Jamin’ At The Beach

What Could They Possibly Be Thinking?

Here’s a strange phenomenon. A lot of my musician friends (and a family member) have moved north. 
The Georgian Bay horseshoe from Owen Sound to Wasaga Beach seems to be the current retirement area of choice for a lot of people, not just musicians.
I get that it offers a less frantic lifestyle than the GTA, and I get that house prices are marginally lower up there. Also, the hills of the Niagara Escarpment make for gorgeous scenery. 
What I don’t understand is why, as they age, people are opting to live in one of the snowiest areas of Canada.

Crazy

My brother lives in Wasaga Beach. Last year, the snow from just one storm completely trapped him in his house. I’m serious! He couldn’t open the front door. He had to call our brother-in-law, Enzo, in Alliston to shovel out a narrow escape route. 
To be fair, the area is close to utopian for seven or eight months.
But, as Eden-like as it is during the summer, it’s equally as arctic hell-like from early December until late March.
The problems are its proximity to Lake Huron – Georgian Bay and the prevailing winds. That equals lake effect snow, and lots of it.

The Reason For The Journey

A good friend whom I’ve known since my early days in the music business, Tony, and his very pleasant wife, Tracy, have these great jam sessions a few times a year at their house in Wasaga Beach.
Nobody completely retires from the music business. The players who gather for these sessions are at least 70, and most are still playing gigs. So the jams are on Sundays…. better odds that everyone can make it.

Where Are My Sunglasses

The players who attend are like an A-list of Canadian musicians. They’ve all been involved with bands that have had hit records. In some cases, they even wrote or co-wrote those songs. 
Lighthouse, Allanah Miles, Frozen Ghost, Marc Jordan, Toronto, Ian Thomas, Gordon Lightfoot, and Sheriff are a few of the acts represented. If it sounds like I’m dropping names ….. I am.
On May 31, Jeanette and I loaded up the truck and headed pretty much straight north to Wasaga (pronounced wuh-SAUG-uh). This city is much longer than it is wide. It was originally just a resort area servicing, at 14 kilometres (or 8.7 miles), the longest freshwater beach in the world.

Oh Yeah, The Music

After we picked up my brother, Pat, it was still another 20-minute drive to Tony’s place. 
Nobody knows what songs we’ll be playing. Someone, usually one of the guitar players, will start playing a familiar intro, and we all join in. There are always at least three great singers in attendance, so chances are good that one of them will know the lyrics. If it happens that they forget, say, the second verse, they just repeat the first. 
If a tune is started that I don’t know, I play the odds. There are only certain ways the chord progression can go, so I tentatively take a chance on the most likely changes, then open up with what I’ve learned in the second verse. 
It’s definitely an example of where experience meets intuition. I used that same process when I auditioned for Gord. Most of you know the story. I was called into Eastern Sound as a session player to add some grand piano to the theme song of a movie Gord had just made. He liked what I did, so he and his band started playing the tunes in his repertoire, inviting me to play along. There were a few I recognized from the radio, but most of them I had never heard before. I got through them all. I’m sure that had a lot to do with why Gord asked me if I’d be interested in joining his band. 

An Irish Piano Player Walks Into A Bar

It’s not just the music that makes the jams fun. It’s the jokes, the stories (musicians generally, have a lot of stories, and I, specifically, have the most), the updates on what everyone is doing, and the camaraderie. It’s also fun to communicate in the unique way musicians do.
There are nuances to our lingo. Just for example, the descriptive word “cool” means something a little different to musicians than it does to everyone else. 
Sometimes there are no words at all. The communication can be as simple as a shrug or a nod. Body language. 
When I worked with Shirley Eikhard in a folk trio, no drums, we knew immediately when to speed up, slow down (particularly valuable in intros and outros), when not to play, and even when to modulate keys just from subtle movements. All good musicians are on the same page with this, and it’s a lot of fun making it work, particularly in a jam where there are no expectations….. No pressure. 
When we left there, Pat to his house, and Jeanette and I to Toronto, my musical batteries were fully recharged.