1. Highliners agree to Start Rockin' with Stony Plain
2. New Emmylou Harris album issued in Canada
3. Emmylou Harris: one fan's personal tribute
4. Ian Tyson gets ready for next recording
5. Sonny Rhodes signs world-wide deal with Stony Plain
6. Jim Byrnes: Is he the busiest man in Canadian show biz?
7. Asleep At The Wheel? Not this Record!
8. Big Bill Morganfield, Muddy's son to make debut on Blind Pig
9. Stony Plain News Notes
10. What folk are saying about Stony Plain acts
11. Honest, we didn't write this new review of Stretchin' Out
12. Blues rules for Beginners (and a contest)
13. Late Flash! Ray Bonneville joins Stony Plain
14. Last Word: In tough times, the tough go to work
15. Getting in touch with Stony Plain

Rockin’ Highliners’ singer Robet Tycholis enjoys his job

The Rockin’ Highliners, the five-man jump blues group out of Edmonton, have signed a recording deal with Stony Plain — and their first album for the label will be produced by Duke Robillard.

It’s the second domestic signing to the label since The Paperboys and Big Dave McLean joined the Stony Plain stable. And it also coincides with the signing of Texas bluesman Sonny Rhodes to a world-wide recording deal.

The Highliners have had an astonishing career in the last two years. Formed in 1995, the current lineup consists of front man, singer and songwriter Robert Tycholis, guitarists Clayton Sample and Alex Herriot, drummer Ken McMahon, and bassist Jeff Smook.

The band played more than 250 dates in 1997, and will have matched that by the time this year ends.  The band has released two independent albums — Chicks Suits and Cadillacs and the Juno-nominated What Were You Thinking? — and won the Toronto Blues Society New Talent Search. The band was chosen Independent Recording Artists of the Year by COCA, the campus entertainment organization.

Back in Alberta, they’ve won ARIA Awards for Best Group and for Best Blues Album.

The Rockin’ Highliners: From left, Alex Herriot, Ken McMahon, Robert Tycholis, Clayton Sample and Jeff Smook. Below, Herriot and Sample on stage at Toronto’s Horseshoe.

They’ve played in Holland and Belgium (15 one nighters in, well, a 15-day trip), competed in the annual International Blues Talent Competition in Memphis (no, they didn’t win, but they did have burgers in the restaurant next door to Sun Studios), and played festivals from Fredericton to Vancouver and from Toronto to Tofino.

Rockin’ Highliners get ready for Duke Robillard-produced release

The band’s music began by taking what was, initially, a basic blues approach to the jump/swing pioneered by the likes of T-Bone Walker and Pee Wee Crayton. They added songs by Louis Prima and  Louis Jordan to the repertoire, and then started creating their own material.

The band named themselves after an early swing group in the ’40s fronted by guitarist Tiny Grimes and named the Rockin’ Highlanders. “That’s because the band all wore kilts, which was pretty freaky, but people loved them,” Tycholis says.

This band’s not hanging its hat on the swing trend

The current interest in swing has certainly helped bring new fans to the band, but Tycholis and company are not hanging their hats on the trend. Says the band’s frontman: “We’re a swing blues band, if you like. But the emphasis is on the blues.”

The emphasis is also on giving audiences a good time, and to that end the band has purposely, since the beginning, been a road band. “We’re just anxious to get out of Edmonton; if we stayed home we’d wear out our welcome there pretty soon,” says Tycholis.  “We’re old school road warriors; we don’t stop unless the van breaks down.”

Plans call for the first recording sessions to be held in Edmonton in January, after the band comes off the road from a non-stop touring schedule that has taken them through the entire year with hardly a day off.  And the band is both excited and just a little nervous that Duke Robillard, who first met the band at a festival in Fredericton, will produce the album. They met again when the band was asked to come

Emmylou’s Spyboy now on Stony Plain

Stony Plain has released the new Emmylou Harris CD, Spyboy, in Canada. The album, with 14 tracks, has been released on the Eminent label in the United States, which is owned by the singer and her Nashville-based management company, Monty Hitchcock Associates.

Spyboy features her current band: Buddy Miller (guitar, harmony vocals), Brady Blade on drums, percussion and vocals, and Daryl Johnson on bass, percussion and vocals.

The repertoire on the album, however, represents all the stages of her long and distinguished career.

In addition to earlier songs like the Gram Parsons’ and Chris Hill-man’s Wheels, Rodney Crowell’s I Ain’t Living Long Like This, and a quiet but stunning version of Love Hurts, she includes some of her most recent material, including two songs by Daniel Lanois (who produced her previous album, Wrecking Ball): Where Will I Be and an 8:40 version of The Maker which closes the album.

Lanois, the Hamilton-born musician, songwriter and producer, has had a remarkable effect on Harris, as she acknowledges in the liner note of the new album; thanks are included “to Daniel Lanois for the blueprints and the roadmap.”

Emmylou’s Spyboy now on Stony Plain

In addition, his fondness for New Orleans, where much of Wrecking Ball was recorded, led to the name of her band, and this CD — “Spyboy” is defined on the new album as “a Mardi Gras term for the person who goes ahead of the parade; a street entertainer, jester, troublemaker, scout.”

The album opens with another Canadian song, the Jesse Winchester tune My Songbird, and the record also includes a storming version of Born to Run (written by Paul Kennerly, her ex-husband) and a touchingly vulnerable version of Boulder to Birmingham.

Remarkable critical response to album

The critical response to the album has been remarkable, with five-star reviews. The New York Times said the new record was “not so much a career retrospective as a re-imagining of her past.”

“Emmylou has always zigged when the rest of the music world has zagged.

“After doing country long before it was remotely cool, and then getting exiled from country radio along with virtually everyone else over 40, she seems more adept than ever,” wrote critic Peter Applebome.

“She first came to Nashville as an outsider with a suspect rock pedigree, and is now regarded as the keeper of the flame while Nashville churns out contemporary pop country.”

The release of Spyboy in Canada is not the first time that Emmylou Harris’ aching, sweet voice has graced a Stony Plain album — the label released Ricky Skaggs’ Sweet Temptation album on Sugar Hill almost 20 years ago, featuring Emmylou’s vocals, and members of the Hot Band, her band at the time. And in 1984 she recorded the supporting vocals on the title track of Bob Carpenter’s long-unissued Silent Passage album for Warner Bros., which, years later, Stony Plain was able to release.

If you walk into my office, the first thing you’ll see are four Emmylou Harris posters on the wall. Someone told me it was a shrine, and I agreed, but did mention there were others at the altar—Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, Muddy Waters,  Solomon Burke among them.

Harris has been a beacon in my life since I got a copy of her first major label record, Pieces of the Sky, back in 1975; it immediately led me back to the two remarkable albums with Gram Parsons, and even her pre-Parsons album Gliding Bird (which I suspect she wishes she had never made).

Since then, I’ve traveled with her music, buying every album she’s ever made, and, in fact, every record I can find that she’s ever sung on — and she is a consummate studio musician. This is, after all, a woman who has contributed backup vocals for dozens (hundreds?) of artists, from Anne Murray to Linda Ronstadt and Dolly Parton to Mary Kay Place to Guy Clark to Jesse Winchester to Bob Dylan and Willie Nelson and Mary Black and Steve Earle and Bob Carpenter and Vince Gill and George Jones and Roy Rogers and Cheryl Knight and Delia Bell and ... the list is endless.

All of us have favourite artists; people whose gift allows them to speak to perfect strangers and turn them into friends for life. She has set an example as an artist who has always moved forward, taken risks, and yet never for a second betrayed or forgotten the roots of the music she sings.

She’s touched the worlds of rock, country, and folk with ease — and I suspect that the only reason she hasn’t tried a whole album of pop songs from the past (like Mr. Sandman) is that the “country” ache of her voice doesn’t really work in a jazz context.

Her voice has changed over the years; today, it seems slighter, even more vulnerable but more worldly-wise than ever it was. Better still, she retains a certain reserve in public, a certain dignity. Like all country stars, she meets fans after every show and signs autographs until the last request has been honoured. Her longevity as an artist is not unique in country music; the standard of her work, however, can be matched only by that of Johnny Cash or Willie Nelson.

I met her once, and it wasn’t perfect; I remember being nervous, and offering what, in hindsight, was a stupid observation about a project she had just finished. Blushing, I turned away. Years later, I hope she has forgotten me; I console myself with the thought that I can’t possibly be the only one of her fans who, tongue-tied, has said something he wishes he or she hadn’t.

The “shrine” in this office (and Holger Petersen has a couple of the same posters in his) is one fan’s tribute to an artist who has spoken to me for over a quarter of a century. Like everyone at Stony Plain, we’re all honoured by the opportunity to help others discover her music.

Good news for the multitude of Ian Tyson fans out there: He’s well on his way to completing a raft of new tunes for a new release on Stony Plain.

“This will be something a bit different,” he said recently. “I’ve long wanted to include some other influences in my material — jazz, the kind of classic standards that were pop music from a calmer era — and the songs I’ve been writing recently seem to be having that sort of edge.”

Along with Cindy Church and Paul Brandt, Tyson appeared at the prestigious President’s Dinner at Canadian Country Music Week in Calgary — and previewed two of the new songs.

Hopefully, Tyson will be ready to go into the studio early next year. He will record some material in Nash-ville, and former CBC producer Danny Greenspoon has been working with him on sessions in Toronto.

Stony Plain has signed Sonny Rhodes to a long-term, world-wide recording contract.  The first record under the agreement will be released early next year to coincide with a major winter tour of western Canada set for mid-February through early March.  Dates in the United States starting in January will precede the Canadian tour.

Born in Texas, Sonny Rhodes is a unique artist — one of the very few artists in blues history to play the lap steel guitar.  Visually, resplendent in a bejeweled turban and often a bright red suit, he is an unforgettable figure on stage.

He is also an artist who performs mostly original material. The All Music Guide’s entry describes him as “so full of musical ideas that he is destined to inherit the seats left open by the untimely passing of blues greats like Albert King and Albert Collins.”

A blistering instrumentalist, Rhodes is a gritty singer with a real passion for the material he performs.  He has recorded two albums for Ichiban, and in recent years has released albums on the Kingsnake label, produced by Bob Greenlee — who is working on the new CD for Stony Plain.  The new record is being completed at the Kingsnake Studios in Florida, close to the small town where Rhodes now makes his home when he’s not on the road.

Plans for the second leg of the Canadian tour, which will include Toronto, Montreal, Ottawa and other major cities are in the works for April, and it is hoped that Rhodes and his band will undertake several summer festival dates in Canada.

All of this is just fine with Sonny Rhodes. “I am what you call a blues warrior.  I love to travel; there’s nothing like the sound of my engine going from one job to the next.

Who’s the busiest man in the Canadian entertainment industry?

The answer: Stony Plain recording artist Jim Byrnes.

The Vancouver-based actor and musician has just completed 26 installments of the Jim Byrnes Show for Baton Broadcasting. The show is currently being seen in Vancouver at 11:30 p.m. each Friday night, but will be syndicated across the country in the near future.

His well-known role as blues bar owner Joe Dawson in the Highlander series is being reprise in a new spin-off television series, Highlander: The Raven.

He’s also booked for the next Highlander movie, too, which will be shot in Vancouver in March.

In addition, Byrnes is in almost half the 22 installments of a new series called The Net, which is seen on the USA Network, and may be picked up for Canadian exposure on the Space Channel.  “I’m a villain in this one — it has elements of X-Files, and is really a spin-off of a recent Sandra Bullock film. Lots of computer stuff, hackers who are trying to control the world, that sort of thing ... good fun, and it’s nice to do it close to home.”

The Jim Byrnes Show is not, he explains, a music show but more of a variety outing, with the artist playing the host of the Byrnes Blues Bar. Lapsing into Ed Sullivan’s famed voice, he adds: “It’s a reely big shew...jugglers, unicyclists, comedians.  We don’t have Senor Wences; maybe we should have Junior Wences!  There’s also lots of music; I sing a song a show, and we’ve had all sorts of guests, including The Paperboys and Long John Baldry.”

The show is likely to be renewed in the new year, and it has been the catalyst that’s put Byrnes into songwriting mode.

“I want to sing my own songs on the show, so I’ve had to work hard to keep up.”

“Right now, I’m working hard on demos for a new recording, along with Tim Hersey, my co-writer. And if the show is renewed, I’m going to need a lot more material,” he says.

Ray Benson, the cheerful, bearded leader of Asleep at the Wheel for close to 30 years, is even happier these days, thanks to the re-release — for the first time on CD in North America — of what he considers one of the band’s very best albums.

As part of Stony Plain’s on-going “Classics” series the label and Benson agreed to reissue Pasture Prime (SPCD-1251).

The album, which Stony Plain originally released in Canada on vinyl in 1985, was the band’s “comeback” effort after five years away from the studios, sidelined by Saturday Night Fever and the disco boom. To this day, Benson says it’s one of the best records the band’s ever made.

“We were really primed when we cut this one, and we’re still proud of it,” says Benson. “It’s just great to have it back again.”

The band was founded in 1970 while Benson was living on a farm in Virginia.  Joined by singer Chris O’Connell, the band moved to San Francisco, and released their first album in 1973.  A year later the whole crew moved to Austin, Texas (where the band is still based), and albums have since followed for Epic, Capitol, Dot, Arista, Liberty, and, in recent years, Epic again.

The Stony Plain release includes one of the best songs ever written about the music industry, titled Write Your Own Song — it’s a Willie Nelson song, and is sung as a duet by Nelson and Benson.

In addition, singer Chris O’Connell turns in some of her best performances with the band.

Also on deck: Fiddler Johnny Gimble, and — on a storming version of Switchin’ in the Kitchen — the entire Roomful of Blues horn section.  The record also marks one of the first recording dates of Junior Brown, who plays lap steel on two tracks.

The CD closes with a cordial and informative 17-minute interview with Ray Benson, recorded by Holger Petersen in Austin just prior to the re-release of Pasture Prime.

Blind Pig, the blues label based in both San Francisco and Chicago, has signed Big Bill Morganfield to a recording agreement. Stony Plain will bring the records to Canadian music fans.

There may be burdensome expectations placed on the offspring of a towering blues presence, but he seems to be overcoming them.

He was a featured performer in a Kennedy Centre Tribute to Muddy Waters concert (which will be nationally televised in the US on PBS next January).  Curiosity has earned him some major festival gigs, but the return invitations have come as a result of his inspired performances.
 
Now, with recording sessions under way with former Muddy Waters guitarist Bob Margolin producing, it looks as though the legacy will continue with a release early next year.

Paperboys, Baldry win west coast music honours

• Two Stony Plain artists were winners at the 1998 West Coast Music Awards.  The Paperboys’ Stony Plain album Molinos (SPCD-1243) was chosen Best Roots and Traditional Album, while Right to Sing the Blues, the most recent Long John Baldry album on the label (SPCD-1232) earned the Best Blues/R&B album award.  Both albums won Juno Awards.

Shirley Myers TV Special celebrates holidays at home

• Shirley Myers will be joined by two other New Brunswick artists, Chris Cummings and Julian Austin, on a special Christmas show to be aired on CMT  on December 6.

Shirley and her friends were being filmed in concert at the Heritage Theatre in St. John; each of the artists will sing Christmas material as well as some of their biggest hits.  The hour-long show, called Going Home for Christmas, will be aired a total of 14 times  throughout December, with the final performances for 1998 set for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day.

CMT’s Calgary-based program manager, Ted Kennedy, said the organization was excited to be traveling to New Brunswick to produce the show. “We believe it will be the highlight of our Christmas season, and will receive strong airplay for years to come.”

Meet cover boys on magazines

• Cover boys:  Dave McLean, along with buddies Colin James and Tim Williams, recently graced the cover of Blues Scene Quarterly — and were the subjects of a five-page article. And Stony Plain president Holger Petersen made the cover of Les Amis du Blues, the Quebec music publication, with a three-page interview.

Music on TV

• Stony Plain continues to be active licensing songs by the label’s artists to television shows.  Swallow’s Tail Jig by The Paperboys was used recenty on Hyperion Bay; Anna Banana, by Paul James, was heard again in reruns on Grand Slam.

And there are two Jim Byrnes tunes Stony Plain co-publishes in the new series Highlander: The Raven.

Alt.Country news

• Stony Plain’s Holger Petersen has compiled an album for another label — Alt.Country has been released by Simitar Entertainment in Minn-eapolis, with sleeve notes by the Edmonton Journal’s Peter North.

Tracks by the Mavericks, Sun Volt, Emmylou Harris, Steve Earle, Lucinda Williams and BR5-49 are included, along with cuts by Cindy Church and Jr. Gone Wild.

Sounds like a plan

• Gary Fjellgaard and veteran Canadian folksinger Valdy have been touring together, featuring new songs and old favourites. Sounds like a good collaborative idea for an album one of these days!

Emmylou Harris
Spyboy (SPCD-1253)

“If often underscores, with spooky power, her intense spiritual yearning and doomed romance with the road.” — Alanna Nash, Entertainment Weekly.

“Arguably the most daring music of her thirty-year career.” — Rolling Stone.

‘With what is possibly her best band ever, a repertoire that grows more impressing with each passing year, and a voice that has matured into one of the great icons of our time, it’s pretty hard not to be be spellbound by this collection.” — Peter North, Edmonton Journal.

“It’s time we gave Emmylou Harris her props not just as a masterful country — or even pop —singer, but as the most accomplished and most powerful woman working the soil of American roots music.” — Roger Hahn, Off  Beat Magazine.

“At 50, Harris could have capitulated to sedate, bluegrass-tinted middle age. Instead, she’s reinvented herself with her finest backup group since the original Hot Band.  This terrific live album ... is mesmerising stuff.  This is the sound of a band reconstructing country rock with a passion the young pretenders might well envy.” — Charlotte Greig, Mojo, UK.

“She’s at the height of her powers here.” —Pulse Magazine.

Long John Baldry
Right to Sing the Blues (SPCD-1232)

“His vocal delivery is as accurate and powerful as ever...no mean feat for a man who has sung serious blues and jazz/rock at international concerts and clubs for well over 30 years.” — Cosmic Debris Musicians Magazine.

Linda McRae
Flying Jenny (SPCD-1239)

A joyful engaging collection of her own songs and a studio full of supportive musicians...Great stuff!” — Sarnia Observer.

“Front and centre, something she’s apparently wanted for years.” — Thunder Bay Chronicle-Journal.

“A fucking masterpiece...she has the uncanny ability to pull folks into the heart of the song, and she sure does it here. Roots album of the year, hands down.” — Colin Bruce, Monair Sweets, Austin.

The Paperboys
Molinos (SPCD-1243)

“This eclectic band grafts fiddle accordion and flute over a strong rhythm section, tossing in some bluegrass banjo here and a Latin Ameri-can riff there, and applying the mix to the sort of songs that stick in your head after one listening....immediately accessible, thoroughly contemporary, and distinctively North American.” — Tom Nelligan, Dirty Linen.

“A combination of rootsy rock and roll energy with the thrills and spills of traditional Celtic music...tight and disciplined throughout, with a perfect understanding of the urgency of Tom Landa’s jagged rootsy pop rock songs. They establish themselves as Canada’s premier rock ’n’ reelers.” — Rock ’n’ Reel, UK.

“The centrepiece is a rendition of Pound a Week Rise, which may have been learned from Dick Gaughan but takes on a life all its own, starting with solo old-timey banjo before evolving and building into an extraordinary powerful full-tilt rocker that matches the range of the words perfectly.” — Sing Out.

Cindy Church
Cindy Church (SPCD-1235)

“Cindy Church has one of the purest voices around ... if only she could get a bit of attention in Europe, she could be one of the most popular acts on the country scene.”— Stewart Fenwick, Country Music & Dance, Scotland. .

Dave McLean
For the Blues ... Always (SPCD-1249)

“He has been a significant influence on such leading Canadian blues-styled artists as singer-guitarist Colin James and young Atlantic Records trio Wide Mouth Mason.” — Larry Leblanc, Billboard.

McLean has been stunning audiences for 28 years, yet For the Blues...
Always is only his second CD.

Duke Robillard
Stretchin’ Out (SPCD-1250)

To say that anyone is unequivocally “the best” at anything is a precarious statement, usually more useful for impact than truthfulness. Caution (almost) aside, though, Duke Robillard is (almost certainly) the world’s best living jump-blues guitarist. And for those who have never been wowed by his recordings, Stretchin’ Out — his first live disc since he co-founded Roomful of Blues three decades ago — offers ample proof.

Like many instrumentalists, Robillard’s best playing has never found its way to tape. His recordings, from early LPs with Roomful of Blues and the Pleasure Kings through a string of solo releases (including three recent discs on Rounder Records and Virgin/
Pointblank) were spotty, often straying from his strong suit.

However, on this new hour-long, nine-track set recorded in 1995, Robillard zeroes in on a classic set of jump and blues.

Opening with Too Hot to Handle, a longtime live staple, Robillard (with vets Marty Ballou on bass and Marty Richards on drums) establishes his stunning command of the instrument; Gee I Wish is nothing short of phenomenal — not for its speed or flash, but for its not-so-simple good taste.

Robillard is imbued with a sense of melody usually reserved for the best horn players.  His phrasing is uncanny as he effortlessly tosses in accents and twisting phrases every which way but loose. Robillard shines on Albert Collins’ Dyin’ Flu, unleashing stinging volleys of notes one minute, and executing slow, soulful bends the next.

Over his pumping rhythm guitar in Big Joe Turner’s Midnight Cannonball, saxman Gordon Beadle matches Robillard with a blistering squealing solo. The disc ends with a version of T-Bone Walker’s Don’t Leave Me Baby, Robillard once again demonstrating an inexhaustible well of ideas.

In the spirit of postwar greats like Louis Jordan and Big Joe Turner, Robillard plays music everyone can understand.  — Michael Lipton, L.A. Weekly, Oct. 9-15, 1998.

If Smith had stayed longer than he did in Muddy Waters’ band, when he replaced Little Walter, he might have achieved the fame he deserved.

He did record for Modern, however, and this compilation includes some sides from the mid-’60s, and nine tracks recorded in 1982 with Rod Piazza’s excellent band; a harp duet with Piazza is the highlight of Asiatic Stomp.

Smith, who died not long after the sides were made, was a major influence not only on Piazza, but on Kim Wilson and countless other members of the new generation of blues harp players.

This CD offers some virtuoso performances, many of which have never been released before (and all of which are extremely rare), and should be recommended without reservation to blues harp players and fans.

One of the most powerful new female voices in the blues, Deborah Coleman’s raw energy, searing guitar work and engaging songs are building her an international reputation.

On her second outing for the label, she’s accompanied by the late Luther Allison’s players, the James Solberg Band, and the release includes eight strong originals in the song list.

Thanks to a growing number of supporters, this artist is touring consistentl

1. Most blues begin “woke up this morning.”

2. “1 got a good woman” is a bad way to begin the blues, unless you stick some-thing nasty in the next line. (i.e.: “I got a good woman — with the meanest dog in town.”)

3. Blues are simple. After you have the first line right, repeat it. Then find something that rhymes. (i.e: “Got a good woman/With the meanest dog in town (X2)/He got teeth like Margaret Thatcher and he weighs 500 pounds.”

4. The blues are not about limitless choice.

5. Blues cars are Chevies and Cadillacs. Other acceptable blues transportation is a Greyhound bus or a southbound train. Walkin’ plays a major part in the blues lifestyle. So does fixin’ to die.

6. Teenagers can’t sing the blues. Adults sing the blues. Blues adulthood means old enough to get the electric chair if you shoot a man in Memphis.

7. You can have the blues in New York City, but not in Brooklyn or Queens. Hard times in Vermont or North Dakota are just depression. Chicago, St. Louis, and Kansas City are still the best places to have the blues.

8. The following colors do not belong in the blues:
   a) orange
   b) beige.

9. 9. You can’t have the blues in an office or honky-tonk. The lighting is wrong.

10. 10. Good places for the blues:
    a) the highway,
    b) the jailhouse,
    c) the empty bed.

11. 11. No one will believe it’s the blues if you wear a suit, unless you happen to be an old black man.

12. 12. Do you have the right to sing the blues?  Yes, if:
    a) your first name is a southern state,
    b) you’re blind,
    c) you shot a man in Memphis,
    d) you can’t be satisfied.

13. 13. Neither Frank Sinatra nor Meryl Streep can sing the blues.

14. 14. If you ask for water and your baby gives you gasoline it’s the blues. Other blues beverages are:
    a) wine,
    b) Irish whiskey,
    c) muddy water.

15. 15. If your life ends in a cheap motel or a shotgun shack it’s blues death. Stabbed in the back by a jealous lover is a blues way to die. And so is the electric chair, substance abuse, or being denied treatment in an emergency room.

16. 16. Some blues names for women:
    a) Sadie,
    b) Big Mama.

17. 17. Some blues names for men:
    a) Joe
    b) Willie
    c) Little Willie
    d) Lightning

18. 18. Persons with names like Sierra or Sequoia will not be permitted to sing the blues no matter how many men they shoot in Memphis.

© 1997 by Judith Podell

The return of our contest

Special prizes (three brand-new Stony Plain blues records, and a Duke Robillard shirt — guaranteed polyester, complete with the name “Duke” attached — will be sent to the reader who submits the best Canadian content version of Judith’s parody.  Runners-up get other goodies, and the winning version will be included in the next issue of Stony Plain News, if it makes the editors smile.

Montreal’s ace blues-based singer, songwriter and guitarist Ray Bonneville is joining Stony Plain’s roster of artists.

Now at his creative peak, after two previous independent releases, he steps up to the plate  with a new effort.  More in the next issue; expect a release in the first quarter of 1999.

The only constant part of the music business, of course, is change. And in the years Stony Plain has been on the scene, we’ve seen plenty of it — and these days the pace of change is accelerating.

Let’s see now. Radio deregulation, leading to fewer stations, owned by fewer and larger companies.  Big record companies swallow bigger record companies.  Major concentration (particularly in Canada) of newspaper ownership.  Fewer and larger music publishers.  Fewer distributors who can handle independent music.  Fewer chains of record stores as independent shops go to the wall.  And At the same time, governments get bigger and bigger, and it seems to take for ever to get them to understand the concerns of different segments of the music business.

Those of us who work in the independent sector — and those of us who attempt to market what I’ll call “minority” music — face  tougher and tougher times.

Is there an answer? I believe there is.  Years ago, British guitarist Robert Fripp said it best: “Be small.  Be mobile.  Work hard.  Don’t stop.”   To that, I would add one more word: Participate, and then recite a new mantra: “Think globally, act locally.”

As big organizations know well, there is strength in numbers. Independent music companies must make strategic alliances.  If you work in the industry, join industry organizations and take an active role. If you’re a fan, join your local blues society, volunteer to work on a local festival, help promote gigs by indie artists you admire.

And one of the most important things anyone in the business can do is understand the issues.  Copyright’s THE key issue, and we have major problems in Canada and in the United States.  In Canada, the broadcasters have managed to overturn the long-established blanket license, and thus attack the very foundation of performing rights organizations. And in the United States, new copyright revisions allow restaurants to use music without paying for it — which I, for one, simply call theft.

Independent music is a fragile thing, with a fragile infrastructure.  When times get tough, the tough get
going ... Let’s all work to make it work!

A final note:
Stony Plain was once again honoured by the Canadian Country Music Association as Independent Record Company of the Year.  This is, in fact, the fourth year in a row that we’ve won this award; this recognition from our peers in the country music field is very gratifying, and we’ll try to deserve it.
 

Holger Petersen

1) Check the website: www.stonyplainrecords.com
2) Write to us at P.O. Box 861, Edmonton, AB T5J 2L8, Canada.
3) Call or FAX:  Ph. 780 468-6423.   FAX: 780 465-8941.
4) Talk to the boss: Holger Petersen: holger@ stonyplainrecords.com
5) Want off this list, or know someone who wants on: E-mail the
       editor: Richard Flohil: rflohil@sympatico.ca
6) Need records to review, interviews with Stony Plain  artists, or
       backstage passes? Same thing: e-mail rflohil@sympatico.ca