In the Zen

by Kerilie McDowall

News and Notes:

I was just scraping a little frost off the windshield at 7 pm here. I spent the afternoon dropping off about 100 home baked shortbread and chocolate chip cookies to staff and seniors at a senior home. (The sugar shortage due to the local sugar workers strike did not even stop me!)

Yes it t’was a month before Christmas just a moment ago, as I anticipate another exciting adventure of on-the-mountain winter fighting 10-12 feet snowfalls that take place over about 2 weeks. I look forward to the shoveling workouts.

I have always appreciated the mountain rainforest solitude here and working solo and intensively on creative projects that I have managed prior; like podcasting radio, writing as a journalist, or music composing. I am not a fan of editing film or audio, I find the meticulousness of such work drab and boring. I am the type of person that really revels and likes to sit happy in the more meat and potatoes of the creative process.

I can handle the technical. I problem-solved regular technical issues on radio while live engineering it as a radio producer and radio host for 17 years. So that set me up for film directing, an entirely different beast.

I managed to get 5-6 years of TV directing under my belt as a Shaw Spotlight television volunteer. I was directing 3-4 cameras and personnel, an audio person, graphics person, while switching (operating the camera shots and shooting equipment) all for non-stop filming. We only stopped if we had tech issues. So that meant there was no room for any errors from me as a director. It was a real adrenaline rush due to that. Then that TV Directing work led to a multi-award-winning short film that wreaked its viral overwhelming havoc upon my once peaceful life.

What happened? Seemingly for almost three years the whole world started messaging and emailing me with requests to appear or submit at film fests with inquiries and then there were the people who were just curious about me. From teenagers saying hi, to Iranian female film directors fighting oppression wanting to know how to promote their films, to the Instagram offers to model to sell environmentally destructive products like costume jewellery; it was overwhelming.

So what did I do? At year three, I realized I wanted no more of it. I had already pulled the film off YouTube when Shaw was merging with Rogers but I decided not to repost it ANYWHERE. I needed a team staff of 5 people just to deal with the inquiries.

Trying to monetize the film seemed like decades more of never ever getting any peace again. I chose to turn my back on it, honestly it was too disruptive to me without proper investor-backing. Even now almost four years later film festivals are still ask for the film, the latest requests from Scotland and India. I am just not into it and losing my sense of serenity like that ever again or even all over again. So I have chosen not to sell the film either, for the sake of serenity.

I was planning on making a major documentary film release, but changed my mind and I am now looking at returning to a very important bucket list task: composing. It would not bother me never to make another film or show again. I may return to it, but only on certain terms, and not for 3-4 years. I am always happiest when playing or teaching the guitar, so I am honouring this. It is who I am, and I must honour it. I still get 9-13 million hits monthly on IMDB Pro much to my dismay.

I was late publishing this week because this week was my mother’s funeral and I was so drained from all the last minute non-stop funeral preparations that I slept for days afterwards. I have never been that exhausted ever before it was a first. I have also never spent all day in bed before. Never in my life. Welcome to the world of grieving and many tears. I lost my mother in early November due to her severe illness and heart failure, and I am now in healing mode from years of heavy caregiving.

I am heavily grieving at this time.

I am returning to my music roots once again, and doing the things that are most important to me, and being true to my nature. So expect a few blog surprises as things roll along.

You may notice that your free subscription trial has ended on November 26, 2023. Going forward to read the blog you will have to sign on as a suscriber to suscribe and read the bi-weekly interviews. I am honoured to have you along for the articles, news, and interviews. And if you have been suscribing already or sign up to suscribe after November 26th until December 31, 2023, note that I am gifting you a free one HOUR workshop or a lesson of your choice. (Music lesson value= $60, or Workshop value=$125.) Happy wishes to you and Merry Christmas! xox.

And yes for non-suscribers guess what? I am giving away a freebie to you, too for the month of December 2023! Next the details. Scroll down for the Ryan Oliver interview.

In the Zen 2023 OPEN HOUSE

When?

DECEMBER 1-9th, 2023, 10 AM - 8 PM.

We provide guitar and music theory lessons, writing, music industry and film instruction and music/film coaching services with complete in-studio facilities, or online video lessons with results to your expectations. Mountain/ocean view Westwood Lake South Nanaimo studio.

An Open House gift on us!

30 Minute Music and Workshop Freebies!

One free open house 30 minute workshop, guitar or theory lesson all levels and styles! In-studio or online by live video session by Zoom, Skype, FaceTime or Messenger.

SERVICES

· Guitar Lessons 12 weeks, 12 lessons. In studio or live video lessons.

·  Level I Music-Musicians Bootcamp

· Level II Launching Your Music Recording: The Year Before

· Level III Ready for The Press

· Beginner Film Directing/YouTube/Social Media Producer Bootcamp Level I, 2, 3 or Intensive with 12x award-winning TV film Director McDowall

· Get Your Film Festing

· Writer’s One on One

Our Mission

Supportive guitar, music, music industry, film/ film industry instruction according to your specified level at your own pace. Guitar, music industry and film workshop bootcamps. We take it step-by-step with novice beginners and services at your own pace with quality and thorough instruction. Intensified accelerated learning for fast-learners and professionals. Modified paces as needed for ADHD and others with a focus on enhancing ability.

Beginner Directing/YouTube/Social Media Producer Bootcamp

Level 1: $250. 2 hours. Learn With your cell phone or camera how to frame camera shots, how to film and pan, creating lighting for YouTube and film, makeup/wardrobe, shooting for youtube or tv, how to content brainstorming. Group rates available.

Level 2: $250. 2 hours. How to set up a YouTube account and upload videos, where to source free music and photographs from for your film, understanding copyright, storyboarding, producing/writing shows, interview techniques for guests and hosts. Level 1 and 2 gets you filmmaking and knowing the techniques on how to create good film

Level 3: Ready for the press, the media and their timelines, writing for the press, press email lists, research, being prepared for media interviews and/or how to conduct media interviews. $299.99 value 2 hours. 3 hours $349.99. 

Guitar Lessons 12 weeks, 12 lessons: Sale price 1 hour each for 12 lessons 20% off (for 12 weeks at $49.91 per lesson)  $599.99 (regular price 12 weeks $750 Price locked. Bring a friend to get a 15% discount at $42.50 per lesson). Price does not include GST.

12 weeks for 45 minutes: 20% off at $432.00  and $36 per lesson (Regular price 12 lessons is $540.00)

Level I Music-Musicians Bootcamp, 3 hours at $449.99 each person. Bring a friend get a 15% discount. Group rates available.

Interviews and articles=record sales, understanding how the media/press works within TV, radio, print, blog and podcast

Level II Launching Your Music Recording: The Year Before/Planning Organized Schedule of Events for Releasing $149.99  hourly. Recommended 2 to 3 hours. 2 hours $299.99. 3 hours $349.99.

Level III Ready for The Press Understanding how to work with the press, the media and their timelines, writing for the press, press email lists, research, interviews. $299.99  hours. Recommended for 2 hours. 3 hours $349.99.

FILMIES: Film-Get Your Film Festing for Musicians

Level I Help getting your film competing now in fests, top 5 fests, Canadian funding strategy, best time saver approaches, how to win awards strategy, social media. Level II Considerations: monetization before you make your short and after you produce your film. $299.99   2 hours. Recommended 2 to 3 hours. Group rates available.

FILMIES: Beginner Directing/YouTube/Social Media Producer Bootcamp Intensive, 4 hours.

With your cell phone or camera you learn how to frame camera shots, how to film and pan, creating lighting for YouTube and film, makeup/wardrobe, how to set up a YouTube account and upload videos, where to source free music and photographs from for your film, understanding copyright, storyboarding, producing shows, interview techniques, and more. This course gets you started with filmmaking and knowing the techniques on how to create good film with 12x award-winning short documentary filmmaker Kerilie McDowall. $449.99. Group rates available.

WRITERS: Writer’s One on One, 3 hours

Work with Kerilie McDowall through fun writing exercises designed to fuel your creativity with fresh ideas and a new beginning. Kerilie is a non-fiction music writer who has freelanced for publications such as Canadian Musician, All About Jazz, Musicworks, and INSPIRED 55+. She was a regular contributor to DownBeat from 2016-2020.

Learn from Kerilie how to seed and storyboard ideas, then develop them while brainstorming and remaining receptive to flow and intuition. Kerilie has techniques to assist you to overcome problematic blocks, including techniques that are helpful for fiction writers. This workshop takes place with 12x award-winning filmmaker/award-winning journalist/past radio and TV producer, guitarist-instructor-writer Kerilie McDowall. $349.99. Group rates available.

Contact Us

[email protected]

For a quicker response: (250) 668-3589 TEXT/by PHONE to set up your private Open House session and for address/directions to the studio.

Ryan Oliver: Musing and Mastery

by Kerilie McDowall

(Previously published September 22, 2023 online at All About Jazz as: Ryan Oliver: Zigging With A Jazz Maestro, His Secrets And Wisdom)

“Sometimes having an original idea or game plan can be a really good thing. Zig, when everyone else is zagging...”
—Ryan Oliver, The Cookers Quintet

Tenor saxophonist Ryan Oliver of Canada's The Cookers Quintet, is no stranger to the art of touring the globe. For years he was an integral part of The Shuffle Demons, an adored Toronto jazz saxophone group known for their mid-'80s hit single, "Spadina Bus," written in humorous reference to the Toronto Transit Commission's Spadina Avenue bus that served a vibrant and unique neighbourhood in downtown Toronto, and other treasures such as "Out of My House, Roach," and the comedic "Cheese on Bread." "Spadina Bus" became the best-selling independent release single in Canadian music history in 1986, and Streetniks was nominated for Best Jazz Album at the JUNO Awards of 1987.

The Canadian hipsters are still known to sport flashy and kaleidoscopic wardrobes that would have inspired even some of the greats within jazz fashion like Miles Davis, or the eclectic Sun Ra. The quintet currently features Richard Underhill, alto and baritone saxophone, vocals); Kelly Jefferson, tenor saxophone, vocals; Matt Lagan, tenor saxophone, vocals, (formerly Ryan Oliver); Mike Downes, acoustic bass, vocals; and Stich Wynston, drums and vocals. The band has had personnel changes over the years, and are solidly Canadian jazz favourites. They even accomplished a successful attempt at a world record for the largest number of people playing saxophone simultaneously during a tour in 2004. The official Guinness Book of Records count was at 900 participants, all playing the theme from Hockey Night in Canada.

Oliver has moved back to Victoria, British Columbia on the southern tip of Vancouver Island, way-out-west in Canada, and joined jazz writer-guitarist Kerilie McDowall for a chat.

In the Zone: It is a pleasure to hear your thoughts today. You have enjoyed a formidable jazz career. Speak about your formative musical years from that earlier period. Where did it start?

Ryan Oliver: I grew up in Williams Lake in the interior of BC. I got interested in playing saxophone after hearing a John Coltrane recording. Luckily, there was a great teacher who happened to be in town as his wife worked at the local mine. His name is Michael Butterfield. He lives in Nanaimo now. He is a great tenor player and teacher. He had me listening to and transcribing Dexter Gordon solos, and playing in his blues band, the Hot Buttered Blues. We played all kinds of blues and R&B music, and he would even bring up Canadian saxophone giants Ross Taggart, who was a former student of Michael's, and Campbell Ryga from Vancouver to play with the band. Those formative experiences were really inspiring. Learning to blow on the blues and play all those horn lines was a pretty deep experience for me at 16 years old and I think it really set the tone for how I would learn to play. After that, I attended Malaspina College in Nanaimo for a couple of years, studying with Pat Coleman, before moving over to Amsterdam and eventually to Toronto.

ITZ: You are now residing once again in BC, but what was it like as a Canadian jazz superstar performing and touring globally with Toronto's The Shuffle Demons?

RO: It was definitely an incredible experience in my career, and I feel very thankful to have had it. I spent the better part of 15 years touring around the world with The Shuffle Demons. As a kid, I had their tapes and used to play along with some of their tunes so it was definitely a full-circle moment when I got called for the first time to tour with them. The first tour we did was in India on Christmas Eve about 15 or 20 years ago.

I was friends with some of the members just from hanging around the Toronto scene. I'd actually met saxophonist Perry White when I lived in Amsterdam and he was over there quite a bit. The Shuffle Demons gave me a chance to see the world while playing saxophone. I was also really lucky to share the stage with some of my best friends and favorite saxophonists.

Hearing, Rich Underhill and Perry White and of course, George Koller and Stich Wynston every night on the road was an inspiring experience, to say the least. We played all over the world over those years and that is a pretty priceless experience.

ITZ: Your band, The Cookers Quintet, has made some fun albums that are all about elevating and transcendent sizzling energy. What is your philosophy towards the practice and fine art of music?

RO: We've made four records for a great label in Toronto called Do Right! Music. The Cookers [Quintet] allows me to explore some of the hard bop music that I love and always love listening to. We put the band together 10 years ago or so at a dive bar in Toronto so that we could play every week.

We started out playing music by Art Blakey and Horace Silver, Hank Mobley, and all that, and then eventually decided to start writing our tunes on tunes in that vein so we could record and make a kind of a statement on, that the music wasn't just derivative.

I guess if I had to quantify how The Cookers [Quintet] fit into my musical view, it would be that it is important to strive for some level of originality. Not to say it can't be rooted in the jazz tradition, because that's part of the idea of it all. But searching for your own individual voice is an important aspect of the art.

ITZ: Do you have projects on the pandemic back burner or on the bucket list that you have been shaping? Didn't you just record an album or two?

RO: I've always got projects kicking around in my head. Some might be as simple as some original music of the writing for sax trio with bass and drums, all the way up to larger scale projects.

I've been lucky to record numerous albums over the last few years. I did a project featuring 12 strings with a jazz quartet for The Cellar Live label, a recent The Cookers record, and some great sidemen projects. One with Reg Schwager Senza Resa that Nanaimo jazz aficionado extraordinaire producer Luigi Porretta [Quadwrangle Music owner] produced, and another one as a sideman on Joe Coughlin's latest CD, exploring some of the repertoire by John Coltrane and Johnny Hartman.

I recently completed a live record at Frankie's in Vancouver. It will be released on Do Right! Records in 2024 and features one of the best rhythm sections on the planet. Brian Dickinson is playing piano, Neil Swainson on bass, Terry Clarke on drums and we had Dee Daniels as a guest vocalist for a few tracks. I think that the music turned out brilliantly and I'm looking forward to releasing the album next year.

ITZ: How did you cope with the pandemic's Canadian music industry and performance events shutdown from 2020-2022? Did it affect you negatively, and how did you use that time?

RO: The pandemic definitely put a hold on some things and I think we're still feeling the effects of it in the music industry. I was probably the same as everyone else, just kind of hanging there doing some digital things as they came up and spending my time that way. It coincided with the birth of my daughter. So I was definitely busy with life!

I am glad to see things coming back though, and I am always appreciative of the hard-working people in the industry who put concerts on, run the jazz clubs, and all the rest of it.

ITZ: You are into the art of composition, as well as interpretation. What is your process when composing? How do you get into the right headspace for it, and how do you like to work?

RO: It's a fine balance that feeds itself in some ways. I am a believer in the importance of learning repertoire from the jazz tradition. Learning tunes with cool harmonic movements and melodies can really help you as a composer. I do try to write original music. Often that is fueled by a project coming up like a record date or a gig with certain players that I would like to have original music for.

Original compositions give you a blank canvas that takes you out of this mode of thinking, 'What would Hank Mobley play here?' Or, 'How did Coltrane do this?' When you have your own tunes, you kind of have to find your own voice when you are improvising on them.

My composition process varies. Usually I come up with things from the saxophone directly, and then fill in the blanks at the piano, but from tune to tune you never know how it's going to go. I've been lucky to record a lot of my compositions over the years and played them on the road with different bands. I've also had some great experiences playing with real masters of the music and being forced to kind of step up to the plate and play my own tunes with them. It creates a real yardstick for your writing and builds your confidence in that.

ITZ: Are you fascinated with anything in particular? What are your fave to-do's, and are they music-related?

RO: There are a lot of things that fill my time from my life as a parent of a little kid now, outdoor activities, pursuits like yoga, reading, cooking, etc. Your life is your art in some ways, so I definitely enjoy things outside of music.

ITZ: What have some of your most memorable career highlights been as a bandleader or side player?

RO: I've been lucky to have had a lot of great experiences as a musician. The live recording I just did at Frankie's with some of the top cats out of Toronto was a definite highlight. Sharing the stage with masters of the music is always an edifying experience. I got to hang out with some of the jazz greats like Victor Lewis during my time in New York. This was also a very rewarding experience, and I feel honored to share the stage with Victor and have him as part of my musical world.

Of course, all those years with The Shuffle Demons were also great. Not to overstate it, but any opportunity I have to put the horn to my face these days and make music with people is special and fun.

ITZ: What are the most challenging aspects of tenor saxophone performance for you?

RO: Well, after all these years, I'm still practicing the tenor saxophone, and trying to figure things out on it, improve my tone, and really find ways to express myself with the instrument.

At this point, I guess the things I'm concerned with go beyond technique, although I'm always working on that as well. The tenor saxophone is a pretty incredible instrument with such a rich, lineage and history to it. I feel like no matter how much you can do, there's always more to be done, and there are so many players past and present that do so much with the horn. It's hard not to remain inspired.

ITZ: Given that you have mastery over your instrument, is music a love-hate relationship, or one of finding balance and new frontiers?

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