Burton Cummings

[charlene]

interview and picture:
http://www.torontosun.com/entertainm...96281-sun.html
Having just come off the road following a tour with Randy Bachman last year, Burton Cummings considered getting back to work on a new solo record, one he thought about releasing five years ago.

But while mulling it over, those who knew him best were actually setting things in motion.

"My road manager Sam Boyd and my manager Lorne Saifer, they phoned me up one day around November 2007 and said, 'Alright, the studio is booked in California, the flights are booked, so is the band and you start on January 11th,' " Cummings says. "I was like (gulps), 'What? I guess I'm doing a new album.

"So once I reached that point, I felt a little bit relieved. It was like a weight was taken off my shoulders. It was like okay, it's going to be real now, we're going in on the eleventh and everything was concrete. It was laid out in front of me."

The new album Above the Ground, in stores today, features 19 songs.

But perhaps most surprising about this record is Cummings wrote all the material himself, something he couldn't say about an album before.

"The fact that it's so many and they're all mine, that's the first time I've ever seen that in print on any of my album covers -- all songs by Burton Cummings. That's kind of a neat little personal milestone for me," he says.

After spending most of the past decade touring as The Guess Who and then as Bachman Cummings, Cummings says Father Time influenced the album's direction, hence the album title.

"I think all of my years of living have crept into the lyrics, so this is more of an album of reflecting and growing up and being a little older," Cummings, 60, says.

DUAL CITIZENSHIP

"I don't think there's a lot of fluff on here, the lyrics are far more ... I wouldn't say serious but I am more concerned now at this stage in my life. I don't want to put something out that will haunt me or embarrass me in a few years."

Although American Woman was a huge hit, Cummings remains a Canadian citizen living in Los Angeles part of the year. However, in late October Cummings revealed to Sun Media he planned on getting dual citizenship.

Maybe the idea came from We Just Came From the USA, a single Cummings describes as "Caveman stuff" that's getting lots of airplay Stateside despite not being the most praiseworthy song about Uncle Sam's land.

"It's a reflection on a Canadian's idea on how insane the United States is and yet wonderful at the same time," Cummings says. "I love the whole concept of the United States, but they're obsessed with celebrity, power and money, it's a crazy country.

"I'm not putting America down. God knows it's been good to me. In the bridge I'm saying I'll cut you open for a nickel, sew you back up for a dime, for a quarter I can testify that someone else did, for a dollar I'd do it all one more time. So it's the obsession with money and power down there."

The person Cummings might have to thank most for Above the Ground being released is his longtime cohort Randy Bachman.

After touring this summer (sometimes in severe agony), Bachman underwent shoulder surgery, the result of having a Gibson guitar slung over his left shoulder for four decades.

"Thank God he's okay again, but my next few months certainly will be centred on Above the Ground. I'm at a stage in life where that's a real privilege. A lot of people don't get that chance when they turn 60. And it's not an old lame guy just putting out an album for the sake of putting out an album."

REVIEW of new CD -
Above the Ground Burton Cummings

Sir Lucious Leftfoot ... Son of Chico Dusty Big Boi

Classic Rock

*** 1/2

Burton Cummings has his own way to rock. Again.

The CanCon icon and longtime Guess Who frontman's long-overdue comeback album -- his first solo studio release in 18 years -- is easily the most personal and ambitious work of his four-decade career. For the first time, Cummings wrote, arranged, produced and even financed the entire album himself. Some songs date back to the '70s; others are brand-new, drawing on his view of life at age 60. Stylistically it encompasses everything from lumbering Zevonesque rockers laced with arch wit to sincerely bittersweet piano ballads, along with excursions into samba, lounge, country, barbershop and more, capably rendered by Cummings' old pals The Carpet Frogs. And with 19 songs spread across 75 minutes, it certainly delivers plenty of bang for the buck (though he coulda saved a few for a followup).

In short: Burton is making up for lost time. So we'll stop wasting time and get right to the track-by-track review:

Crazy If You Mess

With the Gods 3:50

An old-school rocker laced with Chuck Berry guitar, pumping piano and dark lyrics about playing with fire. Great opener.

Junior Won't Behave 3:38

It's just a ditty about bad kids -- but the well-deep refrain and midtempo wallop make it seem far more ominous.

TPOS 3:30

First word is The. Third word is Off. Last word is Song. Cummings fills in the blank on this bouncy, CCR-ish country-rock twanger.

Any Minor Miracle 4:08

Burton quits kidding around to deliver this gorgeous little roots-pop number. Reminds us of I'm Scared.

Powers at Play 4:42

A Zevonesque California rocker based abound a rolling tom-tom line and big, ringing piano chords. Simple but effective.

Ponderlust 4:49

Never mind the bad-pun title -- but this chugging Iggy Popish rocker is a winner. Burton channels the Lizard King in the bridge.

Rollaway 1:42

This silly barbershop-quartet ode to a hide-a-bed is the album's oldest song. Cute, but coulda been a bonus cut.

We Just Came From the U.S.A. 3:36

The 'Hey, hey, get out of my way' playground chant becomes a neanderthal rocker. Amazingly, Randy Bachman didn't write it.

Pretty Pictures 3:39

We go from the U.S.A. to the Caribbean for a lilting, deceptively sunny number inspired by a kidnapping.

Look Out Charlie (There's a New Bartender In Town) 3:14

Cummings makes like Billy Joel on a suave lounge-piano workout about Dubya, 9/11 and the Gulf War.

Kurt's Song 4:45

No, not Cobain; the Kurt in this melancholy lament is late Guess Who guitarist Kurt Winter, who died in '97.

Richard 5:00

Another tribute to lost friends and relationships, this shadowy slow-burner is reminiscent of Rain Dance.

Dream 3:45

Even Burton gets lonely sometimes, as we learn in this gently strummed, fittingly dreamy tune.

Up In The Canyon 3:09

The flip side of Dream: A lightly funky groover about the splendid isolation of Cummings' home in the L.A. hills.

A Touch of Morning 3:49

Burton does the samba. As light and sunny as its title -- but nice as this is, the disc is starting to feel a little long.

Revelation 4:24

A little Huey Piano Smith X a dash of Alley Oop + lyrics about "Mr. L. da Vinci" = A bouncy little retro-pop nugget.

Invisible 3:31

Cummings conjures Aaron Neville for a soulful ode to life's unseen magic. Fun fact: The lyrics are blank verse.

Retribution 5:25

One last blast: A crunchy slow-motion boogie-rocker with another Jimbo tribute. Good, but not great.

Above the Ground 4:18

It takes a long time to get there, but this breezy piano-pop closer is worth the trip.

[Moosedog]

Burton's radio interviews over the past couple of days have been great! He'll be signing a CD for me tomorrow, thanks to a great friend of mine in Toronto.

Vickie

[charlene]

He's a very personable guy-funny and he has great stories..He should write a book...


article & pic - http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servl...rtainment/home

article text is in next post.

[charlene]

Globe and Mail

November 1, 2008

First, shake the hand – meaty and muscular, with fingers that have carved 10,000 keyboards.

Then, switch on the tape recorder, sit back, and just let him riff. He needs no invitation.

When I say my name, the eyes seem to flinch momentarily through the cigarette haze, because, although we've never met before, Burton Cummings and I share a common history, having occupied the same psychic terrain known as Winnipeg in our formative years. A physical place, too, of course, but mainly a state of mind.

Burton and I roamed the same elm-lined boulevards, cursed the same endless winters, hung out in the same bowling alleys, and listened addictively to the same pop radio stations, the music imprinting itself forever in the fresh Silly Putty of our cerebella. Of course, there's one major difference: I can still recite lots of the old lyrics; Burton started writing his own – and went on to sell upward of 20 million records, entering the pantheon reserved for the royalty of rock music.
Cummings can still belt out a dozen lines from his starring tenor role in his Winnipeg high school's production of HMS Pinafore, crica 1963. (Fred Lum/The Globe and Mail)
Just how deep this personal connection runs is immediately apparent, because it turns out that the object of Burton's first great adolescent crush was my first cousin Karen (“She didn't have any time for me”) and that his good friends growing up were two more of my cousins, Mark and Miles.

Of course, you couldn't come of age in the Russian shtetl that was still north Winnipeg in the 1950s and early sixties without associating with Jews, but Burton, nominally a gentile, probably overdid it (not for the last time) when he persuaded Rosh Pina Rabbi Phillip Shnairson to admit him to the synagogue's youth program – “the only goy,” he laughs, “to be a member.” He attended “more bar mitzvahs than most Jews,” can still recite (in Hebrew, no less) the first of the four questions from the Passover Haggadah, and belonged for four years to the Sabras, one of the teen clubs at the Young Men's Hebrew Association on Hargrave Street (about 200 metres from a theatre that now bears his name). “Listen,” he says, drawing on a cigarette, “I could daven [pray] by the time I was 12. All my friends were Jews. I found the Anglicans really boring.”

The newspaper-delivery route that Burton administered as a boy took him past the Ludwig house on Scotia Avenue, where he would stop to visit his friend Israel, tinkle the ivories on the family's grand piano, and experiment with their reel-to-reel tape recorder, then still a novelty. Ludwig still owns the earliest known tapes of Cummings singing songs by Ray Charles, as well as the Marathons doing Peanut Butter. “I was 13,” he says. “My voice hadn't even changed.”

And when he made his first professional appearance at 14, as a member of the Deverons, the gig was booked at the Herzlia Academy, then an orthodox shul in the city's south end. The booking agent was an enterprising kid named Lorne Saifer. Now, 47 years later, Saifer is still Burton's manager. His fee back then for the five-member band: $5. “None of them were old enough to drive, so we had to take cabs,” remembers Cummings. “We lost money.”

This was even before he had started dating a young Jewish girl from the south end, Jan Schneider, who would be his girlfriend for nine years (and very nearly became his wife) – a crucially important period in his personal and musical development. It was for Schneider that he wrote such hits as Stand Tall, Timeless Love and I Will Play a Rhapsody. Indeed, long after she was married to someone else, “I was still writing songs for Jan,” he says, “trying to make her think about coming back.”

All of this came flooding back a few weeks ago as Burton sat down to talk about his new CD, Above the Ground. It's his first solo album in 19 years, and he has not stinted on content: The disc boasts 19 songs, all new, music and lyrics by Cummings himself. The photo on the cover shows him sitting in a chair with his arms extended, looking not unlike another Winnipegger, the late magician Doug Henning, as if he were levitating an invisible body.

Above the Ground is an apt metaphor. Although the years have taken a toll on him – for the Globe's photographer, he was reluctant to open his jacket to show a Beatles T-shirt, for fear of revealing his ample stomach – Cummings has endured. The title track goes, in part: “Been waking up with my nose in the eggs now, and I suppose that I could use a shower, but I'll never turn the other cheek now, I guess the 'tude is getting dark and sour … Not a crime to want to kick it alone … but I have come to know what a real crime is … to mortify what you don't own.”

Turning 61 in December, Cummings says he now feels “a certain freedom” to speak his mind. “I'm not as guarded about my past as I was. I can say what I want. At this point, I'm not hiding. It's not going to have any long-term effects.”

Of his drug use during the glory years, for example, he concedes, “I shovelled an awful lot of the white lady up my nose. I did a lot of acid, smoked a lot of great hash, great weed. I barely even lay down till I was about 40. But no needles – I can't get a vaccination without passing out.”

Today, he says, he likes an occasional joint “whenever it's offered. I still smoke dope a little bit, not as much as before, because it's a little harder on your throat. And I like Newcastle Brown Ale. So I'm not ready to move to Lourdes quite yet. I've never really denied myself anything and I've never had any serious problems with alcohol or drugs, where I woke up with the shakes. To me, it was just rock 'n' roll party shit, that's all it was.

“I've read the Motley Crüe book,” he adds, referring to The Dirt: Confessions of the World's Most Notorious Rock Band, “and Jesus, man, compared to them, I was an angel.”

Certainly, rock's snack-food diet of cocaine, hash and acid hasn't affected Cummings's memory. He belts out a dozen lines from his starring tenor role in the St. John's High School production of Gilbert and Sullivan's HMS Pinafore, circa 1963 (he played Ralph), and then sings a few bars of the first song he ever wrote, at 12, So Hard to Explain (“How do you tell the girl you love, the way you feel about her? … I find it so hard to tell her, so hard to explain.”).

Two years of operetta and a few more in the choir at St. Martin's Anglican Church constituted the only formal singing lessons Cummings ever had. “I was taught to sing from here,” he says, pointing to his diaphragm, “but I just sing. It helped to be the lead. From an early age, I always said, ‘Why try out for the chorus when you can try out for the lead?' ”

His gift for piano he owes mainly to his mother, Rhoda, who started him on lessons at the age of 5. He immediately rebelled, making it clear to her that he preferred to play road hockey and football with his friends. But a year later, she forced him back to it. Soon, he figured out that four basic chords – C, A minor, F and G – allowed him to play “80 per cent of the songs on the radio. From that point on, she couldn't drag me away from it. All of a sudden, I became a big hero because I could play Bumble Boogie.” The rest is music history.

He was just 19 when he became lead singer of the Guess Who, joining Randy Bachman, Jim Kale and Garry Peterson. They had a decade-long run at the top of the world, producing a steady stream of hits, including These Eyes, No Time, Laughing and (She's Come) Un dun. “Our heroes were the great songwriters of that period, King and Goffin, Lieber and Stoller, Lennon and McCartney, Mann and Weil.”

Cummings still retains a close connection to Winnipeg. In addition to the downtown theatre, there's a community centre named for him, he owns a stake in the city's legendary Salisbury House restaurant chain, and he just bought a house in the Tuxedo neighbourhood, with Assiniboine Park as his front yard. He won't disclose the purchase price, but says: “Let's put it this way. Lenny Kravitz paid for it. Thank you, Lenny. Thank you, God.” Cummings is referring to the royalties Kravitz paid him for his rerecording of the Bachman-Cummings classic American Woman, the first song by a Canadian rock band to make it to No. 1 on Billboard.

American Woman was a hit in 1970, the same year that Bachman, a Mormon, bailed from the Guess Who, unable to tolerate the rock lifestyle any longer. Cummings carried on for another five years before going solo, soon afterward producing I'm Scared.

The new house has a grand piano in the foyer. In the basement stands the 110-year-old Nordheimer upright on which Cummings has composed for the last 24 years, writing songs with Bachman and the late Kurt Winter, as well as producing such solo hits as Break it to Them Gently and Stand Tall. “I got it for $200 in 1970,” he says, “and, touch wood, if I lost everything tomorrow, you would see me on the street with that piano singing for my food. That will never, ever, leave my possession.”

Cummings also owns a secluded mountaintop estate near Mulholland Drive in Los Angeles, which he bought in 1976 (“It's worth about 11 times what I paid for it”) and what he calls a 10-acre “garden of Eden” in Victoria, facing Mount Baker. These are shared with his wife of 27 years, Cheryl DeLuca, a naturopathic healer, and two dogs: a short-haired collie and a tiny Jack Russell, “the best friends you could ever have.” The touring life wasn't conducive to child-raising, and besides, he concedes, “I was too selfish to have kids.”

One day, Cummings insists, there will be a book chronicling his story. “I've started it many times, and every time I think I've finished, something else great happens and I figure I have to write about that. But one day, I will. I'm too busy right now.”

[Moosedog]

Char, he is actually putting together a book of poetry.

[charlene]

He's a never ending talent..hard to believe he's gonna be 61 on dec.31.. wow.. and I'm still 39... hmmm.. amazing..

[Moosedog]

I didn't realize we were the same age, Char! Here's a little eye candy for ya!

[Sundreme]

Good articles Char. I've always liked Burton. I never knew he was so interested in Judaism...pretty cool.

Incidentally, I went to Hebrew school for 5 years and I can only remember one of the four Passover questions in Hebrew. Go Burton!

[charlene]

here's some pics from last year:
http://flickr.com/search/?q=burton%2...13349149%40N00
and some great ones here:
http://flickr.com/search/?q=burton%2...14866778%40N02
and
http://flickr.com/search/?q=burton%2...62598286%40N00

go to www.flickr.com and search Burton Cummings..lots of pics - click on the names of the photographers to see more at their flickr site..

[Moosedog]

Thanks, Char!

[Jesse Joe]

Burton Cummings was in Halifax a few weeks ago at Casino Nova Scotia. Liz Rigney of CTV News Atlantic interviewed him on Live @ 5. He seemed very happy, and was looking good, had his new CD in his shirt pocket, showed it to Liz and said I'le be wanting that back. lol !




http://www.officialburtoncummings.com/

[Jesse Joe]

This has a clip of a recent interview. If it has been posted already my apologies.

http://www.ezrock.com/media/806085/B...Interview+clip

[Moosedog]

Got my copy of "Above The Ground" in the mail yesterday, and enjoyed watching the DVD. Some funny stuff, some very interesting behind the scenes stuff about the making of the album. Here's a scan of my autographed CD.

Vickie

[Jesse Joe]

Very good looking Vickie, He's got a great Signature. I've seen it many times before.

ENJOY !

[charlene]

Burton look slike the King of all Things sitting there in his chair!
lol
He, like Gordon has great penmanship!
I'll pick up a copy when I can.. can't wait...

[Moosedog]

The signature kind of hides the fact that his chair is floating "Above The Ground"...which is the name of the CD. LOL

[charlene]

I noticed that and it is SO fitting for Burton, King of All Things..

[Moosedog]

Char, I'm hearing he's gonna be "On The Hour" with your friend George S. on November 17th, although I don't see anything on the website yet. Hmmmm, Burton on TV on Gordon's birthday. Life really is good. LOL

[Jesse Joe]

It may be the repeat of when he appeared w/ Randy Bachman ? But then again maybe only him to promote that new CD/DVD. We will watch for it.

[charlene]

well I'm just gonna have to contact my boyfriend and see about this!
Burton could have done a pre-recorded bit like Gord did . He was in town last week so it's possible he got it done while he was here..he's doing publicity for the CD so I imagine he's traveling around the country... or not..
maybe he's camped out in TO for a while....
lol

[Jesse Joe]

I hear he may be in Whitby ! just kidding char ! lol

[Moosedog]

I know where he is. LOL

[charlene]

ok - give it up..where's Burton hanging his hat?

[charlene]

as I expected - the interview was pre-recorded last week and is not airing on the
17th..
an air date has not been set..

[Moosedog]

Check this out...typical Burton story. LOL
http://www.cbc.ca/player/Shows/Shows...ID/1238016555/