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Old 02-09-2019, 02:56 PM   #21
charlene
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Join Date: May 2000
Posts: 15,877
Default Re: Video: Meet Barry Keane

SF: How did you get hooked up with Gordon Lightfoot?

BK: I was working at RCA studios and my good friend at the studio was an engineer named Mark Smith. Gordon was going to do an album in Toronto, and Mark was going to engineer it. Lenny Waronker (producer) and Nick DeCaro (arranger) asked Mark to get some musicians. Gordon had Rick Haynes on bass, Red Shea and Terry Clements on guitars. I think this was just when Terry was getting to be the guitarist. Red was sort of falling out of the group.

They needed a drummer, a pedal-steel player, a banjo player and an autoharp player. So Mark introduced me to Gordon. We did the Old Dan’s Records album. That was 1973. I just happened to be in the right place at the right time. It worked out well.

SF: Did you then start to tour with Gordon?

BK: No, actually not. Gordon had been told by various people for years that, “You gotta get a drummer!” He had always traveled as a trio; himself, bass and a lead guitarist. People knew him as that, and he was comfortable in that size unit. He didn’t really want to have a drummer. I played so simply and was different from any other drummers he’d worked with. I played as little as possible, which was halfway due to my lack of knowledge and halfway due to just wanting to do a good job. It was partially luck, and some sense of what was right for the music. I’d listened to a lot of Gordon’s records. It seemed to work.

Barry KeaneGordon asked me if I’d be interested in doing a weekend with him. We had a couple of rehearsals at Massey Hall and everything worked fine. He called me a couple of days before and said, “Listen man, I’ve got cold feet. I’ve been on the road so long without a drummer, I’m just . . . I’m worried!” He said, “I just don’t want to do it.” Very up-front. It was disappointing, of course, but Gordon was completely honest with me and told me the truth, which he has always done. Then I didn’t see him for a couple of years.

He phoned me in the Fall of ’75. He was getting ready to do another album and was very seriously considering adding a drummer. We got together and rehearsed for the Summertime Dream album. Things worked out well again, and we arrived at a deal that was good for both of us. See, I’d never done any really serious touring with anyone. He had never had a drummer. We had to feel each other out. I wasn’t sure if it was going to work for me, and Gordon wasn’t really sure if it was going to work for him. All the other guys in the band were on a weekly salary. I decided, and Gordon agreed, that I would be paid on a daily basis. Pay as you play, which I thought was great! I wasn’t committed to him in case it didn’t work. He wasn’t committed to me, and it’s been that way going on five years. It’s never changed and it has worked out great.

SF: When you are rehearsing for a Lightfoot album, does Gordon pretty much know the sound he wants, or is it more of a group effort in putting his songs together?

BK: When it comes to recording and concerts, Gordon is the leader of the group. He does all the arranging. There’s a lot of input that comes from the other guys, but he really knows what he wants in a song; what the song should feel like, what it should sound like. Gordon controls all the tempos. He controls each individual instrument, and how they’re arranged for a particular song. He really is the leader of the group.

SF: I wondered if the “effects” had been your ideas, or if they were sounds that Gordon Lightfoot had wanted to add to his songs.

BK: Some of the ideas were Gordon’s. Some of them were mine. The triangles and the Mark-Tree that have been added on stage, they came from Dream Street Rose. We worked with percussionist Lenny Castro from Los Angeles. Gordon thought it might be an idea, just for a change, to have a percussionist on all the basic tracks. So Lenny was on the tracks and he played a lot of the very tasty percussion stuff that has stayed in the arrangements. I try to incorporate as much of it as I can, playing both the drums and percussion.
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