Fraser & DeBolt

Fraser & DeBolt and The Critics

noreply@blogger.com (Fraser & DeBolt) — Wed, 07 Apr 2010 05:08:00 +0000

Music reviewers were universal in their praise of Fraser & DeBolt.
Here are some of the best comments.

"(Their music) has an energy that is the lost glory of rock. As a group, they are omnidirectional, carrying you to the interstellar wander of the great jazzmen, wrapping you in the deep folk cloth from which rock was cut, and rocking you like vintage Lennon and McCartney." -James Lichtenberg, The New York Times, April 18, 1971

"It's too far out to be the most popular Canadian recording of the year, but it could be one of the most important." - John Macfarlane, Macleans Magazine, May, 1971

"Some music is so special that, well, can you imagine how your eyes would feel if they saw a brand-new color? Not a new shade, or a new blend of colors, but a whole new primary color? That's how your ears feel the first time you hear 'Fraser & DeBolt with Ian Guenther' ." - Nancy Weber, Gentlemen's Quarterly, April, 1971

"Their music is a highly controlled vocal display of minute vocal lines, and sharp dynamic pitches. Their voices interweave, repeat lines, and often sound like a soft scat. The melodies... are like blue dwarf stars --- giant accumulations of mass that have collapsed into a tight space: a bundle of compressed energy." - Jud Rosebush, Rolling Stone, April 29,1971

"What can I say to make you have to listen to this album? It's the most musically complete and least pretentious album of folk music I've heard in my entire career as a reviewer. I am certain that Fraser & DeBolt are going to be an important musical force." - Chris Van Ness, Los Angeles Free Press,

"I can easily recommend this as one of the two or three best albums I've heard this year. Certainly the most inventive." - Bob Sarlin, Crawdaddy, August 29, 1971

Review - Montreal Gazette - Feb. 5, 1972

noreply@blogger.com (Fraser & DeBolt) — Wed, 07 Apr 2010 05:06:00 +0000

Fraser and Debolt make their music and dodge the super-hype

By JACK KAPICA
of The Gazette

The story of the artist who rejects urban society in favor of a solitude is an old one and each era produces creative individuals who recoil from the spectre of prostituting their art --- an act they must do to satisfy the demands of their public.

The promotion-happy pop record industry is not immune to this attitude and there seem to be more and more recording artists who reject the man who will "make them stars." The result is a scattering of styles of music into tightly personal sounds which have not been molded by producers with an eye for the big money complex.

Two such artists are singers Allan Fraser and Daisy DeBolt, who have walked out on the super-hype of the pop music scene into the serenity of peaceful country living.

"Promoters only want their 20 or 30 per cent for a show and that's all," said Allan Fraser, propping his feet against the wood-burning kitchen stove on their farm near Sherbrooke.

HAPPINESS

"Nothing in our music works on a business level alone. We want to work with people who are artistically and spiritually involved. Our only aim is to make people happy through our music."

And happiness, they believe, is something that can't be found in the frenetic life of a city.

"The psyche of the city really affects us outrageously," said Daisy Debolt, "Everything just goes whizzing by --- except in graveyards."

Their shyness toward the big promotional buildup has allowed Fraser and DeBolt to develop a sound that is entirely their own. Their music is the kind that grows on you, and rarely becomes tedious.

NOT A ROCK

"Our music is hard to classify," said Fraser, and so it's hard to fit into anything. It's immediate in the sense of the moment, it's classical in the sense that it's sober, and it's popular in the sense that it reaches a lot of people.

"No, you don't hear it a lot on the local rock FM stations, because the process of FM is getting bland, too much so for us. What I've heard on the rock stations has become stereotyped. We aren't stereotyped, and so our music won't fit. The disc jockeys don't know what to do with it, so they don't play it.

"But the CBC radio plays us a lot," added Daisy, "at least two or three times a week."

"Our songs are basically very personal, and that's the only way I'd like to describe them," continued Fraser. "That seems a very shallow thing to say, but it's the closest to the truth. Folk music is traditional, and if you define our music as traditional to our own personal heritage, then I guess it's folk."

If you listen carefully to Fraser and DeBolt's first album (called simply, Fraser and DeBolt), you can find almost anything you want in it. Rock, folk, jazz, classical, it's all there. Ultimately, the effect of the cross-currents in their music is surprising. "We try to play what we feel, and so sometimes it seems outrageous and shocking," said Fraser.

200 ORDERS

"The album is doing fairly well for us and Columbia says they get some 200 orders a week for it, and it's been going like that for over a year now. It's in its second printing in Canada now. But the crazy thing about it is that we're a Canadian group working for an American outfit. We're considered foreign artists in both countries.

"We do a lot of concerts in the United States, on the college and coffee house circuits. But the atmosphere in coffee houses is more intimate, although there are more demands put upon you. The coloring of the mood changes from set to set. Some people stay for only 40 minutes, then go. You can develop a concert atmosphere with the people that stay, though.

"You have to get psyched up for a concert, and then one you can appear, play, then disappear again.

CLEANSING

There are a lot of demands made upon you to flow into the art on stage, and you have more control over what you project.

"The act of the performance is a cleansing, a moment of truth. You can't hide anything. I don't know if the audience sees the truth in the music, but it's there to see."

The last concert Fraser and DeBolt did in Montreal was one staged in the cafeteria of Sir George Williams University last November. Since then, they have been getting little exposure in this city.

"We're mostly limited by the fact that there just aren't that many places to play in Montreal," explained Fraser.

"There's the Café de Paris, the Black Bottom and The Esquire --- we'd like to play those places, but since the management never heard of us, they get leery of our music. We're flexible, and once they accept us, it will be okay."

In the meantime, Fraser and DeBolt are living quietly on the farm, fashioning a new kind of music, a music that hasn't been heard in this city before.

Allan Fraser Remembers Fraser & DeBolt

noreply@blogger.com (Fraser & DeBolt) — Wed, 07 Apr 2010 05:00:00 +0000

Daisy and I were working separately on a college circuit in the States. We would cross the U.S. border and usually spend a few days at each university and state college, a few weeks at a time. Daisy had been working with Arthur Gee as a duo called Toronto Elevator and I was working with Sue Lothrop. We called ourselves Al 'n El and later went under "Breakfast".
I met Sue in high school in my home town of Sherbrooke, QC. Both duos were booked by Shelley Abrams, a friend of Breakfast's manager Brian Blain who now is a recording blues artist with Northern Blues Records in Hamilton, Ontario. Brian had played double bass with Sue and me in Quebec when we played a ski resort for a couple of winters. He left Bishop's University in Lennoxville to work with an ad agency in Hamilton. Shelly got us working in the states with the Bitter End circuit out of an office above the famous coffee house in NYC.
Both duos played at the Mariposa Folk Festival in 1968, the first year it was held on Toronto Island, in the workshop called New Writers. It was hosted by Joni Mitchell and Murray McLauchlan. When both duos broke up in the spring of '69, Daisy and I moved in with Brian and put our act together. We played around Toronto the first summer in coffee houses and in parks concerts.
We played the Pornographic Onion at Ryerson Polytechnical Institute. We did a demo for John Chatter and Jack Feeney, a music publisher and a record exec with RCA Records and when Chatter mentioned at the end of our three hour session that, of course now he had the publishing on our material, Daisy went ballistic, tore a strip off Brian and Jack and then stormed out of the studio . I don't know whatever happened to the tape but we never did business with them after that. Probably just as well.
That fall, we began touring on the same U.S. college circuit with Ian Guenther who had been playing electric violin with Toronto rock band Lighthouse. We had been playing with him all that summer and he agreed to travel with us in the U.S. Ian is extremely talented and the mesh was excellent. I learned a lot from him although I remember the first gig we did with him, I couldn't hear the pitch of my voice. I think it is partly the nature of a fretless instrument like the violin and partly Ian's adventurous style.
About 1980 I contacted Bryan Adams' producer, Jim Vallance, to try to drum up some interest and he asked me about Ian, with whom he had worked at some point. He asked, "Did he ever learn to play in tune?" Only later did I flash back to those first few gigs where I thought I was going nuts, too. I did adapt though and eventually came to love Ian's powerful creative arrangements. We were definitely in our salad days then, too, and Ian had had a taste of the professional recording act experience with Lighthouse.
Ian was a talented engineer and always went to great lengths to ensure that the equipment was as good as could be. I can still see him with great Voice of the Theatre speakers on a cart he had dug from some AV dept at the college we were playing, and working with the staff, discussing speaker placement and lighting and such. At first playing with Ian was weird because his intonation and attack are so energetic and bold. After a set or two, right when we started touring, it settled in and for a solid year or two, we toured a lot. The music was fine and powerful. His wife Joan Chisholm travelled with us sometimes, too. She was a sophisticated and talented woman with a good sense of humour.
Throughout the Fraser & DeBolt years we were guided by a redheaded angel. My very good friend Tony Perkins, not the actor, was our touring manager. He did everything for us. He produced the sound at most shows we did and he always got great sound for us. He also drove our Citroen station wagon and later our International Harvester SUV (what a hog). He was a dear, dear friend who passed away recently with cancer. We had fallen out of touch for several years but I wish now we hadn't. His wife, Jessica Reaske, travelled with us as wardrobe mistress. What a laugh. We were about patched jeans and feathered hats. She is a scream and she was always cracking things up.
Man, stuff was good when we wuz fab.

"Herein an honour our lives have worn."

noreply@blogger.com (Fraser & DeBolt) — Tue, 06 Apr 2010 01:46:00 +0000

CLAY AND DAISY SKY

There was no treacherous procedure in this winter.
Close senses and easy rhythms to our shoulders,
the fibre of its nature colouring our breath.
We have lived aspace amid the shadows cast of winter,
laboured eye to eye - soul and heart and all our strengths
trained in the strange textures of easy times.

The world a beach for our pairs of dazzled eyes, the air
the taste of ashes, a bell the colour of secrets rings in
the winds. Many hearts were lifted.

There is the effect of a finer balance, having sniffed of
doom in cities. Grey crystal skies of another country's
spring force the exactness of form and action.
Our steps have rustled through thin beauties of stone and
dust. Music seeds the growth of calm.
When perfect, the swift truth of silence cools the crowded
loins of fear.
Herein an honour our lives have worn:

- Anthony Perkins

(This poem was originally intended to be on the back cover of Fraser & DeBolt With Ian Guenther. Columbia Records replaced it at the last minute with a review. We are now able to share it with you for the first time. The Fraser & DeBolt website is dedicated to the memory of our road manager and dear friend, Anthony Perkins of Sawyerville, Quebec

.)

The Many Versions of Dance Hall Girls

noreply@blogger.com (Fraser & DeBolt) — Tue, 06 Apr 2010 01:00:00 +0000

The Winnipeg band The Duhks brought Allan's tune “Dance Hall Girls” (from the Fraser & DeBolt with Ian Guenthur album to international attention with their Grammy-nominated album but the song has also been covered by Tom Russell, Keith Miles, Mike Asquind, Jim Cope, Blue Love Monkey and more not to mention numerous indie recordings and YouTube appearances. Watch for another hi-profile cover real soon. You'll read it here first.

The First Single

noreply@blogger.com (Fraser & DeBolt) — Fri, 02 Apr 2010 06:33:00 +0000

Fraser & DeBolt's first-ever 45 RPM single was "Don't Let Me Down," with the mono version on the flip side. It was the fab twosome's tribute to the Fab Four.

Daisy recalls some adventures on the road

noreply@blogger.com (Fraser & DeBolt) — Fri, 02 Apr 2010 06:24:00 +0000

Ah, the glamour and excitement of Hollywood!

Back in 1971, Allan and I had just finished the first album. It was out and we were doing a promotional tour for CBS Records. We were making our way down in the States and we went to Los Angeles to open for Mason Williams at The Troubador.

Every night Mason would come out with this big, fabulous glass guitar and play his hit Classical Gas.
He was a big star with a big glass guitar. Then he would come back to the dressing room sobbing that he had to get off the mountain where he lived, there were just too many people living there.

So here we are in California and we're waiting for a cheque to come from CBS Records. We're staying in a house in Pasadena that's on the side of Medicine Mountain. And everything felt really, really weird. We didn't know what was wrong but we felt we had to get out of California really fast.

Tony, our road manager, went to the grocery store and left our cash in the grocery cart so we had absolutely no money. That particular day we were up at Mason Williams' house and we were looking out the window, right at the top of Beverly Hills.

We could see the CBS sign flashing on and off, reminding us that they owe us money. We didn't have any money and we sensed there was some reason we had to leave. So, Tony's wife Jessica phoned her parents and they wired us enough cash so we could go.

We left the next day. So we're out there going along the highway in the hills and we just crossed the mountains into San Bernardino and that's when the earthquake happened. The mountains started shaking, including every road, every bridge we had passed under. The Pasadena house we had been in had slid right off the mountain. We just stood there in the desert and watched the mountains shake.

Luckily, Mason Williams wasn't home at the time.

Frequently Asked Questions

noreply@blogger.com (Fraser & DeBolt) — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 20:44:00 +0000

Q: Are the two Fraser & DeBolt albums available on CD?

A: The two Fraser & DeBolt albums are not yet available on CD. Daisy DeBolt's solo albums are available from her website
www.daisydebolt.com

Q: AAMP!itude asked why a Canadian (Allan Fraser) would write a song about Baltimore women. Allan answered as follows:

A: "I wrote dhg when I was 19. There's a Baltimore, Ontario where a lot of migrant farm workers get field and orchard work. I used to call the tune 'The Maritime Migrants' Song.' I spent my late teens in Sherbrooke, Quebec and there was a Baltimore Bay we used to boat to for parties."