Preview
STEVE PINEO WITH HORNS
November 30 and December 1
Ironwood Stage and Grill
If you were sitting where Steve Pineo’s sitting, it would be tempting to take it easy while resting your keister firmly on your laurels. With Paul Brandt performing and recording Pineo’s song, "Canadian Man" and Tim Williams doing a version of "He Didn’t Quite Make It" at concert halls in England, his royalty cheques are fatter than a feedlot heifer.
With a standing gig every other Thursday night at Merlot with the Steve Pineo Trio (featuring Kit Johnson and Tim Leacock), occasional gigs with the Mike Stack Trio, and a fairly steady string of dates with the unstoppable Co-Dependents, there’s not many open spots on his dance card. But apparently, those projects aren’t quite enough for Pineo. He decided to create a horn show for special occasions as well.
Seems like a simple idea – just round up some horn players and have them play along, right? Not with someone like Pineo who learned from Co-Dependent bandmate Billy Cowsill that meticulous attention to detail creates a flourishing musical garden. So when Pineo and then-manager Neil McGonigal set out for Edmonton to record his 2000 album A Perfectly Good Friendship, he had a detailed mind-picture of horns on his songs.
"I said I’d like trumpet on this, sax, a whole horn section on this. I didn’t know how to write horn charts at the time so I went up with (bassist) Mike (Lent) and I had the parts in my mind so I just kind of hummed them to him and he transcribed them. In fact, that’s the way a lot of people do that," says Pineo.
Because the songwriter didn’t want to always rely on others to transcribe the horn parts for him – he decided to learn how to do it himself. While he was learning to write horn parts, he also mastered using computers to compose and transpose music. Luckily, he had help from people like arranger Laurie Bardsley and George Blondheim, who co-ordinated k.d. lang and Tom Cochrane’s efforts with the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra.
"I didn’t know that the guitar is actually an octave lower than treble clef, even though (guitar music is) written on treble clef," he says. "People are very patient and happy that you’re trying to learn – that was the thing that kept me from trying sooner, was getting laughed at."
The result of his efforts is the Steve Pineo with Horns Show, which has been presented twice at Kaos, once at Olympic Plaza, and once at Ironwood. For the fifth show, Pineo is releasing Around the Horn, a CD of the basic horn show.
"I wanted to have a horn show that I could do a couple of times a year. The idea is to have some fun, to generate some interest, and to make it sort of a special occasion."
While it’s ambitious, it’s still not enough to keep Pineo busy. He’s already booked a January 10 show at Ironwood called The Three Canaries, a showcase of show tunes from the ’30s and after that, the horn show will move to Edmonton for some CD release gigs. There’s still talk of another Co-Dependents album and Pineo’s also pining to get back to playing blues clubs – this time with a two-piece horn section.
These well-fired dreams are all connected to the excitement of his learning curve with the computer and horns.
"It’s really renewed my interest in writing," he says. "In my case it’s a very personal thing, you get too caught up in being a lyricist…. You sort of get caught up in that whole singer-songwriter thing where you remove yourself from the world because you’re writing things and you’re kind of like a detached observer. Whereas if you’re sitting there working a lot on (horn parts and shows) you start feeling like you’re kind of a craftsman or artisan." |
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