and Joy for being such wonderful
hosts and wonderful people. And thanks to all my fellow attendees for such
good company and inspired play.
Try and hang onto that feeling and ... I'll see you all again soon.