I saw Dave Young at Elements. Dave Young is a jazz legend. He’s played with them all: Oscar Peterson, Clark Terry, Harry Edison, Zoot Simms, Joe Williams, Oliver Jones, Rob McConnell, Kenny Burrell, Cedar Walton, Hank Jones, Nat Adderley, James Moody.


My wife Michelle and I sat about six feet away. So close, you could feel the air moving from his bass, not the stan- dard little Gallien Krueger amp every bass legend uses—I doubt that was even turned on—just that big, old acoustic bass moving the air.

After the gig, Dave signed my CD. We talked about people he had played with and other times I had seen him play. It was heaven. Two months later, Elements closed.

New York has Birdland. The Baked Potato lives in North Hollywood. Even Toronto has The Top O’ The Senator. Kamloops had Elements.

Elements Café was supposed to be Kamloops version of the jazz-and-supper club. You know the deal: great music, good food, good times. The food was there, the music was there too, but less than a year after it opened, Elements closed its doors. Without fanfare, without fuss, without public notice Elements was gone. Locks changed, tables and chairs abandoned.

It wasn’t just Elements. For a brief period Kamloops was a pretty good place for jazz players and listeners alike. Milestones, Chapters, Elements, Java Cycle, The Plaza and The Stockmen’s— all offered live jazz. Within six months, all six places either closed, or dropped live music from the menu.


What does this say? Can live jazz be sustained in Kamloops, in small market communities in general? Is jazz dead? How about live music in general? Has the day of the small performing artist been supplanted by canned entertainment, music videos and mega-shows?

Musicians have always complained that there are no good gigs around. People complain that no one plays good music. Can fresh, new, inventive, exciting, energetic, engaging music get out and into the world?

Bob Murphy is a piano player from Vancouver. He played with Dave Young at Elements. He too has played with them all: Chuck Berry, Larry Coryell, Phil Dwyer, Gil Evans, Lionel Hampton, Freddie Hubbard, Lee Konitz, Fraser MacPherson, Henry Mancini, Kenny Wheeler, and of course Dave Young.


“Don’t blame the music,” he said. “Don’t blame the people either. In most cases, the community support is there. It was in Kamloops.”

“It’s a business”, said Murphy. “Basic business needs must be met.”

A famous British guitar player once told me “if you want to make music, don’t become a professional musician.” The demands and pressures of sustaining the business side of music can squelch the music, squelch the creativity. When profits from one person’s creative output support a cast of managers, booking agents, advertising reps, and bus drivers, the pressures mount to maintain a strong fiscal bottom line. But at what cost?

In the balancing act b e t w e e n music and business, it’s the rare soul who manages to hold the scale level without a d d i n g weight to one side or taking it away from the other. All too often, music is sacrificed for money. S o m e make their music more commercially accepta b l e . Restaurant o w n e r s skimp on the entertainment budget or find players willing to play for free. In either case, the music suffers. The artist who compromises his music runs the risk of leaving his best things left unsaid. Club owners quickly find that even novice performers can’t give it away all the time.

So what to do? Throw up our hands? Can anyone make a living off live music anymore?


What if you could work around business issues, sacrifice some of the financial demands, lessen the burden of the bottom line—make some music?

In big cities and small towns, at all levels of professionalism, in schools, from the garage band to the Backstreet Boys, money issues are unavoidable. But there are ways around it.

Enter the non-profit society.

The first time I called Linda Tanaka, she was too busy filling out grant applications to talk with me. Linda heads the Salmon Arm Folk Music Society, a non-profit society dedicated to bringing world-class musicians to Salmon Arm. When I did finally manage to catch her with a couple of minutes to spare, she shed some light on what it takes to bring music to a small town.

“I’ll never forget the time we got Miriam Makeba and Hugh Masekala.” She said. “Apartheid had just been overthrown in South Africa. Miriam was 47 about to return home and vote for the first time in her life. She was over 60. It was her birthday that night. The crowd sang Happy Birthday.”

Linda has run the society as an unpaid volunteer for 20 years. This year, the society became her full-time occupation. She will draw a paycheque. It started out as an informal coffee house, featuring local musicians. She had no training or experience booking acts, but rented a hall and started booking people who were passing through town.

“It’s a lot of work with no financial pay-back,” she says. “It takes hard work, motivation and someone’s vision to be successful.

“Our goal is to break even. Most of the time the turnouts are good, but not always.”

Hence the need for grants, Canada Council Grants mostly. “We couldn’t exist on the box office alone.”

A core group of volunteers work year round for the society. During festivals, the number swells to 400.

It’s a ton of work and the pay is nonexistent. Why does she do it?

“I guess I’m just a music junkie,” she said.

Most city governments publicly support the arts and fund specific events and organizations. Kamloops is no exception. While the days of walking into city council and receiving overwhelming support are gone—replaced by filling out forms in triplicate and city budgets that often make the arts their first sacrificial lamb—money is available for groups and individual artists.

The city spends upwards of $1 million per year on arts says Ron McCall, head of the Community Arts and Culture Department.

“We support the art gallery, Sagebrush Theatre, Western Canada Theatre Company, the symphony, Arts Council, Music In The Park, Mainstage Theatre Festival and Community Arts Grants. Twenty per cent of the programs offered through the parks and recreation department are purely artistic or have an artistic component.”

Of that $1 million, $30,000 goes directly to musicians in the form of two grants. The Community Arts Grant funds non-profit groups and organizations. The British Columbia Festival of the Arts Legacy Funds are the remnants of money raised during Kamloops hosting of the B.C. Festival of the Arts. The principal is not touched. Seventy-five per cent of the interest is given to individuals for personal development.

The Legacy Funds are also marked for organizations bringing in specialists for seminars or other educational events. The idea is to bring in experts and have them leave some knowledge behind.

Grants are given out twice a year. The maximum is $600, but most get between $200 and $300. Only one grant per year is available to each group or individual. Forms are available at city hall.

After filling out the 52 page application for non-profit society status and working your way through city hall’s red tape, what’s left for the young and not so young musician still not too discouraged? Play. Play every chance you get anywhere you can. Remove the word “no” from your vocabulary. If someone asks you to play Christmas carols, learn a bunch of Christmas carols. Be careful what you give away though.


Sadly, if you are willing to play for free, there are an awful lot of people who will let you do just that. That is not to say that you must get paid every time you perform, but choose your benefit gigs wisely. Are you playing for someone who is making money from your performance? Are your Christmas carols in the local bookstore intended to make shoppers in that store more relaxed and more likely to buy books?

The California Guitar Trio was recently featured in Downbeat magazine. Some of their first gigs were in nursing homes and hospitals.

They were great musicians already, but through freebies, they learned how to play together in front of audiences who not only didn’t pay, but also deserved to have some music for free. If there is a moral, and you don’t mind being hit over the head with it: support live music.

Live music enriches us all.

Regardless of the style, get out, turn off Much Music or CMT and see—no, hear—what’s out there.

Music is possible. It is possible to make, present and perform music in small towns.

I arrived five minutes early for my 9:30 a.m. meeting with Syd Griffith and found her waiting for me at the front door of the old elementary school that now serves as one of the school district’s office buildings. “I was going to apologize for the mess,” she said as we entered her office. “But this is pretty much what you get all the time.” I assume there’s little time for housekeeping.

A trombone case holds up a m i c r o p h o n e stand. A tangle of cables leads from various pieces of audio equipment, into a small mixer and out to nicer speakers than should be in a school district e m p l o y e e ’ s office. Pictures of student bands fight for wall space with family photos.

Officially she is the Fine Arts Coordinator for School District #73 (Kamloops/Thompson) but she wears many hats. Today her headgear reads ‘Kamloops Jazz Society Founder.’

“The first step is to find a place for performances, a good venue,” Griffith said. The recently relocated Grind appears promising. Grind owner “Dave (Burgess) has always supported the local music community,” Syd would like to help out.

“The next step is to form a committee, with specific tasks.” The Vernon Jazz Society serves as her model. “It needs to be an active, working committee,” she adds. Positions are reserved for public relations, venue/performer bookings, school district liaison, advertising—the list goes on. Vernon has 13 people, each playing a role in pulling off an average of two shows per month. Griffith expects the same here.

The plan is four-fold: schools, community, professional performers, and eager amateurs. “First, education and cultural development in the community, then clinics,” she said. “Clinics for both the kids in school and the community in general.” Next come the actual performances.

Syd has moved past the obvious and envisions a place for local adult players to get together and play. “There are all these great players, doctors and lawyers by day, who end up just playing alone in their basements.”

A circuit is becoming established through the interior. Players start in Kelowna, move to Vernon, go on to Armstrong, play in Salmon Arm and then move on.

Kamloops is a natural fit, the next logical stop. Syd plans to exploit this. “I’ve talked with Sue Kershaw in Vernon and she is really excited about a co-op kind of thing.” At the time of this writing, the society had yet to hold its first meeting. With luck, by the time this story hits the streets, Dave Young will have a place to play in Kamloops once again.

You can reach Syd at 376-2266.