New music from Bill Bourne
Bill Bourne releasing new solo and collaborative albums
Picture Bill Bourne curled up and sleeping behind the piano as his parents performed at dances throughout central Alberta in the late ’50s and early ’60s.
It’s an illuminating mental image, one of country, traditional Cape Breton jigs and folk music rhythms pulsing through the future singersongwriter, becoming part of his very DNA. By his own account, it often feels as though the music has always been there, not surprising considering his mother played guitar at shows while pregnant with him.
“Maybe it’s what I was meant to be. In Africa some people are born musicians and that’s what they do all their lives,” says Bourne, who’s releasing two new CDs — his solo album, Songs From a Gypsy Caravan, and the collaborative Amoeba Collective.
Bourne’s own story confirms this. Born in Red Deer, he grew up on a farm outside Penhold. Despite his musical family, his dad didn’t necessarily approve of his interest in making music his occupation. It was the early ’70s, and Bourne’s attempt to share his love of blues, rock and folk was met with resistance.
“Your father is a huge influence in your life, and you always try to make him happy somehow, it seems,” Bourne sighs. “I became a mechanic in my late teens; I got the licence to make my father happy. That helped the relationship, but the reality was that all I wanted to do was make music.”
Obsessed with country blues, musically kicked forward by the Woodstock generation, Bourne began gigging professionally in 1975, running into the standard problem of the original musician facing pressure to play the cover circuit. He made a pact with himself to stay true to his original intentions, which led to a few dismissals early in his career but also meant that he’s never looked on music as drudgery.
“There’s still a responsibility, though,” he points out. “When you get onstage you have to entertain. People want to see an artist playing music and you have to pay attention to the job. You have to deliver. The longer I’ve played, the more I’ve learned that it’s a journey, and now I understand the energy of music. When you get that thing flying, you can have a lot of fun.”
Whatever that energy was, he apparently had it from an early age.
Tippy Agogo, who worked on Amoeba Collective, recalls that Bourne was mentioned as an up-and-comer by friends who kept up on the Red Deer scene. “You’d hear about him from people like k.d. lang, who went to college there,” says Agogo.
Bourne released a self-titled album in 1980, then joined the long-lived Scottish folk band The Tannahill Weavers for a few years, sticking around to record the album Passage with them in 1984. He struck up a fellowship with ex-Weaver Alan MacLeod, a piper, and the two put out Dance and Celebrate in 1990. The album won a Juno in 1991 for Best Roots or Traditional album.
It was around this point that Bourne’s father began to soften to his son’s chosen avocation.
“But even at that point I hadn’t resolved it internally,” Bourne muses. “I was still wrestling with it. All through my life dad would say ‘You gotta make a living, you gotta work hard.’ That’s all true, I agree with him, but I had to give myself permission to not agree with everything he said.”
The other side of the family coin was Bourne’s maternal great-grandfather, the revered Icelandic poet-farmer Stephan G. Stephansson, who moved to the Red Deer area in 1889. A pacifist in the mould of Walt hero to everyone else, though; when he went back to Iceland in 1917 he was celebrated. It was a big deal when I started reading his poetry. It illustrated to me something of what Dylan and (Paul) Simon were writing about years later.”
Bourne and MacLeod released two more albums, after which Bourne formed a duo with violinist Shannon Johnson of the McDade family, releasing a couple more albums in 1994 and 1996. Bourne picked up his second Juno Award with the self-titled debut of the trio Tri-continental (which also featured guitarists Les-
“It’s all about the music for Bill. He’s one of those people for whom it’s not about regard.”
MUSICIAN AND PRODUCER JOHN ARMSTRONG
Whitman and Ralph Waldo Emerson, he became famous back home during the First World War because of a letter he wrote to an Icelandic newspaper in Winnipeg that was also distributed in Iceland. In the letter, he took the Lutheran Church to task for not advising people to take a pacifist stance on the war.
“The church was furious,” Bourne recounts. “They excommunicated him. He was a ter Quitzau and Madagascar Slim) in 2000.
He’s had several solo albums and a large number of Juno nominations since, but always there are collaborations. Bourne recorded with Icelandic singer Eivor Palsdottir in 2004, got together with Wyckham Porteous and Jasmine Olhauser in the Bop Ensemble in 2009, put together the Free Radio Band (which featured his son, guitarist Pat Bourne of Edmonton’s The Get Down) and released their album Bluesland in 2011.
On Saturday night, he and Agogo will debut the collaborative album at Avenue Theatre.
Gypsy Caravan, the new solo album, “came about because I wanted to do the complete opposite of what I did with the Free Radio Band, which was rocking … I wanted something more intimate,” he says. “Amoeba Collective is about joy and liberation and the unified state. There’s so much going on that’s unexpected. There’s blues, some reggae, some ethnic African stuff that Tippy came up with, but the message comes through; it’s the same philosophy.”
That philosophy has kept Bourne relevant, says musician and producer John Armstrong. He’s known him for close to 20 years as a fellow member of The Christmas Carol Project, a musical version of Charles Dickens’s classic story, with Bourne playing Scrooge.
“It was a little intimidating to ask him to join, but he’s very approachable,” Armstrong says.
“People know him as this world-touring, award-winning artist but … it’s all about the music for Bill. He’s one of those people for whom it’s not about regard or accolades, it’s about playing music.”