Blues community honours Alec Fraser April 14 at Healey's
Friends of Alec Fraser (pictured at right) will gather on Good Friday to help him celebrate his 50th birthday and to raise funds for Alec's wife Maggie's medical treatments. The Jerome Godboo Band with Shawn Kellerman and Pat Rush on guitars, Alec Fraser on bass, and Al Cross on drums, play at 10 p.m. and Jerome Godboo's new band with Joe Toole from the Phantoms will do their debut concert at 6:30 p.m. Jeff Healey, Jimmy Bowskill, Danny Marks, Chris Whiteley and Caitlin Hanford, Julian Fauth with Wayne Charles, Broken Joe and Wendell Ferguson and many others will be playing starting at 4 p.m. on Good Friday April 14th. A lot of love coming out to honour "Sir Alec" on his birthday. Photo Eddy B - Blueheartarchive.com
Stony
Plain Turns 30!
Stony Plain is a record company based in Edmonton, a culturally diverse city on the edge of Canada's prairies, but one that rarely shows up on the North American record industry radar. The label specializes in what its founder calls roots music: Contemporary music with roots in the past that stands on its own, but which influences almost all the pop music you hear around you. In the last 30 years, the label has released almost 325 albums of blues, classic r&b, folk, country, bluegrass, rock and roll, and music that is impossible to put into pigeonholes. The common element in all of these forms of music is that the musicians, regardless of current fad or fashions, put their hearts and souls into the music they make. Stony Plain released the results - and almost invariably found that people responded.
When Holger Petersen (left) started the label on the kitchen table of his home in Edmonton, he had no idea that he'd still be running a record company 30 years on. He had been a radio/TV arts student, he had a blues radio show on CKUA, the Alberta public radio network, and he got to meet the artists who came through town, share a meal or a drink with them, and, better still, he got to interview most of them. And thus came about what was the first record Petersen produced, before Stony Plain even began. In 1972 Walter Horton, one of the great harmonica blues players of all time, was in town with Willie Dixon's Chicago Blues All Stars. Horton had a reputation as a taciturn man who did not trust too many people, but an introduction from Dixon and half a bottle of Teacher's excellent whiskey seemed to break the ice. He agreed to take part in a recording session with a local band called Hot Cottage. Petersen made a deal with London Records (now yet another victim of ongoing industry consolidation) and the record was released - and later issued in both the US and the UK.
In short order, other records with other blues artists - Roosevelt Sykes, Johnny Shines - were completed, and it became obvious that Petersen ought to start his own label. The first artist on Stony Plain, however, was a friend called Paul Hann who, with Pete White, wrote country folk, and helped Petersen explore other kinds of music.
In the first years there were singer-songwriters, blues artists, some Irish music, some folk, a taste of rock and roll, and even a contemporary pop album by a band called Crowcuss (with two members of The Guess Who), which scored a #1 hit. Alas, the hit was in Guatemala, not the US and Canada - and one can only guess how the Stony Plain story might have turned out if the band had broken wide open. The early years were not without incident. There were a couple of occasions when the label nearly sank, but lucky breaks kept it alive. A good friend of Petersen's, Alvin Jahns, became a chartered accountant, and initially worked part time with the company, but as it grew he became its business manager and partner.
An early suggestion from Al Mair, head of another growing independent label (and now publisher of the magazine Applaud!), led Petersen to MIDEM, the massive annual music convention in the south of France held each January. It was there that the company began to build international links - connections that, today, mean that Stony Plain's music is distributed around the world. It wasn't until the mid-'80s, however, that the company found itself on firm ground, thanks to the amazing success of Ian Tyson's classic album, Cowboyography, which became Stony Plain's first platinum CD. In the years since, the label has released (or re-released from other sources) a dozen Tyson albums, and he remains a jewel on the label's roster. In 1993 Petersen came across the American blues guitarist Duke Robillard at the Winnipeg Folk Festival, and built a continuing relationship that has had an astonishing effect on the label. Not only has Duke recorded almost a dozen stellar CDs for the label (and a couple of DVDs as well), he's produced almost as many for other artists on Stony Plain. Including Jay McShann, the late Jimmy Withserspoon, Rosco Gordon and Billy Boy Arnold. Duke is signed to Stony Plain for the world, and continues to deliver wonderful music to the label.
Petersen remains a self-confessed music junkie, but in addition to his day-to-day work with the label, gives generously of his time to music industry organizations. He continues as a director of SOCAN, Canada's performing rights society (for more than 15 years, so far), as well continuing an active role with the Canadian Independent Recording Industry Association that began in 1983. Along the way, he helped found the Edmonton Folk Festival (and was its artistic director for three years), and was a founding director of the Alberta Recording Industry Association. He has been honoured with an honourary Doctorate from Athabasca University. For his activities in the music industry, Petersen was inducted into the Order of Canada (the country's highest civil honour) in 2003. Just as importantly, he's maintained his links with CKUA; Petersen's show, Natch'l Blues, has been aired every week for 36 years. He's much better known on a national basis for hosting Saturday Night Blues, CBC Radio's long running show, now in its 19th year. And, for the last eight years, he has also programmed the blues channel on Galaxie, the CBC's digital satellite network.
All these years later, Holger Petersen still hears music that surprises him and delights him; the tired cynicism that's part of so many people in the music industry just isn't part of the man's make-up. And Stony Plain is still run out of a pleasant house in an Edmonton suburb, with three rooms filled with one of the most comprehensive record collections in the country. Sure, Petersen's a practical man. There is lots of music he would like to release, if he could be sure that it would sell enough to pay for itself and help keep the label on an even keel. He's cautious about what the label puts out - maybe a dozen releases in a year - and he tries to keep the records in the catalogue for as long as he can. Of course, change is in the wind, but Petersen figures that it always has been - this is a man who collects 78 rpm records, used to market 45 rpm singles, 8-tracks and cassettes, and emerged into the world of the CD. Now the days of the CD may be numbered, as the way that listeners acquire their music changing.
But Holger Petersen believes that good music always finds its home. And for 30 years, this record company has proved him right. (See John's Blues Picks for a review of 30 Years of Stony Plain)
- Richard Flohil
Richard Flohil is a Toronto-based writer, editor, publicist and promoter who has worked with Stony Plain for more than 25 years. If ever there was a labour of love, he says, this is it.
Web mistress' note: Here's the Stony Plain Records website url: www.stonyplainrecords.com