The CJCA Chessmen make their move and will play together for the last time on New Year’s Eve
After 50 years, local rock band plays last show
The Original CJCA Chessmen With: The Freeway, featuring members of Southbound Freeway, and Gary Donnelly When: Monday at 7 p.m. Where: Sands Hotel Ballroom, 12340 Fort Rd. Tickets: $65, email vony@shaw. ca or call 780-299-6372
An important part of the early Edmonton rock ’n’ roll scene will be strapping on their instruments for the last time on New Year’s Eve.
Well, at least with each other. The CJCA Chessmen, original rock ’n’ rollers, are playing one final show on the anniversary year of their formation in 1962.
That’s 50 years worth of crashing through rockabilly and rock covers, surf instrumentals, originals and whatever it took to get audiences up and dancing.
“We started out playing sock hops at high schools and renting community halls,” recalls drummer Gary Grykuliak, trading off memories with guitarist and fellow Chessman Dwayne Osepchuk.
“The roots of rock ’n’ roll is what we did. We’d put up our own posters and play on television and radio, shows like CHED Bandstand.”
If Edmonton has a musical DNA running through it, then The Chessmen are an integral part of it. After breaking up in the mid-’60s, the members scattered to other bands. Osepchuk and his brother Richard (who played bass with the Chessmen) found a modicum of success as Southbound Freeway. They parlayed some recordings with Buddy Holly’s producer Norman Petty into a single (their cover of Steve Miller’s Roll With It) on Atco, a division of Atlantic Records.
The Chessmen themselves never spent as much time in the studio as they would have liked. They released brash, high-energy instrumentals like Fuzzy Wuzzy, but Osepchuk admits the quality wasn’t as good as if they travelled to Clovis, N.M., to record with Petty, as other Edmonton acts did at the time.
Canadian bands of the time were unfortunately overlooked by our own radio stations, and the Chessmen were too early to benefit from the Guess Who breaking into national radio with These Eyes in 1968.
This didn’t stop them from being a beloved fixture on the local scene. Most importantly, it didn’t stop them from bonding in a way that has kept them friends 50 years later.
“It’s a true brotherhood,” says Grykuliak, “a brotherhood built on treacherous roads and touring. There were five of us in a ’52 Mercury four-door eating french fries, playing places where we changed our clothes in the part of the hall where they kept shovels. You can’t help but get close, and the friendship is still there.”
Osepchuk is doing doubleduty for this last gig, also performing with openers The Freeway, made up of a few original members of Southbound Freeway.
The Freeway have their own stories to tell as well. One of the band’s early highlights was a late ’60s concert in New York where they unexpectedly ended up sharing a stage with both The Doors and Simon & Garfunkel.
“I talked with Jim (Morrison) for a bit, and the rest of The Doors were pretty nice,” Osepchuk says. “We didn’t know that we were going to be a part of it, and there were 14,000 people watching.”
Later in their career, Roulette Records, which was headed by the legendary (and notorious) Morris Levy, indicated that they wanted to sign the band. Curious about the offer, they phoned Petty and asked him how much longer they had on their current contract. “Norman said there were a few months left, but that we shouldn’t even talk to Roulette, because they were mafia,” Osepchuk laughs.
Because of issues with his hand, Grykuliak will be bowing out on drum duties in favour of Osepchuk’s son Shane. Osepchuk is still wringing chords out of his guitar with a passion that can only come from the heart.
“We all loved music, and we all still love music. I never saw a scene like we had when we were growing up,” Osepchuk laments. “You had to be tight, especially with bands like Willie & the Walkers or The Pharoahs around. All of these bands had top musicians and were very competitive. Everyone had pride in what they did, and the most important thing of all was to have fun.
“We’re getting on, and it’s not easy to play with the energy we have to put into this,” Osepchuk adds. “We have to have emotion, and we have to have the energy, which you don’t see in the younger bands.
“That’s why we want to do it one more time. I guess it’s something we learned from Ronnie Hawkins and the Guess Who, that you don’t do it unless you’re willing to put your all into it every time. That’s our promise for this show, that we’ll be putting our all into it.”