The Shirley Years part 5

Hi everybody! More people than I thought have been waiting for this next installment of The Shirley Years. I began the series with no other aim than to chronicle and archive the era for Shirley and myself. But I’ve been getting feedback from unexpected sources expressing interest and gently nudging me to quicken the pace.

For those of you just jumping in, the artist is Shirley Eikhard.

So here’s the fifth part. We begin in the spring of 1979. It’s been ten months since the end of the last project.

Toss Me A Bone

The timing was perfect. For close to a year, I had no problem finding work. Having a career in music is a little like being a feral dog looking for food. You spend way more time foraging than eating. It was different this time. I went from tours with Marc Jordan and David Bradstreet to a steady gig with George Olliver. I was off only a week when Shirley called.

The Idea

She said she’d been wood-shedding, a musician’s term for hiding away from the world and just practicing. The result was a new direction and proficiency in her guitar playing and songwriting.
She wanted to put together a band with two keyboard players and rehearse intensely for two weeks. I was intrigued. It was an opportunity to collaborate with her to arrange and orchestrate a new artsy and adventurous sound.
She’d found a great player who was entirely at home with a Fender Rhodes and played the Clavinet like Stevie Wonder. Evelyne Datl could hold down the rhythm like a funky guitar player leaving me free to sweeten with electronic strings, synthesizer, organ, and Yamaha grand piano.
I made some calls, and we found a bass player and drummer who had been working together in the Paul Christopher band. Henry Heilig and Jack Proacher.
We planned to play for a while outside of Toronto to tighten up the band and then hit the showrooms in town. We had an agent who outwardly agreed to the plan but turned out to be all talk. He told us he had access to the Toronto venues. He didn’t.
After a week and a half of rehearsals, we had a schedule for the first six weeks. We were going to places like Coburg, Ottawa, Kingston, and Peterborough. When Henry saw it, he quit. But he was a pro. He had notated all his parts. We just needed a good reader, and then we could proceed.
Jack found a bass player named Glenn Yorga. We went on with this line-up for four months.
The band was tight and highly structured. Exactly what we wanted at the time. Strong orchestral-like phrasings, extreme dynamics, and dramatic solo sections. During rehearsal, Shirley and I had gently steered this creative activity into a format that I hoped wouldn’t blur the main idea. Her.

Sharks Won’t Touch Agents As A Matter Of Professional Courtesy

We had an agent, as I was saying, who had agreed to the plan of four to six weeks of bookings out of town and then go into the essential show rooms in Toronto. He badly wanted an exclusive arrangement, and we implied that it might be possible later if things worked out.
At six weeks, no bookings were coming up for Toronto. When the situation hadn’t changed at ten weeks we started looking for the people who really were booking the Toronto rooms. It was recommended that we talk to David Bluestein, an experienced Toronto booking agent.
I made an appointment for us to meet with him. He told us that the guy we had couldn’t book any of the rooms we wanted. David went on to say he that he could. And he did. He got us the Jarvis House, a popular show bar right downtown.

Ya Got Me Shakin’ Now

When we got that news, I called the first agent to tell him. All hell broke loose. He called me every nasty name you can think of and even made up a few new ones.
I took the high road and let him rant. It was vicious but oddly entertaining. When there was a pause, I said:
“You didn’t keep your end of the agreement. It’s a done deal; we’ve moved on.”
The gasping, snarling cloud of abuse got worse.
“I’ll make sure you never work again…..” He meant me, personally. Then he hung up.
My first thought was that he could have at least gotten the cliche right,
“You’ll never work in this town again.”
Flash forward to the first two weeks of July and the Jarvis House. This would be my last gig with Shirley for many months.
It wasn’t a sudden decision to stop. We didn’t intend for it to go on indefinitely, and we’d accomplished most of what we set out to do.

Anatomy Lesson

An interesting event happened while we were at the Jarvis House. There was a television producer who had a weekly program showcasing artists and bands. Someone in our band arranged for him and his crew to come out to the gig. Shirley seemed interested but wasn’t too keen on giving up a break between sets to talk business. I told her I’d speak to them.
They arrived and watched a set before I sat down with them. They were very eager. Dates were already being thrown at me.
“Let’s talk about some details,” I said. “What are you paying? I prefer to contract this through the union…….”
I was cut off abruptly by the producer.
“Paying? It’s exposure! You also get a copy of the show.”
“Nothing personal,” I responded, “but we don’t need your exposure. Shirley is a well known singer-songwriter and we’ve done half a dozen television shows together for Global and CBC over the years, and we got paid for all of them.”
“Listen,” he said angrily, “if Shirley didn’t have big tits, I wouldn’t even be here.”
With that, I stood up and said, “We won’t be doing business,” and I left.

Shameless And Nameless (by necessity)

That wasn’t the end of the band. We got together again with Shirley for about a month early in 1980. More on that in another post.
But we (without Shirley) also did a couple of weeks with a singer who later became well known around Toronto. Our last gig with her was three nights at The Edge, a famous show club on Church Street. She and her manager left right after the final song and never paid us.

They both ignored any telephone messages I left. I had all her charts. Some looked professionally done, so she likely paid some good money to have them made. I got a letter a month or so later from her. It was a plea for the charts.
“ I can’t work without them, and if I don’t work, I can’t pay you.”

She had no intention of paying us. Anyone who would skip out on their band and give no explanation couldn’t be trusted.

Shortly after, I threw the charts out.

Analysis

The project was successful in some ways. It was an excellent forum for Shirley to showcase her many talents. New experimental songwriting, lead guitar, the chromatic harmonica, and of course, that incredible voice.
I had high hopes for the two keyboards experiment and I wasn’t disappointed. Music loaded with synthesizers, chorused pianos, organs and string machines was trendy at the time. I’d already been in three very good bands with this format but none of them worked as well as the one with Evelyne.
My musical collaboration with Shirley went up another level while we were arranging and having a ball doing it. I was sure we’d end up writing a song or two together.
But in retrospect (although I sort of knew it at the time), the band was exceeding its mandate. It became busy in more than just the usual ways. Every arrangement was epic, every performance a dynamic, headlong missile. We were like a jet airplane that relied more on momentum than it did on lift to stay aloft.

Next

Part 6 begins with the most unusual sequence of events ever for Shirley and me. It involved recording, performing, TV, and thousands of miles of travel. All of it was crammed into just two weeks!
Stay tuned.