MISSISSAUGA MUSIC WALK OF FAME

Rob Wells has been in the studio with some of the most famous musicians in the world, but it’s the tinkling from behind Westacres Public School that really get his musical motor running. It may not be the Justin Bieber or the Ish or the Nelly Furtado or the Olivia Newton-John or the Selena Gomez product that he’s shaped for the public – but it cuts to the heart of what music is really all about.

Over the past few years, Rob has hosted a Songwriters’ Circle where some of his musical playmates, like Randy Bachman and Matt Dusk, drop by to play at an annual concert. The proceeds go to his local school in Applewood Acres to support and sustain its music program. Rob’s personal interest has helped support, sustain and inflame students’ passion for the pursuit that is his life’s work.

“Music is related to so many different aspects of life,” he says, noting that Albert Einstein, who played violin and piano, insisted that the theory of relativity was a “musical thought.” He’s not the first one to notice that “math, patience, focus, listening skills, give-and-take, and response” all seem to be intimately connected to music. That’s why walking by West Acres and hearing kids banging on bongos or pummelling the xylophone gives him such a thrill.

Some of those kids would be thrilled themselves to know that Wells and his engineering co-conspirator Chris Anderson worked with Justin Bieber not far away from the school to produce My Worlds Acoustic, an unplugged album of songs from Justin’s first two albums.

Rob was a mild-mannered computer animator, writing songs for himself in his spare time until he attended a game-changing one week songwriters’ course with 40 other would-be musicians at Metalworks Studio in 2001. He went from “incredibly nervous” the first day to “depressed” on the last – not because his dream was shattered but because the course was over.

The rest, as they say, is history. Wells, like his brother Rob, is a highly sought-after writer, producer, player and collaborator who works with many of the best-known contemporary acts in the business.

He thrives under the pressure of going into the studio in the morning with an idea and, in collaboration with the artist and lyricist and the rest of the band, emerging with a completed product. “By the end of the day you have a track and people are freaking out about it – that’s the best.” The writing is still the best part of the job. “It soothes my soul… lowers my blood pressure. It’s the best therapy of all time.”

His music has appeared in countless TV shows, film scores and too many CDs to count. He’s doing the new Katharine McPhee album in Hollywood and writing for the new Degrassi series on Netflix. If you walk into the new dinosaur museum in Calgary and catch the epic chase scene that greets you, listen carefully to the chase music. That was written by Rob.

From dinosaurs to Daisy Dares You, Wells has it covered.

It was 2003 when Rob first heard one of his songs on the radio. It was Craig Smart singing What Went On. That’s when he says he first thought, “Wow, I can do this.” Wow, can he ever.

Welcome to the Mississauga Music Walk of Fame Rob.

After watching a student talent showcase at Mount Carmel Secondary School in the spring of 1993 featuring three school bands, English teacher David Rogers had an idea.

What if the three standout guys who were in the band called To Each His Own hooked up with the standout guitarist in the band Dragonflower? He planted the idea with them and, sure enough, over the summer Ben Kowalewicz (Ko-wall-a-witz) Aaron Solowoniuk (Sol-won-ee-yuk) and Jon Gallant got together with Ian D’Sa to see what would happen.

What happened was an instantaneous musical bond. The energy and mutual admiration were immediate. One of the first songs they played was a Neil Young’ cover. It was supposed to be practice, but Keep on Rockin’ in the Free World turned out to be prophecy.

Even though it was a mixed marriage — two of them were from Meadowvale and two were from Streetsville — the guys made it work. There was no punk-pop scene in Mississauga at the time, so they all but created one themselves, turning Friday nights at the Masonic Lodge in Streetsville into a pilgrimage for every angst-ridden teen in town with a sense of musical adventure. And they gained a reputation — which they’ve never lost — for delivering the real goods onstage.

Whether it was upstaging the headliners at Jingle Bell Rock 4 at Mt. Carmel or playing for a few friends and family at a billiards joint in Lakeview, the guys in Pezz — which became Billy Talent to the rest of the world — were totally committed to the energetic execution of their musical vision on stage.

They wanted desperately to get better and better — and they did. That they played with the same energy and commitment and edge in front of 100 kids in the basement of the Masonic Lodge in the late 1990s as they did in front of 100,000 people at the Rock Am Ring concert in Germany last year, is a mark of their high personal standards of excellence.

Their songs have evolved rhythmically, lyrically, melodically and harmonically over the years, but the nuclear musical fission at their core remains intact.

After a decade of hard-slogging, they became “overnight” successes. While they can now measure their success in terms of millions in sales, and international tours, and media coverage, and awards (seven Junos and nine MuchMusic video awards and counting), they prefer to measure it in terms of their own musical evolution. Which is ongoing.

In introducing their Mississauga forerunners, Triumph at an induction ceremony last year, Ian said “as artists they showed the world time and time again how to give bigger-than-life performances. And they showed the value of really connecting with their fans.”

He might just as well have been speaking of Billy Talent. Despite their huge successes, the band members are very much still the same Toronto Maple Leaf-loving, neighbourhood pub types that they were when they started out. They’re a “friends and family” band for the punk set. From their first gig in Ian’s parents’ basement in Meadowvale to their appearance yesterday before thousands at Riot Fest in Downsview Park, Billy Talent has rocked the talk.

And — now that they’ll have their very own stone — they’ll be able to rock the walk on the Mississauga Music Walk of Fame.

Congratulations Aaron, Ben, Jon and Ian!

Despite what some people might tell you, the Southside Shuffle was not born 15 years ago at the St. Lawrence soccer fields at the foot of Hurontario St., where Downchild and Fathead held forth for a small but enthusiastic crowd.

It actually started many years before that, in a house at the foot of Mississauga Rd. — in what is now J.C. Saddington Park — the house where Chuck Jackson’s grandparents lived. That’s where the ritual gatherings of the clan took place, often on Sunday afternoons. Everyone grabbed an instrument and took a featured spot on the musical bill of fare.

Brothers, cousins, uncles, aunts, parents, and grandparents played various instruments, mostly guitars — Chuck probably plucked away on his first bass purchased from the Dixie Music Centre in Dixie Mall — and his grandfather played spoons.

It was a musical mishmash full of mayhem and fun and a lesson in the collective joy of making music which Jackson tucked away in his fertile Credit River delta memory banks.

In fact, it could have been the inspiration for a memorable song he wrote many years later called “Dew Drop In.” There was another ritual that took place at Jackson homestead every fall — a giant family corn roast. When Chuck started the Shuffle in 1999, he made sure it was scheduled for September, in honour of his grandparents. This twin divinity of family and music is what the Southside Shuffle has always been about and what it remains about today.

Chuck Jackson lived the first 56 years of his life in Lakeview and Port Credit. His musical education got a big boost in Grade 5 at Forest Ave. Public School when the regular music teacher took a leave of absence. The substitute just happened to be the guitar player in a great Toronto band – Robbie Lane and The Disciples.

It wasn’t long before Chuck and four of his buddies formed a band they called Barewires. A couple of years later they hit the big time – playing the afternoon school dances in Grade 7 and 8. Port Credit Secondary School brought more bands – Full House, the Madison Street Walkers – and a new awakening.

At 16, he had the life-changing experience of seeing Buddy Guy in the flesh at the CNE. In 2007, Chuck would bag one of his biggest catches ever for Southside when he got Guy to agree to be in his lineup.
The same year that he saw Buddy play at the CNE, his buddy Angus McKie (Mac-Eye) went on holiday in England and returned with two records more precious than gold — an album by John Mayall and The Bluesbreakers and a song that had yet to be released in North America called Sunshine of Your Love by some new group called Cream. That really solidified Chuck’s love of the blues.

Pretty soon he hit the road — Dixie Rd. At a talent show at Dixie Mall in 1971, the judges — the well-known local group of Edward Harding and McLean — placed Chuck’s band first. They won a recording contract with Stop 8 Music and the resulting album, Get On Up with Dancer, captured the first-ever appearance of a Chuck Jackson vocal on vinyl. If you have a copy — or even better if you have it on eight-track — Chuck will be happy to sign it for you later!

Greater glory awaited on Dominion Day in 1972. Chuck and the band headlined at the A & W drive-in on Lakeshore Rd. at Front St. – near where the Starbucks now stands. The sound and light man for the show, by the way, was a kid from Erindale Woodlands named Gil Moore.

Jackson earned his stripes on the road with an r & b tribute band that played on the east coast before he joined the Cameo Blues Band in 1978. Two-and-a-half years as the house band at the Isabella Hotel refined the vocal and harmonica styles.

You pretty well know the rest of the story. He joined Canada’s premier blues band Downchild 24 years ago and is now their longest-serving vocalist.

He has flipped, flopped and flown his way to three Juno nominations, three Maple Blues Awards, the Toronto Blues Society’s Blues With a Feeling lifetime achievement award and innumerable other industry markers. Last year he was enshrined in Festival and Events Ontario’s Hall of Fame for his work founding and directing the Shuffle.

As brilliant as he has been over his long career as an artist, his work as artistic director of the Shuffle may be Chuck’s greatest achievement. He has created a vibrant, elastic, living/ breathing blues and jazz festival that has stood the test of time.

He has “borrowed” liberally from the best of the ideas he has seen playing festivals around the world and brought it all back home. The festival has changed with economic times. The big ticket main stage draws have been refined to a much more democratic, and much more accessible, regime.

For $10, you get a front-row weekend seat to the best musical entertainment that Chuck Jackson’s imagination can find. Some of the kindest words that ever fall on Chuck’s ear come from visitors who say, “man, those guys are good. I’ve never heard of them before.” That’s a tribute, of course, to his keen eye for talent.

Whether he’s singing for thousands of people at a festival or doing his weekly Sunday afternoon gig at Roc n Docs, Chuck Jackson “sits right down and cries the blues” with the same fervent commitment. When Chuck sings the blues, they stay sung. And when he founds a blues festival, it stays sound.

Memorial Park has always been central to Chuck’s life. He played ball here as a kid. He hung out with the hippies here in the 60s and he first learned to play the harp on a bench here. It’s a big part of who he is and through his efforts it’s now part of who we ALL are as a city and as a musical community. Chuck says that the Shuffle has now taken on a life of its own. In his words — “ the event itself has become the star.” Perhaps so. But if that’s so, it’s largely because of Chuck’s passion, his persistence and his perspiration.

The Southside Shuffle only became a star because one man had a vision of what it could become. It’s only fitting that Chuck Jackson’s name should find a permanent home in the park that shaped his life so vividly. He changed the park and the town forever when he first called the blues home to Port Credit — and made Port Credit the home of the blues.

Oscar Peterson’s sound may be the most recognizable thing in jazz.
In fact, it may be the most recognizable thing in music. Millions of jazz fans can tell from just a few notes that they are listening to Oscar play piano — his sense of time, his phrasing, his command and his vitality — they all signify that you are listening to “the Maharaja of the piano” as Duke Ellington famously called him.

Peterson was born in Montreal, was unveiled to the world by his great friend and producer Norman Granz at Carnegie Hall in September 1949 and was embraced by the international jazz community in a career that spanned six decades — and spawned a legacy that is unmatched by any other Canadian jazz player and few other musicians anywhere in the world.

His fellow performers revered Peterson for his impossibly high standards, his relentless drive to be the best and his versatility — which saw him front his brilliant trios, act as the house pianist for Verve Records for a decade and then turn around and become the sensitive accompanist to the best-of-the-best of the jazz singing world, from Billie Holiday to the superb duets of Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong.

When Oscar Peterson sat down at the piano stool, there was never any doubt that something extraordinary was about to happen. He’d flash that big smile, then unleash that big arsenal of sound to which, he alone, seemed to have exclusive domain.

Fellow pianist Marian McPartland may have put it best when she said: “He creates a different kind of emotion, a heady excitement, because of his overwhelming capacity to dazzle and generate exhilaration. At times, it’s almost as if he’s driven by a force greater than himself that makes him play at an impossible speed, but when he changes pace and performs a reflective piece, one can hear the tender side of Oscar, the voicings he uses that are his alone.”

Peterson was a proud Canadian. His Canadiana Suite is an homage to his homeland that is as breathtaking in its scope as are the variations in landscape from Newfoundland to British Columbia that inspired its creation.

He was also a proud Mississaugan who lived here for some 35 years. Although he won 8 Grammies, the UNESCO International Music Prize, the Governor General’s lifetime achievement award for performing arts, the Jazz at Lincoln Centre award for artistic excellence and the equivalent of the Nobel prize for the arts, the prestigious Praemium Imperiale award, he said that two of the greatest honours in his career were the City’s 2003 tribute day for him, which included an all-star concert at LAC, and the naming of Oscar Peterson Public School in his honour.

Peterson was a mentor and an inspiration to pianists everywhere, from Diana Krall, to Hiromi, the Japanese fusion phenom. The first words she learned to say in English were “Oscar Peterson.”

She told me in an interview before her 2004 tribute concert at LAC that one of her greatest honours was meeting Peterson at his home when she was in her early 20s.

“It was an amazing experience. I could touch his piano. I could play his Boesendorfer. I was seeing my super-hero right in front of me. I was crazy- happy, listening to all of the stories about Frank Sinatra and all the other jazz legends he’s been playing with.

“It was like a dream house to me, with all of the posters of old concerts on the walls. It was like a museum to me.”

She continued by saying “When I got back home I went to the park and they took a picture of me jumping as high in the air as I could. I love jumping. I sent it to Oscar and said this is how I feel to meet you.” That’s how it was for everyone to meet Oscar and to hear his marvellous music.

He made us all leap for joy at his genius.

Critics struggle to try to find the right words to describe Krisztina Szabo’s voice. Her superb mezzo soprano has been called everything from “honeyed” to “ravishing” to “ringing” to “sumptuous” and, of course, the old standard “gorgeous.”

The Chicago Tribune called her acting “deeply poignant” and noted that “Krisztina Szabó stole every scene with her powerful, mahogany voice.” There are not many voices rich and deeply honeyed enough to be described as “mahogany.”

When she made her debut at Lincoln Centre at the Mostly Mozart Festival, the New York Times gushed that her performance was “clear, strong, stately and … endearingly vulnerable.”

Raised in Mississauga and a graduate of Port Credit Secondary School, Krisztina lived here until 1998. She began playing piano at the age of 9, the same year she auditioned with the Toronto Children’s Choir by singing that well-known operatic set piece — “O Canada.” She recalled that it was “the only song I knew.”

She’s learned a few others since then, enough to put her on many of the world’s great opera stages. She studied piano at the University of Western Ontario until her final year when she decided — thank goodness for opera fans around the world — that she wanted to be a singer and not a teacher.

After completing her studies at Western, Szabo applied — via audio tape — to the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London England. Although she describes it as a “bit of a fluke” to be accepted without a live audition, one suspects the school recognized genuine talent — even when it arrived via overseas post.

She won the Canadian Opera Company’s Mozart competition and after being accepted into the COC’s Ensemble Studio, she has become a fixture on the national opera scene. She also regularly performs recital, concert and chamber repertoire not just because she genuinely enjoys it, but also in order to remain close to her Toronto home and her husband and daughter.

In 2005 she won the MARTY for Established Performing Artist from the Mississauga Arts Council. Her former Toronto Children’s Choir instructor Jean Bartle says, “even as an 11-year-old she had a magic sound. She’s a lovely person.”

The key to her success in bringing characters to life on stage — characters that could easily be caricatures in the wrong hands — is Szabo’s ability to get inside a role and project the human emotions of the character, while delivering the vocals that have won her plaudits everywhere she has worked.

“You must be vulnerable when you perform,” says Szabo. “It’s that deep emotionality that connects us all. It’s about being human.” In reminding us of that human connection, Szabo’s work consistently rises about the level of great performance and becomes something more — something that distinguishes her as one of those rare artists who have access to that special place where we all live — but which we do not want to show to the world.

Her gift is the gift of revelation of soul through song. It is a rare and unusual gift — and one to be treasured by all.

If you can make your passion your profession, you will never have to do any real work again. It’s a philosophy that many men and women have dreamed of, but few have successfully executed.

Pre-eminent among musicians who have transformed their careers on the stage into a business that hasn’t just survived off the stage, but has earned its stripes on the forefront of the Canadian music industry, is Mississauga’s Gil Moore.

Everyone knows the story of Triumph, the Mississauga band who performed anthemic metal miracles in arenas around the world in the 1970s and 1980s, releasing more than a dozen albums, selling millions of records and eventually earning a place in the Canadian Music Hall of Fame and the Canadian Music Industry Hall of Fame.

In 1978 the band opened its own private studio on Mavis Rd. so it could tinker with its songs and not have to worry about booking studio time. When Triumph stopped performing a decade later, Moore dedicated himself full-time to the studio.

“Who doesn’t want to work at Disneyland each day?” he said when asked about his motivation in launching the studio. It is a decision that Canadian musicians — and musicians everywhere — look back on with deepest gratitude.

Metalworks has gone from a hole-in-the-wall industrial unit, with 20 students, to a musical mecca that is now more than 17,000 sq .ft. in size and features six studios, state-of-the-art lighting and sound, and audio facilities and innovative teaching techniques that reflect its owner’s unmistakable stamp of professionalism — a word that isn’t always top of mind in many aspects of the music business.

“Word of mouth from the artists is important,” Moore told The Mississauga News in an interview last year. “I think trust is number 1.” When the referrals are coming out of the mouths of artists with first-hand experience at Metalworks whose names are David Bowie, Bruce Springsteen, Katy Perry, The Cranberries, Rush, Prince, Tom Cochrane, Christina Aguilera, Guns ‘N Roses, Nelly Furtado, Anne Murray, Feist, and Metric, to name but a few — that’s a gold-plated endorsement.

Metalworks was named Recording Studio of the Year at the Canadian Music Industry Awards for a dozen consecutive years – so often that it might as well have been renamed the Gil Moore Recognition Award.

With all of the accolades that Triumph and Metalworks have received, you might think that a little some of that might go to a person’s head. But Gil Moore remains the same native son of Mississauga, the same unpretentious guy who founded Gil Moore Audio as a teenager and attended Streetsville and T.L. Kennedy Secondary Schools.

The same guy who always had a yen for construction – which may be why the never-ending expansion of Metalworks continues to this day. If you need a Mississauga Idol judge or sponsor, Gil is there. The prize may be studio time for just the winner, but somehow, he finds time for the top three finishers to record.

Metalworks sponsors the Q107 Homegrown contest , which is no accident. Moore has always had a deep and abiding respect for homegrown talent and he’s always respected his roots — which were planted deep in Mississauga, where he still lives.

He grew up in Erindale Woodlands and his parents, Martha and Herb, wrote columns for many years in The Mississauga News. One of those columns was called Suburban Style.

The Moores would be infinitely proud to know that their son has come to epitomize his own form of suburban style — one grounded in respecting and teaching the entire business of music, from conception to performance to recording to marketing and beyond, to succeeding generations of musicians.

Yes, Gil Moore is a wonderful musician, but we recognize him today for all the things he has done that make him so much more than that — those things that make him a true champion of his craft and a perpetual leader of his industry.