Joseph Arthur Faith video shot in Ipperwash now online

You can now check out the video for Faith by Joseph Arthur and the Lonely Astronauts, filmed in Ipperwash, on YouTube:
Faith on YouTube

For more details about the video’s filming, see our story:
You’ve Gotta Have Faith

New music school focuses on band experience

Music is a big boost for a child’s learning and self-confidence, and that’s why Ken Dinel hopes his new Grand Bend music school, The Band in You, will take off locally. Confident it will based on similar schools he has seen as a recording industry professional, Dinel is putting the finishing touches on a home studio that will house six students at a time in a real band situation.
“Each student has their own instrument and practices independently, and then they just jam,” Dinel says. “That’s how I got hooked on music, and that’s the biggest thing. You have to get children hooked on the instrument because it’s hard work at first.”
Students will learn with others their age, and will record an age-appropriate song with their peers.
“Seven to nine year olds may want to do Hannah Montana, and the older kids may want to do Nickelback. As long as the song is something they can handle and the parents consent to the song, that’s the song they’ll do.
“Really it’s about having fun. We’ll start simple at first with three chords, but they’ll know they’re playing that song.”
Classes are $20/hour, and will run for two to three months starting the week of September 30. To register, call Ken Dinel at 519-851-7013 or email thebandinyou (at) hay.net.

You’ve gotta have Faith

Story and Photos by Casey Lessard

It was a leap of faith, but a former Hollywood actor, a New York musician and a London (Ontario) camerawoman converged on an Ipperwash trailer park this summer in hopes of creating a music video that will also showcase the park to the nation and the world. Stephen Shellenberger, whose art is regularly shown at group shows at Bliss Studio in Port Franks, left Hollywood several years ago and directs the video for “Faith” by Joseph Arthur, a folk-rock musician based in Brooklyn. They teamed up with a friend of Shellenberger who owns London’s video production studio CIVA Communications, and who provided the team with Sylvana Liebregts, who shot and edited the video. It should hit MuchMusic this month if accepted by the music network, and there’s word it will air in the United States and France.
“I’ve done some music videos in the past,” Liebregts said, “so I was thrilled when I was asked to do it. I’m crazy about music, so to be able to do this and combine my passion for filmmaking with music is incredible. Joseph’s a really nice guy and talented so it was an easy job to take.”
Arthur has enjoyed moderate success in the U.S., with one of his songs featured on an EP as a tribute to the victims of Hurricane Katrina. The song was recorded and remixed six times on the EP by such artists as Peter Gabriel (who signed Arthur to his Real World label), Chris Martin of Coldplay, Justin Timberlake, and by Arthur himself in a duet with Michael Stipe of REM.
“I kept telling Stephen about Joseph,” said Arthur’s manager Peter Wark, whose office is down the street from Shellenberger’s Montreal home, “and he came out to see him play solo at the Montreal Jazz Festival. We gave him the record and Joseph said we should do a video. Stephen started calling me and he brought a lot of energy to the process. He had the idea from day one to do it at this trailer park.”
“It’s amazing,” Arthur, born 36 years ago in Akron, Ohio, said of the area. “It’s a beautiful lake and I like this trailer park because I like the characters and the people here. It was Stephen’s idea to come here. It’s a song about faith, and I just trusted his instinct and I feel like it’s something interesting we’re making here.”
Shellenberger lives part-time at the Huron Shores Trailer Park. He recruited some locals, including his neighbours and Miss Kettle Point, to perform in the video, which was filmed over several days at the park and at Ipperwash beach.
“I’ve never shot a rock video before,” Shellenberger said, “and I love Joseph’s song and I though if we’re going to do it, let’s do it at my trailer park.”
Shellenberger turned to art while acting in Hollywood, with roles in 30 films including A River Runs Through It with Brad Pitt, directed by Robert Redford.
“I was always painting along the way,” he said, “and then I went through a rocky breakup and my kids were taken to France and I started painting more and more. If you’re an artist, you will do whatever is necessary to create. Arthur hyper-focuses and puts out three albums a year. It’s a compulsion to do it.”
Arthur’s album Temporary People will be his first full-length album for 2008, following four EP-length albums released in March, April, June and July.
“When you’re really productive, you flood the market with your psyche,” Arthur said. “The Internet is a digital manifestation of humanity’s subconscious and it’s limitless. You can do as much or as little as you want. You could put out a record every five years or blog like crazy every day.”
Arthur is a busy man, not only touring and producing music, but also running a New York art gallery, which is shutting down this month because of problems with the landlord (according to stereogum.com). He sets off for a tour of France and North America October 6.
“Joseph does well, but he’s still struggling to get to the next place. I think everyone is,” his manager Wark said. “Success for artists is getting to the point where you can do your art and you don’t have to work a day job. Then you aim for the sky and hope you play for thousands and thousands of fans every night.”
Canadian fans should get at least one glimpse of Arthur when his video hits the air on MuchMusic; he recorded an interview that is expected to air when the video makes its Canadian debut. The album hits stores September 30.
“Our aim is to do something more with this and see if we can expand on the idea of what a music video can be and is,” Arthur said. “Through all these avenues of distribution, we’re no longer limited as artists to formulate our products into a fixed idea of what is commercially viable.”
“Having the video air on national television is probably the coolest thing to happen in my career to date,” camerawoman and editor Sylvana Liebregts said, “and it motivates me to make it really cool and really good.
“The theme of the video is faith, and it’s a spiritual, personal song to him. I like a handheld feel; it’s more intimate and you can get into the action. A steady, tripod look is nice, but it’s sort of dry and more standard; there’s not much too it. In post-production we’re going to give it quite a distinct look. I want to make it look really cool, so I’ll spend a lot of time on it.”
For first-time music video director Shellenberger, who has directed some shorts, it’s a brand new experience.
“I’m flying by the seat of my pants,” he said. “I don’t watch a lot of videos, but I know what I would like to see. You have to trust yourself and believe it’s all going to be perfect. I’ve worked on films where you have so many cooks that the flavour is cooked out of it. You have too many people overseeing everything. The beauty of this is I do what I feel and that’s how it’s happened.”

Hoping for a Hockey Night hit

At least one Grand Bend resident is hoping for a hit of iconic proportions. Pedro Quintana, inspired by a student who did the same thing, wrote and entered an anthem into the CBC’s Hockey Night in Canada theme contest.
“I wanted to write a cantata for church for Thanksgiving,” Quintana says, “so I thought why not write something for the caontest.
“I was inspired by what happens in the rink when there’s a goal and we feel proud when the hockey team is winning. It had to be an anthem, so fulfilling and uplifting. I thought to do it in a format with trumpets, trombones, cello and bass guitar, so something that will sound good in the rink if they have to play it live.”
Quintanta’s theme, Proudly Canadian, brings a smile to the face of the man who migrated to Canada in 2001. Perhaps he’s imagining what it would be like to be the man who wrote the theme to replace a Canadian icon, Dolores Claman’s Hockey Theme.
“It’s a simple theme with a format of A-B-A coda,” Quintana says, explaining his entry. “They can all be used separately, and it would likely be used as smaller parts. It’s how I would respond to a goal, when people are excited at the rink. The first part has some stress and release, and the second part is more patriotic and uplifting, and the last part is a run-out, a big crescendo, like Yeah, we did it.”
Currently, Quintana is competing with about 10,000 entries to make it to the public voting round.
“I’ve listened to many entries; some are good and some are not. It’s luck based on what people will like. We all hope it means something to people.”
Voting for the theme starts October 4. He’d like you to listen to it, and to vote for it if you think it’s worthwhile.
To do so, visit anthemchallenge.cbc.ca and search for Pedro Quintana.

Mookie-Mania hits the Bend

By Casey Lessard

One of this year’s Canadian Idol’s top eight finalists has a close connection to Grand Bend, and his relatives who live here hope you’ll send your votes his way. Mookie Morris has spent many summers in Grand Bend, and he was recently in town for his cousin’s wedding, where he jammed with his relatives.
Mookie has been performing well and CTV’s message boards peg him among the top three finalists.
Most critically, to make it to the top three, he needs votes, so if he’s still standing this week, consider making Mookie your Idol by watching CTV Monday nights at 9 p.m. and Tuesdays at 8 p.m. for the results from each week.
The family will be watching Mookie perform every week at Gables, so if you want to jump on the bandwagon, that’s the place to be each week.

For more information, visit CTV’s Idol website.

Love song: Pedro’s Canadian adventure

Local musician and music teacher Pedro Quintana was raised in Cuba and moved to Grand Bend after meeting his wife, Marcy Walker, at the resort where he played piano.
“I came down the elevator and heard this fantastic music in the lobby of the hotel,” Walker says, recalling their first meeting. “My friend and I sat and listened to his music for a while. I went over and asked if he would like a glass of champagne. I thought, he’s not only talented, but he’s pleasant and has manners; he’s not bad to look at either.”
The two met on December 25, were engaged on December 31, and married the next April. They’ve lived in Grand Bend since then, and have faced their share of challenges together.
“I was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2005, and had treatment for two years,” Walker says. “Pedro was just phenomenal through that. I don’t know what I would have done without him.”
Pedro is now able to do music full-time, teaching and performing locally, including Thursday nights at Hessenland for its Mongolian Grill.

As told to Casey Lessard

I was born in Santa Clara, Cuba. It’s in the centre of the island. We weren’t poor poor; my father was an electrician so he made good money, and my mother was at home. There’s no comparison between what you can afford in Cuba compared to Canada. I don’t remember things being so great that we could buy toys and things. We owned a 1956 Chevrolet, and we used to go once a year to the beach.
We were very much into music; I wanted to pursue music even at a young age. My mom and dad were singers with a group called Lyric, and I remember going to rehearsals with them. There was a lot of music around me growing up. I started taking piano when I was 13. An opportunity came for me where I could go to the National Music School in Havana if I did the seven years of work I would have done in elementary school; I had to do it in two years or I was out. It was quite challenging for me to learn all the subjects, including piano, history, and theory. But I did my examination in Havana and got accepted.
It was a full-time music school, and I finished in 1991 when I was 18. I had to decide whether to go back to Santa Clara and be a teacher, or continue on to university for another five years. The Soviet Union had just collapsed and we didn’t know if the school was still going to be open; if you could picture Cuba at that time, it was a pretty depressing time to be away from home. I decided to go back to Santa Clara, where I taught at an elementary school for two years, and also taught adults.
It was a very rough time economically, and an opportunity came up in Varadero as a pianist in a show, and that was my start. I eventually found more opportunities and became a pianist in a piano bar at the Brisas del Caribe resort. I started taking English lessons and lyrical lessons. I was about 22 at the time.
For a year I lived in Varadero in very poor conditions, paying a very high price for rent in a resort area. I got tired of that, and rented about a half hour away in Matanzas; I had a whole house and paid less than in Varadero.
The resort’s drivers would pick us up at 4 p.m. and drop us off at 4 a.m., six days a week. It was good working at the piano bar because I got a lot of privileges. The food was good, plus drinks, etc. I could talk to tourists and I had a lot of free time to study my English. It was quite boring working 7 p.m. to 2 a.m., six days a week. But in those circumstances, I met my wife, and a big light came into my life.

The piano bar
Being a pianist and having a love for music, I was forced to balance my night between piano and karaoke. On nights where people didn’t care for piano, I had to turn on the karaoke machine. One night, Marcy was sitting beside the bar. She had a little tape player and was listening to some nice music. I stopped by her table during a break and said to myself, “Wow! Who is she, listening to this good music and her hair bouncing around?” She certainly paid attention to me and we found something in each other right away.
I sat down and she offered me a drink. She told me about her family, and that her dad had passed away a couple of months before. After that, we decided to meet for dinner. She asked me what my favourite colour was, and I said blue. She went and changed into a blue dress! We had dinner and it was very interesting to talk to her. I was concerned at the beginning about where things were leading, but she treated me well. She treated me not as a Cuban, conscious of our situation, like other tourists do.
Not too long after we met, we were having drinks in a bar on New Year’s Eve 2000. I asked her if she would marry me and she said, “Yes. I’ll marry you.”
After that she went back and forth to Cuba several times and we used to email each other every day. I have several books full of printed emails from day one to the day I arrived here. In April, three months after we were engaged, we got married in a park in Cuba with a few friends; it was a beautiful wedding.

Coming to Canada
I came to Canada in February 2001. Challenge number one was the language: speaking properly, understanding it, and learning how things work here. I’ve always been concerned and aware of the expectation that if you’re a teacher, people expect you to speak properly. Canada has been great because it has given me the opportunity to do anything I want. Here are the doors, you can open any one you want. I had to start from zero, so I had a vision of what I wanted to do and that’s the only thing that kept me going. Eventually people recognize the work you do if you work with love and you’re consistent with what you believe. That’s true of any business.
Canada gave me opportunities to do what I wanted to do. But it could have been awful, too, if I had come here and found that people didn’t believe in what I believe, or that Marcy wasn’t the way she was down there. Fortunately, everything was as I thought it would be.
I really took a risk coming here, but my wife was the big light in my life and believed in me. Today, we’re still fulfilling the dream we started based on our mutual trust and the love of music we share.

Teaching music
When I was working in Cuba, I was always dreaming, and those dreams are what I do now. Down there, there was always a big roadblock that would not allow me to realize my dreams. I used to go inside my own world to be able to survive depression and the lack of freedom. I think that’s the only way I was able to survive.
When I finished school in 1991, I had this dream of teaching, and I found after a while that it wasn’t what I was supposed to be doing because I couldn’t make a living at it. That’s why I pursued the piano bar job. Now I’m free to do what I want and I’m respected. I work every day to make sure I do the right things. I know that working hard will eventually pay off.
In Canada, music has to be fun, and people take it as the third or fourth thing they do (after sports, etc.). I can teach anyone who comes how to play piano the right way. There are no short cuts if you want to learn the right way. But I have students who just want to learn a little bit, for example chording. You have to understand what people want you to teach them and focus on that.
I arrange my time based on when students are available. Students come for half an hour or an hour, and I teach individually or duets. I follow the Royal Conservatory curriculum, but some students prefer to just play along and learn some popular stuff.
I work at the Forest United Church, and I see myself playing at church and developing choirs and working with children. I enjoy that and working around the area at restaurants and bars. I work hard at everything I do and I take all the experience I have in popular and jazz to my church, and I’ve gotten a good response.

I see myself in every one of the students who come here. Everyone has something to offer and I take the best they can offer to make them start believing they can do it. You have to be patient and love what you do.

To learn more about Pedro Quintana’s music program for all ages, visit pedroquintana.ca, email pedromarcy (at) mac.com or call 519-238-2996.

All good things come to an end

The inevitable day has arrived.
I had hoped I would be able to continue to provide the Grand Bend Strip newspaper for free indefinitely, but after thinking long and hard this spring, I realize that the only way for the paper to publish this winter is to ask for your support.
Like you, I value the ability to learn more about the people who live and work in this community. I love meeting you and capturing your memories for the paper. This is what I feel I can bring to this community, and I want to stay here.
I also feel it’s important to bring to light some of the problems that exist here, and the challenges we face in this community. I’m willing to put the work into creating quality journalism here, but I can’t do it alone.
The Strip will continue to be free until the end of the summer, which on most people’s calendar is the Thanksgiving weekend. After that, it will be available only to Strip Club VIP members. Even the website will be restricted to VIPs. I have yet to decide whether the exclusivity will continue next summer.
I promise to make membership worthwhile, and hope you will contribute to surveys to improve the paper, and take advantage of special offers from our advertising clients.
For more information about club membership, please see our subscription page.

To Do - June 11-24 Entertainment Listings

Every Sunday
11:30 a.m. - 4 p.m. - Pinery Flea Market
Live Music with Brian Dale

Saturday, June 14
3 to 6 p.m. - Grand Bend Legion
Live Music with The Persuaders

Saturday, June 21
3 to 6 p.m. - Grand Bend Legion
Live Music with Cactus Jam

Tuesday, June 24
to July 12 - Huron Country Playhouse
Sorry… I’m Canadian. For tickets, call 1-888-449-4463 or visit http://www.huroncountryplayhouse.com

May 28 to June 10 Entertainment

Every Sunday
11:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. - Pinery Flea Market
Live Music with Brian Dale

Saturday, May 31
3 to 6 p.m. - Grand Bend Legion
Live Music with Jimmy Vail

6 p.m. - Stanley Recreation Complex, Varna
The Blyth Festival Singers Celebrate Canada. Featuring award-winning step-dancing and fiddling duo Matthew and Sherry Johnson. Cabaret Dinner, Concert and Silent Auction. Adults $25, children 12 and under $12. Tickets available from Blyth Festival Singers, Tasty Nu Bakery, Village Bookshop, The Dutch Store.

North Middlesex Arena, Parkhill
Show & Dance Elvis, Johnny Cash & Roy Orbison. Las Vegas World Champion “Elvis” Roy Le Blanc & his band “The Combination” with “The Man in Blank” a tribute to Johnny Cash & Roy Orbison. Show, Dance, Cash Bar, food all for $25. Call 519-294-4767 or 519-294-6215 for tickets.

Tuesday, June 3
to June 21 - Huron Country Playhouse
My Fair Lady.
For tickets, call 1-888-449-4463.

Friday, June 6
5 p.m. - StarDust Dinner Theatre, Parkhill
Angels & Outlaws Country Music Tribute

Saturday, June 7
3 to 6 p.m. - Grand Bend Legion
Live Music with Midlife Crisis

5 p.m. - StarDust Dinner Theatre, Parkhill
Angels & Outlaws Country Music Tribute

SHDHS Percussion ensemble takes gold

The South Huron District High School percussion ensemble earned a gold standing award at the MusicFest Canada national competition. For more, see music teacher Isaac Moore’s blog.

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