Surprise show at the Cellar just what the doctor ordered
Cory Club Weeds’ 13th Anniversary Cellar Jazz Bash
featuring Harold Mabern
Sept. 26 to 29, 8 p. m. and 9: 30 p. m. |
Cellar Jazz Club
Tickets: seatme.com
It was a celebrity appearance that perhaps could not have come at a better time. Hugh Laurie’s recent surprise performance at Cory Weeds’ Cellar Jazz Club reminded Vancouverites that we do indeed have a jazz club of our own — a rarity these days, and something that should be preserved, like a steam clock or a hollow tree.
The House actor’s appearance also came just a month before the club’s 13th anniversary, which the Cellar is celebrating with four nights featuring legendary 78- yearold post- bop pianist Harold Mabern. We talked to Cellar owner/ saxophone player Cory Weeds about the perils of running a jazz club, Hugh Laurie’s appearance and Weeds’ 2012 Juno nomination for Traditional Jazz Album of the Year for his record Up A Step. Q What made you start a jazz club in the first place? A I was touring with a pop/ jam band ( People Playing Music) back in ’ 96, ’ 97. We got to play in a lot of cool venues. And I was noticing that it seemed we were always at odds with the club owner. I couldn’t figure it out. Don’t we have to work together? So I banked a lot of those experiences. And what would happen when I’d come off the road with this band is I would want to go out to clubs in Vancouver and hear some jazz after playing all this pop and funk music. I wanted to hear people like Oliver Gannon and Ross Taggart and Campbell Ryga and there was really not a lot happening. And because I was sort of on the scene, I got to know a lot of these musicians, a lot of them were my friends and I was starting to build up this trust. And I thought, you know I think I can probably do this more successfully than somebody else because I have the musicians on my side. And a lot of things had to happen to actually finally get the club, but an opportunity finally presented itself and I went to my parents and said ‘ this is what I want to do and need to do. That’s the good news, the bad news is I need to borrow about $ 70,000.’ My dad said no, absolutely not. But I didn’t get discouraged, my mom got her claws into him, and said ‘ look, this is our son and we need to support him.’ Miraculously, my dad came around and cosigned a loan. We opened the club and here we are 13 years later, still going. Q Has it been, an, uhm ...
A A roller- coaster? Yeah. I have no regrets. But it is not an easy way to make a living. You have the jazz club part of it and the restaurant part of it, and we live in a tough city. It has been an up- and- down ride from Day 1. In some ways the ante is even higher now, because I’m married with two kids and I have a mortgage. It’s a crazy way to make a living, but it’s a lot of fun, and the experiences I continue to have — you couldn’t buy these experiences with any amount of money. I’ll keep doing it as long as people keep coming out and want to hear the music.
Q Sometimes it seems the only way to get people to see jazz is if it’s free, like the free stage at the Jazz Festival. And the Tangent Café has free jazz on Sunday afternoons.
A People will pay what the market bears. One of the things that’s happened with the Vancouver Jazz Festival is they have this massive free stage, and then the key is how do you get all those hundreds of thousands of people to come to the Cellar after the Jazz Festival is done? You can’t get upset with that kind of stuff. You’ll drive yourself crazy. I think that Tangent Café is very good for us. I think what the loss of O’Doul’s ( formerly in the Listel Hotel) did was very good for us — the loss of O’Doul’s was very bad for the Cellar. At the same time when you come to the Cellar you’re paying for a different experience. It’s a real jazz club. We tell you to be quiet, if you’re not quiet we ask you to leave. We need to do whatever we can to get people to come out to jazz. If five people go to the Tangent Café and realize hey, it’s free, and we really didn’t take much of a risk, and we liked it, then maybe they’ll be more willing to come hear something at the Cellar.
Q The Hugh Laurie appearance, do you think all of a sudden people in Vancouver remembered the Cellar?
A I think so. That generated a lot of press for us. I don’t know how much of it will be sustained. That just happened to be a chance thing, that he came down and made a reservation and played. It’s not like I booked him or I knew it was happening. It’s the same when a celebrity goes anywhere, it creates a bit of a buzz. The Twitter world was abuzz with excitement about it. I got a bunch of emails, we happened to have a really good week the following week, I don’t know if it had anything to do with that or it was just the end of the summer. But it’s always nice when somebody of celebrity status comes and hangs out. Q You had your first Juno nomination recently. A When I first bought the club, I really was prepared to have my career as a musician stop. I was resigned to being a club- owner guy. It went the other way, and that was very unexpected. Since then I’ve been working a lot and playing a lot, now looking back it’s no surprise it happened that way. When you own a club and you’re constantly creating opportunities for other people, eventually you start to get a lot of opportunities for yourself. Q You’re bringing in Harold Mabern for the club’s 13th anniversary. A I’m up on the Sunshine Coast right now, and we did our first gig on Friday night. I was going to do a road blog about it, but it was just too phenomenal and too hard to explain the fun and the power of his piano playing and the humour in his persona and how he talks to an audience. It was probably one of the greatest if not the greatest gig I’ve ever been a part of. It’s been a tough year for jazz piano players, and people really need to come out and hear him. He’s a legend — he’s played and recorded with everyone from Miles Davis to Cannonball Adderley to Lee Morgan. If he can’t make you into a jazz fan, then nobody will.