Porch music
No Guff step out of the blues shadows to prove They're Red Hot
PREVIEW
NO GUFF CD Release Party
Thursday, September 5
Karma Local Arts House
If you could only use one word to describe the blues duo called No Guff, that word would be organic. From the open, live feel of their album, They’re Red Hot, to the vintage instruments that they exchange at will and the songwriting steeped in 100 years of influences, John Rutherford and Dan Tapanila deliver the real thing. But there’s nothing blue about these blues. No, if you can listen to the first track, "Sitting in the Kitchen," without breaking into a smile, you probably need some Prozac.
Part of it is Rutherford’s expressive voice, an instrument he began to work out only after he'd played guitar for 20 years.
"I’ve had lots of response about the voice. People think it sounds interesting and different. I have a nervous shyness about it on one hand, and when it works, it’s extremely exciting."
The duo met up when Tapanila came out from Vancouver, where he’d been working with Ronnie Hayward and Danny Mack. Tapanila came to Calgary to hook up with Hayward again and busk on Stephen Avenue. Rutherford chose to show up with a snare drum, which he had never played before.
"When I heard Dan play, I figured my guitar playing days with Ronnie were over," Rutherford says with a laugh.
Tapanila says busking was fun because there was a whole other set of people there.
"We’d get to busking at football games and lawyers’ acreage parties," Tapinala says. "The people there would be different than the people at the bar we played for. It sure opened my eyes."
But the guitar player’s eyes had surely been opened already, during his long history of working in music, including a 10-year stint with Canada’s country pioneers the Rhythm Pals, a group that had a 50-year career. It was in their final years that they backed Wilf Carter on his last tour, and Tapanila went along to gain experience from the masters.From the opposite direction, Rutherford came to Calgary from Toronto more than 20 years ago with music in mind, hooking up with a cousin to form a bar band before going on to work with CJSW radio and become part of Bill Dowey’s house band at the King Eddy. Currently, his Saturday morning blues show is a favourite of CKUA fans, and he also books acts at the Centre for the Performing Arts. It is their collective experience that gives the duo its charm.
"We were just sitting around in the kitchen or living room, playing, and the two sides of the duo seemed to really have an energy that was there. We started recording in April and had a gig at East Coulee that month, and that was the start of it," Rutherford says.
"We kept it very natural in the studio. It’s all live off the floor. When Lester Quitzau mixed it, he thought of it as being in four different kinds of rooms so "Sitting in the Kitchen" is kind of in the kitchen, sound-wise. Others might be in the basement or front porch. We gave him rough mixes and he came back with that kind of idea."
And while the recording process has encouraged the music to stay organic, Rutherford’s writing style itself generates that feeling as well.
"I try to be as free as I can in allowing my influences – the structures of blues music and roots music, the lyrical structures and phrasing – to sort of allow that to all flow in without thinking about it too much. So it’s pretty much a stream of consciousness formula for coming up with the lyrics as well as the music.
"To some degree I’ve tried to be not conscious of being conscious of not sounding like my influences. I’ve gone through analyzing music and sounds for years, I’ve looked at music from many points of view, as a musician, presenter, writer, broadcaster. I’m conscious of other records that sound like they echo a little too much of the influences and lose their personal identity."
Tapanila sums it up succinctly: "What falls under the fingers is what comes out." |
