I sing and can harmonize.  I have played keys since childhood and brass since my teens.  Since retirement I have learned several string instruments: 6 string guitar, 4 string tenor guitar and banjo, 5 string banjo, fiddle, and ten string Puerto Rican cuatro (which I use as a mandolin for celtic fiddle tunes).  I also play harmonicas, trumpet and baritone horn, clarinet and alto sax. 
         Deborah plays ukes: an 8 string tenor, a Fender concert with an amp, and a baritone.  She runs the projector for hundreds of our charts at our community centre play alongs.  Our Tuesday vintage jazz group has eight to a dozen players.  Our Wednesday evening "all instruments play along", which is now run by friends Arc and Linda,  has 17 to 20 participants each week.  We have a string band (old folk, Celtic/Appalachian/Bluegrass) on Fridays. 



    Here's a photo we took as we emerged from lock down: we only came closer together, masked, to take this photo - and held our breath! 


Earlier days:

A previous group at another community centre:                                                                                                                            Playing at a friend's birthday party:
    An older collection of my instruments.  A few are gone, but even more have replaced them.
       


        Here is a collection of youtube videos Deb and I recorded for family and friends and for the online fundraising projects we've participated in during the Covid19 lockdown years.  I learned to record and mix audio in my basement on basic equipment, playing all the different instruments and vocals myself. I uploaded them to a Soundcloud account.

        I have done repair and rebuilding work on acoustic instruments: pianos, guitars, mandolins, and violins.         

        I hate gigging for pay.  I play for charity fund raisers when asked.  I've played with an 18 piece swing band and a seven piece jazz combo.  Deborah and I have performed as a keyboard and ukulele singalong duo.  We did Christmas shows in womens' shelters for a few years.  At my yacht club I've organized British Pub Night singalongs, Pirate Day songs for sailors and their children, Oktoberfest dances and Talent Nights.   We've played for contra dances.


            My taste in musical activities evolved as I got older.  I made a living at it in my twenties but then went off to travel the world and when I returned I opened a teaching studio and was self-employed until I accepted into the Faculty of Ed.  In Toronto there were (and are) many eager young musicians, DJ's, and too much free music on the internet to make an easy living by playing. Bar owners fill their stages with "Open Mic" participants who are not vetted for talent or reputation, and who are willing to play for free for "exposure".  Every stage they crowd removes a venue for paid musicians with better chops and more polished performances.  It erodes their livelihood.  No longer are young people in every town excited to hit the bar or dance hall because a new touring band has come to town, or eager to come out and support their homegrown bands...those were the days.  I toured at the tail end of that era.  Very competent musicians that I played with then now make their living by teaching, selling in music stores, or both; others are employed outside of music.  I was lucky enough to complete university and take a sharp left turn into public school teaching in my early thirties, so now I have a pension and will never have to rely on music for a pay cheque. 
             That's a darn good thing, because I no longer enjoy late nights and commuting, and lugging equipment to gigs.  I began going out to play nearby open mics with a younger friend but quickly realized that I was providing a free service for bar owners who pay all their other employees but not the musicians.  They don't offer a free drink, a meal, or even their parking costs, and they don't have decent instruments set up for musicians.  One legendary downtown dive had an out of tune piano with five broken keys, even though perfectly good pianos are free for the asking every week in this city, like white elephants.  We played in rooms full of shouting bar patrons who force you to crank up your volume and sing through a p.a. to be heard, in a room with a packed-in capacity crowd of less than a hundred people.  At my community "play along" I can sing while a dozen musicians are playing, and I can be heard without a p.a.  At the open mics, I dragged my thousand dollar keyboard to each venue and set it up to do just a handful of songs for them, but the open mic organizer cajoled me to leave it set up for other players to use, possibly knock over, or spill their beer on.  At one venue, a girl leapt on stage and thrust her tiny phone into my face to chord for her from a very bad arrangement that didn't match what she wanted to sing, in the wrong key, so that she could experience the thrill of singing to a live audience, karaoke-style.  This drunken party behaviour was considered normal and acceptable by the open mic organizer.  What a horror show.  I felt exploited.  Like many older musicians, my drinking days are behind me, especially while performing; but bar owners expect open mic musicians to draw in their friends to buy drinks, and to create a party atmosphere that will encourage other customers to stay and buy more drinks.  Open mic musicians are, in effect, "animators" like the ones employed at resorts and on cruise ships; but they are expected to perform that function for free.  To me that's completely bonkers, and profoundly dissatisfying.
            Fortunately there's another model.  When I was young I assumed that the only real outlet for a musican was to get paid in a bar, lounge, coffeeshop or performing at a concert.  I'd never encountered a community centre music outlet.  Casting about for a more satisfying musical outlet, I brought musicians together to rehearse and play down at our yacht club.  I initiated a ukulele group that ran for a few years in a private home, and a guitar group that we ran at the yacht club which migrated a year later to someone else's home.  Finally I stumbled upon the fact that some community centre managers are eager to find people who can organize community programming.  The facilities provide free space, and sometimes free equipment for our use.  Birchmount Community Centre provides us with a really good keyboard and a projector.   Grateful lonely musicians responded to my invitation,.  We are our own mutually appreciative audience, and we get home to bed at a reasonable hour.  For all of this, Deborah and I happily organize and play for free.  I play for free in parks, for charity or school fundraisers, and for nursing home and hospital audiences.  Those venues make me feel appreciated. They are grateful that we bring our music to them. 



+