Playing in Vankleek Hill a ‘world-class experience’ for local singer-songwriter

Though he's now halfway through a CD launch tour that will see him travel across the eastern provinces of this country, Terry Gillespie is nevertheless living proof that there's no place quite like home.

The Review met with the singer-songwriter on a recent late summer evening as he was preparing for a performance of several new tracks at The Granary Beizli - the recently-revamped Swiss restaurant near Vankleek Hill and the former stomping grounds where Gillespie used to perform alongside The Granary Band on Tuesday nights.

"It's lovely, it's just great," he said of the venue, the place of choice for his September 28 CD launch concert. "This place we play, this place we live in, Vankleek Hill, is a real good place. It's world class: it has all the things necessary to produce an experience that's as good as anything in the world.

"We've got the food, the environment, the great outdoors, of course. And, for instance, The Granary is four kilometers from my house, which is as close as you can get to my home and have a gig."

Gillespie's abode is also home to the renowned Heaven's Radio studio, which he founded with Fred Torak over a decade ago after they realized the potential of all the visits they were receiving from other musicians.

In the same vein, his new album, Big Money, consists of 10 original tracks and features the work of no less than 14 musicians, a process Gillespie said was rewarding in its own right.

"Well, I didn't work with them all at once, so it was a lot easier than it sounds," he joked. "Over the last few years, I've been playing with lots of musicians. Depending on what the gig is, and who's available, whoever I get makes me happy... and the same thing happened in the studio."

For instance, he said one of his friends - who he had been trying to record for 40 years - stopped by Gillespie's home one day. "I sat him in front of the drums and said, 'Play the drums!' And that was the track. Whatever I can do to capture these musicians was done, including in studio, so [Big Money] is every level of recording all at once."

"It isn't actually a mish-mash at all, it's my musical concept that I always wanted to do... there's a continuity here."

Gillespie said there are two messages he'd like people to take home when listening to the disc: "There's an underlying thing about music, where all songs are love songs. We love life and we celebrate it by playing music - you can't get past that. But there's more of a message than just girls and boys; the concept of the protest song has always been really deep in the blues. Lots of the early blues tunes sounded like love songs but weren't."

Once he realized he wouldn't be selling his music to a mainstream audience, the artist said he decided to be more outspoken in his lyrics.

"That's the job of the musician, to raise the awareness of people somehow," he mused. "If we're not doing that, we're not doing our job."

If the message he wanted to evoke in his listeners was one of community, of peace, of working and living together, Gillespie said the reactions and comments he hears from people are evidence that he has connected with his audience: "People come up and say, that's okay, that's a good thing you're doing, it's a good direction."

In that respect, if the full house at The Granary Beizli was any indication of Gillespie's resonance with his listeners - and the local audience - then the direction he's moving in is the right one.

For many, it was clear the Tuesday night launch was in the full spirit of the "Blues on Tues" nights at the old Granary.

"Oh yeah, it's the same thing - there's a whole lot of people from the neighbourhood, hangin' out and doin' stuff - it just so happens we have a record," Gillespie laughed. "But this is it, we'll be at it, we're back into the Blues on Tues."

Terry Gillespie performs next at The Granary Beizli on Tuesday, October 26 and Tuesday, November 23 at 7 p.m. In the meantime, the musician is wrapping up tour dates in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, and will also stop in Ottawa on November 5 and in Beaconsfield, Quebec on November 12. For more information and upcoming concert dates, visit www.terrygillespie.ca.