FFWD Weekly
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Music by Martin Kemp With the release of his new two-CD project O2, Canadian musician Oliver Schroer takes the solo fiddle into previously unexplored territory, introducing his audiences to the more avant-garde side of his instrument. And while it is one thing to produce freakishly delightful sounds while privately experimenting with the limits of the acoustic fiddle, it is another matter entirely to stand in front of an audience more used to traditional jigs and reels, and sell them on something they’ve never heard in their lives. Especially if you’re a fiddle player sporting a mohawk. Yet it is clear from speaking with Schroer that while it isn’t always the most comfortable place to be, this Juno-nominated musician is constantly driven to explore new fiddle sounds. "There I was in the hard rock mining town of Kenora, Ontario, with my mohawk and my very metaphysical fiddle tunes, and I thought, ‘Oh, this is all wrong – people are going to run me out of town here,’" remembers Schroer of his first night on tour with James Keelaghan. "After the show an old farmer with a baseball cap that said ‘Diesel’ or ‘Caterpillar’ or something came up to me to buy an album. That was repeated throughout the tour, so I thought, ‘All right – people are ready to hear this.’ "Anytime you are really up against the cutting edge of art – as a painter, musician, actor, writer or whatever – you kind of reach those moments of terror when you say, ‘God, can I really express this, or is it really all just bullshit, or does it mean something?’ As the pieces on O2 got to feeling more finished and as I became happy with them, I still didn’t know if people would get it. But (opening for Keelaghan) showed me that people actually do get it, and that was a very cool thing." Schroer, who asks his listeners to go on a trip with him, likens his explorations to musical discoveries that have been happening through the ages. "Sometimes I think about what the musical experience must have been like two or three hundred years ago – if you were a farmer from someplace and you walked into a church, saw the stained glass and then you heard a pipe organ for the first time. It must have been the hugest acid trip just to hear this thing. It would have blown people away, because there was so little of that in their lives." After deciding to record an entire album of solo fiddle music, Schroer listened to various other solo instrument albums to learn what not to do. "There are a bunch of cello players who have done stuff, sax players and a few violin players and there was a lot of what I call ‘fuck off music’ – a lot of stuff was just a barbed wire wall of notes, and a lot of really impressive technique, but you don’t really want to put it on again. "For me, the very important thing was to create music that communicated something that was real for me and to other people. Even if it’s unusual, the element of communication and getting through is very important to me, otherwise, why bother? So when you listen to it, what at first seems abstract, begins to make sense in a certain way." What is most intriguing about Oliver Schroer is that he clearly gets off on discovering the meaning of music just as much as he enjoys playing. And whether he is doing traditional jigs and reels, exploring Asian, Scandinavian or Balkan music, or pushing the boundaries of the fiddle by producing sounds never before heard, Schroer clearly thrives on introducing his audiences to as many styles of music as he can. "I often compare music to food or sex. If you can have many kinds of food or enjoy many kinds of sex with one or more partners, then why not (do it)? Music is much simpler than sexuality, because there’s no guilt involved; you don’t hurt anybody’s feelings, you don’t get anybody pregnant and you don’t get any diseases. You do get to have more fun with more people. I’m a fiddle orgy-ist!"

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