The lawyers advised me to contest the will but I couldn’t do it. Dragging an old lady into court over a few acres of land was something I just wasn’t capable of. I had found out all I needed to know. I truly didn’t give a damn about Fred’s real estate, and God knows Dorothy earned it in those difficult final years. I called off the lawyers—it just wasn’t worth it. In fact there was a certain poetic justice to it all. Everything the old man had scrimped and saved for his entire life was gone. It was a final slap in the face from a man who had given me nothing but the back of his hand my entire life. When I looked down into the casket that day I really wanted to feel something, but nothing happened. All feeling for him had been beaten out of me years ago. I just kept thinking, “This is what I’ve been so afraid of all these years?” He looked so frail and small and peaceful, maybe for the first time in his angry, tormented life. I didn’t hate him anymore, but as much as I wanted to I just couldn’t cry.
When I think of my father, I think of licorice allsorts. Strange that this memory has lasted down through the years, but it sums up everything I remember about the man. When I was a kid Fred kept a jar of licorice allsorts by his chair in the living room. We were absolutely forbidden to touch them. These were Fred’s licorice allsorts. That made them even more enticing ... forbidden fruit. Sometimes I’d try to steal a few just to see if I could get away with it. Of course I never did. Fred always knew exactly how many candies were in that jar, and if even one was missing it would drive him crazy. Sometimes I think I took them just to piss him off. I took some of my worst beatings over Fred’s precious licorice allsorts. In a strange way this has shaped my relationship with my daughter. Ashleigh has always known that what’s mine is hers. My home is her home and anything in it belongs to her. She’ll never be made to feel like a thief in her own home and she’ll never live in terror of her father.
To this day I can’t stand licorice allsorts.
The Evergreens
It took a while to get to Canada, forty years of life on the run
I must have run a million miles or more, gettin’ back where I started from
And the need drivin’ me was beyond my control
But every time I see the evergreens, it brings peace to my soul
Muskoka stars shine so bright, and the lake’s black as coal
And every time I see the evergreens, it brings peace to my soul
It took a while to get to Canada, but this wanderin’ boy has come home
Cause when the show becomes a way of life, it takes on a life of its own
And it can all burn you down, and it all takes its toll
But every time I see the evergreens, it brings peace to my soul
Muskoka stars shine so bright, and the lake’s black as coal
And every time I see the evergreens, it brings peace to my soul
Lyrics by David Clayton-Thomas. Copyright © Clayton-Thomas Music Publishing Inc., 2007.
29
THE EVERGREENS
In 2007 I spent much of the summer recording a new CD with Doc entitled The Evergreens. The album is drenched in Canadiana, from its songwriting to its Group of Seven artwork. The songs speak of the idealism of young love in Willowdale, the peaceful beauty of the Muskoka lakes, the donnybrooks in the bars of Yonge Street and the bohemian existence that was Yorkville. The record is a beauty. I’m very proud of this work. The music doesn’t stray far from the blues. Doc insisted that we keep it simple and stick close to my roots. The album was beautifully recorded by engineering genius Ian Terry. Ian was the recording engineer on our live-in-concert album A Musical Biography. The superb audio quality of that recording speaks for itself. The lyrics on The Evergreens are honest and very personal and the musicianship is superb. Doc is his usual amazing self and I loved making this record. In the final analysis that’s all that really counts.
Over lunch one day a record-company guy was bemoaning his declining sales due to downloads and the Internet. I told him how excited I was about the new Evergreens album. He looked at me cynically and said, “That’s all well and good, but what if it doesn’t sell?” I smiled at him. “Then I’ll make another one,” I said. “What’s your point?” That’s why the record industry is in trouble. The lawyers and accountants and marketing guys who’ve been running the music business for decades just don’t get it: it’s all about the music. People will always find good music, whether it’s at a record store or on their laptops. Without the music those guys are just peddling cheap little plastic discs.
The industry has gone through enormous changes. We are in the Internet age, and the old bricks-and-mortar retail record business just ain’t what it used to be. There was a time when shelf space in the stores determined a record’s success or failure and the record companies courted the retailers extravagantly with gifts and payoffs. That time is over. Here in Canada, Sam the Record Man, the largest record chain in the country, closed 140 retail outlets in one year. In the States the mighty Tower Records went the way of the dodo. It was the end of an era.
By 2007 my three-album commitment to Justin Time Records had been fulfilled and I decided not to re-sign with them. I produced The Evergreens for my own company, Antoinette Music Productions (Canada) and made a simple distribution deal with Fontana North/Universal. I’d enjoyed recording for Justin Time, they’d been good to me, but I saw the writing on the wall. I really liked Jim West and I tried to warn him. I told him, “Jim, there’s a train coming down the tracks and you’d better get on board or it will run you over.” But they were so entrenched in the old ways of doing business that they never saw it coming. Jadro Subic told the company that digital downloads and Internet sales were the wave of the future, but they didn’t listen to her either. She resigned.
Record companies were falling like dominoes. When the retail record industry went down, it went down fast. Overnight, websites and downloads replaced the retail outlets. The big chains like Walmart and Best Buy still sold CDs, but the neigh-bourhood record store became a thing of the past. The laptop became the record store for the twenty-first century. The small independent record companies got hit the hardest. They were completely dependent on their retail-store network, and when that collapsed they went down with it. Shortly after I left Justin Time, their distribution company declared bankruptcy.
Justin Time continues as a label and it still has a fine catalogue, but it took a heavy blow. I was sad to see this. The industry needs independent record companies like Justin Time. They were honest and really cared about their artists, but they were caught in the retail trap too. They may have been devoted to their artists, but they never could pay them what they were worth. The profits were being chewed up by a bloated retail network and a system where the artist was the last one in line to be paid. I hope Justin Time survives. I owe them a lot. Jim West gave me the opportunity to finally break free from Blood Sweat & Tears. He gave me a chance to record with Doc and move back to Canada with a first-class record company behind me. Justin Time fostered some fine talent and always made great records, but they were slow to adapt and the business today is moving at lightspeed. I wish them well. I’ll never count Jim West out. He’s a good guy. He is well respected in the industry, and he’s in it for the right reasons. He truly loves the music.
This is an exciting new world for recording artists. They can now play a concert and the next day watch their websites light up with Internet orders for their music. It’s a far cry from the days when we had to wait years for a royalty statement from a record company that took its cut off the top before the artist ever saw a penny. Here’s the reality of that game: a CD sells for around $18; about $2 goes to the artist as a royalty. But the artist will never see that two bucks. Everything from production costs to promotion is recoupable from the artist’s end. The game is rigged. They make you famous and you make them rich. The more records the artist sells, the more is spent on promotion and the more he owes to the company. The musician still makes his money on the road. The record company buys him
exposure, which helps him sell tickets, which in turn sells more records. The company makes millions while the artist digs himself even deeper in debt to them. A few artists may get big enough to renegotiate their contracts, but they are in the minority. Most are just hanging on from album to album and they’ll never get out of the hole. Still, it’s the only way young bands can get exposure. They mortgage their lives and drive in their battered vans from small towns all over the country to the big city with the dream of being signed, and they’re so broke and desperate they’ll sign anything.
While we were recording The Evergreens, a young band was recording in the next studio. They’d just been signed by a major label. Nice kids, somewhat in awe of the heavyweight musicians recording next door—Doc Riley, Bernie LaBarge, Paul DeLong, heroes to these young musicians. Their studio was always full of people, a constant flow of managers and publicists, groupies and girlfriends, record-company types. By contrast, our sessions were lean and economical. We were old pros, and we weren’t there to party while the clock was ticking at $500 an hour. We were there to take care of business.
One day we arrived at the studio and there must have been twenty people hanging out in the lounge. They had just ordered lunch and everyone was enjoying a feast of catered Mexican food. “Must be nice,” I joked. “We’re running on coffee and doughnuts next door.” “Hey, help yourself,” their young guitar player said. “The record company’s paying for it.” My team of grizzled veterans looked at each other and smiled. We’d all been around the block and we knew the reality of that situation. The record company’s paying for it, huh? No they’re not, kid … You are. My guys took their cups of funky recording-studio coffee and went back to work. We didn’t have the heart to tell them. They were on top of the world, and no one wanted to bust their bubble.
Their record was released a few months later along with the obligatory video and it went nowhere. Who knows why? Internal politics, Neilsen numbers or maybe the company just needed a tax writeoff. It doesn’t matter. They were expendable. The band went back to their dreams and their day gigs, and the record company signed some other starry-eyed young band. For every superstar who owes his success to a record company, there is a trail of broken artists who made the mistake of believing the bullshit and were just too fragile to deal with it. In defence of the record companies, for every artist that makes money for them, there are a dozen who don’t, and the successful ones have to carry the load for the failures. Who wins in this record-company lottery is too often determined by politics and payoffs. There are many who believe that the Internet-driven demise of the corrupt old record industry was long overdue and richly deserved.
Let’s face it: the record companies have been screwing artists for decades. Rock musicians in the fifties signed lifetime contracts for a new Cadillac. In the sixties they gave up their publishing rights and songwriter royalties in exchange for a recording contract. Into the seventies and eighties, record-company presidents still shamelessly listed themselves as co-writers on songs. Hell, they were lawyers and accountants, not songwriters, but this was the price the writer paid for being signed, and you didn’t exist in this business without a recording contract. We all knew we were being screwed, but we needed the promotion and distribution that only a record company could provide. They could take you out of that funky bar and make you a star—just don’t expect to see royalties. The companies that were so uncreative in the making of the music were remarkably creative in their accounting.
It’s been said that the music business is in trouble. Wrong! The record business is in trouble. The music business is doing just fine. In the late nineties the explosion of the Internet and new digital recording technology broke the stranglehold the record industry held on the music business. Six-figure budgets were no longer necessary to make a record. Musicians didn’t need a million-dollar studio anymore. State-of-the-art recordings could be made in your basement. The Internet allowed artists to reach fans around the world without signing their lives away to a multi-national corporation, and they began to take charge of their own careers. They can sell their CDs at concerts and on their websites and keep 90 per cent of the profits. Many artists today are turning down record deals. They can do the math. They’ve figured out that 90 per cent of a few thousand records nets them more than 0 per cent of a million.
The marketing power of a major record company is still essential to the young unknown artist who needs the exposure, but established artists have other options today. They are forming their own record companies and making their own distribution deals with the majors. Digital downloads and Internet fulfillment are an important part of these deals. A large percentage of artists’ sales are from their own websites—that puts a powerful marketing tool in the hands of the guy making the music. Musicians today are smarter and better educated in the intricacies of the business. We have learned from those who went before. The days when songwriters like Robert Johnson and Woody Guthrie sold their songs for a bottle of whisky are long gone. Artists own their own music today, and this is fine with me.
A Blues for Doc
There was music in his hands
But his hands were just a window to his soul
And he never lost the wonder of a child
And he never lost his love for rock & roll
Oh, there’s a big hole in my life
I feel the loss of something fine
How can I solve the problems of this world
Without the Doctor and a midnight glass of wine
If I could be with him again
To wonder at the wisdom in those hands
He’d say playin’ music is a gift from God
And complete devotion’s all that it demands
I’m so glad at least I knew
A man this special for a while
He had more than most to overcome
But he found his heaven on the gentle isle
Lyrics by David Clayton-Thomas. Copyright © Clayton-Thomas Music Publishing Inc., 2007.
30
A BLUES FOR DOC
Two thousand seven was a tumultuous year. It was the best of times and the worst. The year began on a high note. In January my song “Spinning Wheel” was inducted into the Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame along with several songs by Joni Mitchell. The event was broadcast nationally by CBC TV. It was a great evening, attended by the who’s who of the Canadian music industry. I opened the show with my Toronto big band playing “Spinning Wheel.” Then there were memorable performances by James Taylor and Chaka Khan singing the songs of Joni Mitchell. It was an honour to be inducted alongside Joni. She is as beautiful as ever and one of the most gifted songwriters I have ever known. I guess I still have a bit of a crush on her.
A few months later I was asked to co-host the National Jazz Awards in Toronto with my friend Dione Taylor—another warm and wonderful evening, filled with old friends and the finest jazz musicians in the country. Doug Riley was the musical director for the event, and two of the guys in my band, George Koller and Russ Little, received their own National Jazz Awards. It was a great way to come back home.
In July of that year I played the Charlottetown Jazz Festival with Doc and stayed at his lovely oceanside home on Prince Edward Island for two days following the concert. It was like old times. We walked along the waterfront early in the morning and bought lobster fresh off the boats. We shopped the local farmers’ market for sweet corn and he gave me a guided tour of his beloved “Gentle Island.” After a wonderful dinner filled with laughter and memories of the good times we had shared, his wife, Jan, went up to bed and Doc and I sat in front of the fireplace until after midnight, sipping wine and talking about life, music, our kids and the Leafs, as we had done so many times before.
Two weeks later I drove my brand-new Audi A8 down to New York for dinner with some of my old neighbours in Rockland County, then continued on up to Boston, where I met with the band for a Saturday-night concert in Lowell, Massachusetts. Deering Howe and his wife, Barbar
a, joined me for the show. It was a lovely concert outdoors in the park on a warm summer evening with an enthusiastic crowd of around 3,000 people. The Canadian boys had a great time and right after the show they piled onto the tour bus and headed back to Toronto. We stayed overnight in Lowell, and the next day Deering, Barbara and I drove up to their remote mountaintop cabin in Maine to hang out and relax. Their log-and-stone cabin looks out over fifty miles of rolling mountains. They have their own fully stocked private lake for fishing and ATVs to get around the heavily wooded property. There are no utilities, no phones. The whole place is powered by solar panels and a 10K generator. The closest town is maybe ten miles away, and it’s basically a service station and a general store. We spent the evening by a crackling fire, listening to Deering’s extensive record collection and reminiscing about old friends and good times.
I left the Howes’ place right after breakfast on Monday morning and headed for Montreal. I planned to have dinner with Jadro Subic and then return to Toronto the next day to meet Doc and the boys for the final recording sessions of the Evergreens project. The rolling mountains of northern Maine were shrouded in mist and I had the road all to myself, cruising along the winding two-lane highway in the high-tech Audi. It was unbelievably beautiful and peaceful. I had the Evergreens tracks on the stereo and I was smiling to myself at just how good Doc Riley was. He played on every tune and wrote all the horn charts.
Then my car phone rang. It was bad news … as bad as it gets. Two weeks after Charlottetown, flying home from a concert in Calgary, Doug Riley had suffered a massive heart attack on the plane and died. It was an enormous blow. I pulled the Audi over to the side of the road and I cried, alone in my car in the beautiful misty mountains of upstate Maine. I pounded my fist on the steering wheel and I cried. I cried all the way to Montreal. Several times I had to pull over and get myself together before continuing. I checked in to my hotel and there were calls from journalists all over Canada who wanted to talk to me about Doc. He was a national treasure, and word of his passing had already reached clear across the country. I choked up on the phone and couldn’t really say much. There were no words to describe the loss I felt. It was like someone had just blown the centre out of my life. I had dinner with Jadro that evening, and I’m glad she was there. I really needed to be with someone who understood how much Doc meant to me. The next day I drove back to Toronto. My first impulse was to cancel the recording sessions. How could I possibly do it without Doc? But by the time I reached Toronto I knew what I had to do. I did what he would have wanted me to do. I wrote a song for him, called the musicians and we finished the Evergreens album. We all felt his presence in the studio during those final sessions. Nobody spoke about it but we all knew … Doc was watching over us.
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