Mike Angus - Hymns

Mike Angus has been my pal for a long time. At one point we lived together in my old Centre Street house, comparing notes on the Rheostatics. At another we started the original Collapse with Ken and Pat after a particularly inspiring Weakerthans show. Mike had come up playing drums in the Edmonton band Hyperpsyche with his best friend Chris, even flirting with a record deal in the days before the big labels merged and culled their rosters. More recently he's the co-frontman for the Wheat Pool and, even more recently, playing and recording as a solo artist.

Mike asked if I would contribue a little pedal steel to the recordings and I joined him at Bryan Reichert's Rhythm Egg studio in January the day after our Forest Tate gig at Edmonton's Wunderbar. If memory serves I played on the songs Patricia Hotel, Cold Cold Ground and my personal favourite, What Does It Mean. Although the record isn't out until July 19, it's already starting to get some online press.

What the heck is a pedal steel guitar anyway?

Let’s get one thing straight right off the bat: I’m not really a pedal steel player. There are days when I can pull off a passable imitation of a proficient guitar player, but when it comes to the steel, I’m merely a dabbler.

What surprises me most frequently, however, is how few people even know what a pedal steel is, although almost everyone is guaranteed to have a heard one before.

So, here’s my little primer on the beast itself, as told by a perfect amateur…

First, a love story:

Growing up, I didn’t really listen to much music. My parents had a few classical records and we’d listen to CBC in the car, but mostly to news and magazine type shows. Sometimes they’d break out a tape of golden oldies, the kind offered by Time-Life, but there wasn’t much popular music outside of that. When I did finally get into rock and roll as a teenage, I was influenced heavily by a lot of my punk friends—the pedal steel was the sound of country music and country music was the sound of small-minded rednecks.

But after leaving home at 18 to go to school in Calgary, and struggling with that coming-of-age sense of identity as most young people probably do, I was surprised to find myself drawn back more and more to country music. Its themes and sounds began to make more sense to me and suddenly the pedal steel, though still sounding like rednecks, at least sounded like rednecks with broken hearts from a place I’d finally accepted calling home.

The record that pushed me over the edge was the Wilco/Billy Bragg album Mermaid Avenue, a collection of Woody Guthrie songs unearthed by his daughter and set to new music. Among them was “One By One”, a fine song with Bob Egan’s yearning steel part (although Bob left Wilco shortly after this record was made, he was recruited into Blue Rodeo shortly after). The short instrumental breakdown (around 2:25) doesn’t really amount to a solo, but it drew me to the steel guitar like nothing had to date.

I’ve always loved to ethereal sounds and a great pedal steel player can manipulate notes like water—looking back, I’m surprised I didn’t take to it sooner. Around the time I finished my degree I finally took the plunge and bought one of my own.

So, how does it work?

Although the pedal steel uses similar strings, tuning machines and pick-ups as a regular electric guitar and is generally the same scale, the similarities end there. Steels have a neck, but its function isn’t to fret the string (indeed, there are no frets). Rather, the player uses a heavy chrome slide called a “steel” or “tone bar” to change the pitch of the strings. The steel doesn’t need to transfer any of the string’s energy to the body the way a regular guitar does, resulting in an increase in sustain especially when combined with the vibrato imparted by the tone bar.

Then there’re the pedals. Originally developed by steel players to change the tuning of the strings between songs, they soon began to be used to bend strings as part of the performance. These smooth string bends have become the quintessential pedal steel sound. Furthermore, because the steel player can manipulate the notes with the pedals as well as the tone bar the instrument is capable of sustaining certain notes while resolving others—a feat much more difficult to accomplish on a regular guitar. Most professional steel players have their own combinations of foot and knee levers (known as copedants) custom installed into their instruments.

Finally, most players use a volume pedal to control the attack of the notes, allowing them to perform violin-like swells or fade up dying notes to increase their sustain. The overall performance takes a degree of coordination between hands, fingers, feet and knees. I believe it’s this extra effort that makes guitar players find the steel so challenging but end result is worth it.

Touring with Jay and Jimmie

Day Three, Edmonton

After most of a day’s work, I pick up Ken and we hit the road to Edmonton. About halfway through the drive we get tired of listening to CDs and decide to check out Red Deer’s New Country station which entertains us endlessly. We banter goo- naturedly back and forth about the makings of a good country song, and are shocked to hear a radio ad that compares missing a sale on pornography as worse than missing “Christmas, New Years and Easter combined”. Finally we arrive at Wunderbar just after the rest of the guys.

Wunderbar is a little hole in the wall off Whyte Ave with a tiny stage and a fantastic beer selection. The place is barely open when we arrive and we drag our gear in through Edmonton’s impressive snow drifts. Out back a bobcat is clearing great swaths of snow out of the parking lot and piling it against the building. We size up the little stage and make a plan of attack to deal with the lack of space and power outlets. Eventually however we find a workable solution to the show and manage to set our gear.

At this show, like the last, we’re working the door ourselves—some might find this a bit of a challenge, but it lets us greet people as they arrive and Jay and I amuse ourselves with a little contest keeping score on who’s sold the most CDs. He snaps a photo of the initial score: Jay Baird 1, everyone else 0. Eventually my old pal Mike arrives and we chat about how the shows have been and how great the beer selection is. The story is that Wunderbar used to be frequented by racists skinheads and the new owners were in the process of turning it around. It’s certainly run down, with graffiti covered washrooms, hand-me-down furniture and but it’s small size makes it intimate and it only takes a modest crowd to make it seem packed. Iit fills up impressively for our show, which turns out to be the best one of the tour despite the cramped stage and meagre PA system. Jay is just about joins us again on sax and Brendan makes a little introduction: “We’ve got Jay Baird here joining us on the saxophone... he’ll be taking some inspiration from the sounds coming out of Jim’s room last night.” There’s an awkward look from the crowd. Brendan continues: “Jim lost his virginity last night…” I see Shotgun Jimmy give us a smirk.

“What?!” exclaims Brian. Ken and I turn back, not sure if he’s playing along or legitimately confused. He gives us a questioning look.

“Are you guys fucking with me?” he asks, desperately looking back and forth between us.

Next up is an Edmonton band called the Mitts. According to Jim, their guitar player is allergic to nickel and has to wear a special glove in order to play guitar. It doesn’t hold him back and they play their catchy power pop songs with teenage enthusiasm, making us all jealous of their wild youth.

By the time Jim calls me up to play on “Province to Province” the bar is packed and I need to not only wrestle my stool away from a girl who’d decided to use it as a seat, but also literally push a young man back into the crowd in order to make enough space. Jim asks me to stay for an extra song and we go for it as the night turns over on itself into the best one of the trip.

There’s a lot to learn from the way Jim is able to handle a crowd, to make everyone feel welcome and how effortlessly he can invite strangers in to be a part of something. As Brendan remarked to me later, Jim frequently gets compared to the former Pavement singer Steve Malkmus and always takes it in stride. “That would drive me crazy after a while,” Brendan says, “But Jim is always just like ‘Steve Malkmus! He’s awesome!’ no matter how many times he hears it.”

Afterwards the show we let things settle out, catch up with old pals and make new ones and exchange contact info and CDs with Jim and Jay. I duck out on a round of shots to drive over to Mike’s place while the rest of the crew heads to some friends of Brendan’s for a few more drinks and an night in the chilliest room they’ve apparently ever slept in.

Touring with Jimmie and Jay

you can catch a little bit of Forest Tate playing "This Chemical" in Lethbridge at the end of this clip

Day Two, Calgary

As usual, I’m the first one to wake up—sore and little hung over. After realizing that I’m not going to fall back asleep I get up and make some instant coffee I find in the kitchen. I’ve just sat down with a book when Jimmie comes up the stairs and suggests we go for a walk and maybe find some real coffee.

Outside the streets are treacherous with ice and we both nearly bail a few times before finding a coffee shop. We chat about Sackville, where Mount St. Allison University is and where Jimmie lives and make plans to go to an apparently really great guitar store in Lethbridge.

When we get back to the house the rest of the crew is awake and we load into the van to go to the Lethbridge Casino for a real breakfast. Jimmie tries to guess everyone’s egg orders (“Jay: sunnyside up,

After breakfast we go back to the NAAG to pick up our gear and then head over to the Lethbridge guitar store to drool over vintage gear. Jim spots an amp cover that might fit his little Fender Super Champ.

Finally, after collecting our gear we squeeze into the van (we have Ken now as well, since Brian had left at 5:00 AM to drive back to Calgary for work). It’s not a comfy as the ride down and we’re all a little hung over but in good spirits. Jim entertains us with stories about his time in Whitehorse and working on film sets in Toronto. We all combine our imaginations to develop our ideal super-girl: tall, pregnant, bum chin, back tattoo, moustache, Brooklyn accent, helicopter pilot. We arrive back to a sunny Calgary afternoon. I split back to my place to catch a little snooze and a shower then make my way down to Local 522 for the show. I grab a beer at the bar with Ken and we wait for the rest of the crew to show up.

During the day Local 522 functions as a happy hour gathering spot for office workers, men in suits with trendy scarves and alligator shoes. We probably look like scruffy Neanderthals despite the fact that we’re probably the cleanest we’ll be all week. I’m setting up my steel guitar at the side of the stage when a guy yells out to me:

“Hey, is that a pedal steel?”

“Yep.”

“Do you play it?”

“Yes I do.”

“Are you any good?”

“Well, I’m no Buddy Emmons…”

He seems impressed enough at my name dropping and but then lewdly suggests that I focus my musical attention at the table of women behind him. I look over and see that it’s Brendan’s girlfriend and her crew. He follows it up by implying something even ruder.

I spot my pal Sandy Barron at the bar, nursing a beer and watching the hockey game. I grab a stool behind him and between sneaking out to smoke we settle into a long conversation about Neil Young, soul music and whether or not the Flames have a play-off chance (they don’t). The room is filling up-it’s apparent that Jim and Jay can draw a bit of crowd.

Jay is on first tonight and it’s nice to listen to his set and let a few of his songs settle in. There’re no other bands tonight so we’re able to leave all the gear up on the stage. Our set is a lot more solid and there’s enough hometown support to make us a bit more comfortable on stage. We ask Jay to come and play sax on a new song Brendan is calling “That Asshole and His Dog” and it works out wonderfully, giving it a real Band vibe, like the end of “It Makes No Difference”. Jim is next and I join him again for “Province to Province” which comes crashing down to a wonderful conclusion. Eventually the night dwindles down. I say my goodbyes, make a plan to leave with Ken the next day and head home for some sleep.

Forest Tate: Cracks in Walls

Touring with Jimmie and Jay

Who’s who?

Shotgun Jimmie: currently hailing from Sackville NB but from the wilds of central Ontario (Ajax, if I remember correctly). The widely travelled Jimmie looks like a little kid in his dad’s clothes: jeans, boat shoes (“you got cool shoes, I got my dad’s shoes” he says), a red Forest Rangers shirt and a pom-pom toque. In line at a Staples in Calgary he’s asked “what are you supposed to be, Bob and Doug MacKenzie?” More notably, Jim is both a) a fantastic songwriter and b) an hilarious guy.

Jay Baird: of the Baird brothers of Toronto, accomplished saxophonist by training, recently the bass player for Feist. Jay is the older, quieter one. Jay’s a great musician and an incredibly warm and humble fellow and probably the most road-worn of us (his touring with Feist took him around the world). Almost always wearing a toque. Also, don’t get confused: Shotgun Jimmie used to play in a band called Shotgun and Jaybird, but Jay Baird wasn’t in it.

Brendan Fraser, stage name Forest Tate: a carpenter by trade, a woodsy fellow by nature. Brendan is supremely calm and laid back but heartfelt and wide-eyed too. He writes great backwoods folk/rock songs with just the right blend of chaotic noise--we love them. Dresses a little like a lumberjack, so he fits in with Jim just fine.

The Men Overboard: Ken Price, bass, joker, always up for trouble. Brian Van Staaldine, drums, excited about the nickname “Traps”. John Hadley: pedal steel, early riser, talks too much.

The Plan

Jimmie and Jay are touring Canada through a program offered by Via Rail where musicians can travel for free on the train in exchange for playing once a day to the passengers. They’ve been periodically getting off and playing shows in the towns they arrive in as well. Because there’s no Via Rail passenger service in Calgary, they actually disembarked in Edmonton, took the Red Arrow bus to Calgary and joined up with Forest Tate there. Our plan is to play Lethbridge on Tuesday, Calgary on Wednesday and Edmonton on Thursday, just in time for them to get back on the train out to Vancouver.

Day One, Lethbridge

I arrive at the Forest Tate house to load out. We’ve borrowed our pal Rich’s mini-van and because of a work commitment, Brian is also driving down. We make introductions to the crew, note that nobody is less than six feet tall, divvy up our gear and pack our things into the van. We’re riding ‘limousine style’ with the bench seat all the way in the back of the van and the guitars piled up behind the driver. Forest and Jim take the front seats and Jay and I hop in the back. We pull out just as the sun is setting. It’s my first conversation with Jay and we hit it off pretty good. Although much of conversation was about music, a few things have stuck with me. We discussed making music for the joy of it, the community of it, and experiencing the journeys it takes you on regardless of your level of ‘success’. It’s rather inspiring to see how humble a guy like Jay is. He’d been on tour for three years with Feist, playing the Letterman show and hockey arenas and giant European festivals here he was in the back of a borrowed mini-van completely at ease and excited to play a show to thirty kids in a semi-legitimate venue in Lethbridge. He never name-dropped or acted like he was too good for what was happening (in fact he only mentioned the Feist thing after I asked him about it). The closest he came was telling me that Sarah McLaughlin was “really cool” after I mentioned that I must have seen him play on the same bill as her in Victoria for BC’s centennial celebration a few years ago. I think the conversation affirmed for me that at the end of the day there’s people that concern themselves with ‘making it’ and there’s musicians who play because it’s what they love to do and I’d rather be counted among the later any day.

We meet up with Brian and Ken in Claresholm to stop at the 7-11 for fried chicken and potato wedges and end up having a little tailgate party, smoking and downing coffees and munching fried potatoes dipped in BBQ sauce. Jimmie and Jay are experiencing their first real Chinook and after -30 temperatures in Winnipeg a few days earlier they’re happy for the warm weather. We make some jokes and press on to Lethbridge.

It takes us nearly no time at all to find the venue we’re playing at, a little place called The Naag. As it turns out, Jim accidently left all his merchandise behind in Edmonton at the train station so he spent the morning burning CDs of his setlist for the night and putting them into homemade cases with “Naag Setlist” stamped on them. It’s an adorable idea and also gives him the chance to work a bit about his “hot new album” into his stage banter. The venue itself is actually a shared rehearsal space/art studio used by a Lethbridge band and some university students, but it’s pretty busy for a Tuesday night. They’ve got a fridge jammed full of beer they’re selling for three dollars, and we get a few for free too. I relish the fact that for once I don’t have to drive after the show.

The first band of the night is a local Lethbridge outfit called Zoo Company whose singer reminds Ken and I of Todd Geshe of Olds’s favourite band The Rocky Fortune. They play a spirited set of punky rock and roll tunes and their enthusiasm overcomes their greenness. Our set is next and it feels a little shaky. I’m subbing in for John, our missing guitar player, on a few songs and hadn’t had any rehearsal, making them feel a bit sloppy on my part. All in all it was a somewhat underwhelming start, but not bad enough to spend too much time dwelling on. It’s always the case that things seem a little less in control on stage than from the crowd too.

Brendan had just left the stage when he was cornered by some cub reported (or, more likely, guy with a blog) who wanted to ask him “on a scale of one to ten, how influential was Neil Young’s Harvest on your songwriting”. Brendan told me later that he managed to dodge the question, but it nevertheless became one of our running in-jokes that weekend: “on a scale of one to ten—how influential was that bacon on your breakfast?”

As we were striking our gear Jimmie asked if I would sit in on pedal steel on one of his songs. As a rank amateur I was a bit flattered. “Sure, what are the chords?” I asked him. “I don’t know, like A minor or something…” he replied, which didn’t do much to comfort me. I grabbed a beer and ducked out into the crowd for Jay’s set.

In contrast to the lushly arranged songs of Jay’s record, with their string and horn arrangements , his live show was a more relaxed and scruffy affair but his songs had more than enough merit to stand on their own. It was nice way to get to know someone in the way we did, chatting in the van about life and then watching him unfold some of the same themes from the stage.

Next was Jimmie’s set, with Jay on drums. Jimmie’s songwriting is outstanding, each song arriving as if from nowhere, as if he was spinning them out as they arrived. The crowd was well into the drinks, the venue was warm and friendly and when he got to “Swamp Magic” I jotted down the lyrics in my phone so I wouldn’t forget them:

There’s enough people here to stay up all night

There’s enough people here to start a band alright

There’s enough people here... to stay up all night

Earlier in the van Jay and I had been talking about the kind of venues where you feel welcomed, and how great it always is to play to a crowd that’s happy you’re there. From that perspective the Lethbridge show couldn’t have been any better. Brendan’s pal Evan, who organized the whole thing was gracious and charming and eventually the night gave way to a half dozen of us drinking the last of the beer and talking in the now empty dark hall.

Eventually was pile into the van and over to Evan’s house where he and his roommates have set up pillows and blankets for us to crash on in the living room.