- Don McGlashan, presented by the PuSh International Performing Arts Festival, Theatre Conspiracy www.conspiracy.ca/ and North Shore Credit Union Centre for the Performing Arts at Capilano University www2. capilanou.ca/news-events/nscucentre.html, Sunday, Jan. 22 at 7 p.m. at Club PuSh at Performance Works, 1218 Cartwright St, Granville Island. Tickets: $24, visit ticketstonight.ca ticketstonight.ticketforce.com/default. asp?SearchText=push&Go=Go. Info: pushfestival.ca.
DON McGlashan has a made a career out of not doing what people expect of him.
"I think that's probably a good rule of thumb for anybody starting off," says the 52-year-old acclaimed singer/songwriter.
A New Zealand native and Auckland resident, McGlashan is considered one of the country's finest. His musical resume is impressive. Previous bands he's been in include: post-pop-punk band Blam Blam Blam, active in the early 80s; art experimentalists The Front Lawn; and platinum-selling The Mutton Birds, together from 1991-2002. McGlashan served as singer and songwriter for the group, which released four top 10 albums in New Zealand.
In recent years, he's focused increasingly on solo efforts, side projects and scoring for film and television. Due to his hard work ethic and intense curiousity he's been driving his management crazy.
"I'm useless, I say yes to everything," says McGlashan, reached by phone Wednesday from New Zealand. "I've got a sign that I'm reading right now, which is stuck on the window of my studio, which says, 'I'm sorry I'd love to help you but I can't. Here are some numbers you may like to call.'"
"I'm so pathetic at saying no to people, not because I'm a pushover, it's more that I get really interested in things," he adds.
From benefits to collaborations to being commissioned to write the music that accompanied the opening fireworks at the Rugby World Cup in September 2011, McGlashan can't help but give it everything he's got. He's also a family man and a father to two rising stars. His daughter Pearl is a musician and an actress on Shortland Street, a nightly New Zealand soap opera, and his son Louis also plays in bands.
Life is hectic, but McGlashan continues to roll full steam ahead, his unconventional musical journey continuing to keep him challenged and creatively satisfied.
McGlashan is among the performers at the upcoming PuSh International Performing Arts Festival, running from Jan. 17-Feb. 4. He's excited about his show, Jan. 22 at Club Push (Granville Island's Performance Works), as he played the festival on his last visit to Vancouver in 2009, taking the stage at Capilano University. The solo performance will showcase his unique approach to performance, incorporating guitar, horn and vocals, and looping.
McGlashan is a formally trained multi-instrumentalist, having studied English and music at Auckland University.
"I paid my way through university playing French horn in the Auckland orchestra," he says. "After a while I realized that the French horn was too hard so I swapped it for a euphonium."
McGlashan still plays the euphonium, except when he's travelling internationally
as it doesn't fit in airplane overhead bins, so he swaps it for the baritone horn. "That's a rare instance of international airline regulations changing musical arrangements," he says.
Coinciding with his classical training, McGlashan was also involved in bands and has penned songs ever since he was young.
"The first bands I was in, I wasn't writing," he says. "I was a multi-instrumentalist. I was the guy who knew all the chords. But I guess being in that position, I guess it allowed me to grow up as a writer a little bit. I think probably I didn't have the confidence to front a band and write songs until I was in my late 20s and so I was a sort of a late starter in some ways. So when The Mutton Birds started I really knew what I wanted to do and since then I've kind of pleased myself in the way I want to write songs."
McGlashan's first solo album was 2006's Warm Hand and his second was 2009's Marvellous Year. The latter was billed as Don McGlashan and the Seven Sisters.
"Both solo records have been quite different and I feel really happy now to be looking forward to the next one and wondering what it's going to be like," he says.
While he has no official plan or release date, his third solo album is certainly on the agenda, as well is his interest in working with the Seven Sisters. In addition, he's planning to put together his own best-of album.
"There are a few things in the way of me doing another solo album, but I'm not stopping writing," he says.
McGlashan has been busy songwriting, performing and recording with side project The Bellbirds, with friend Sean Donnelly (Pajama Club). The group is comprised of four voices - two men and two women - and two acoustic guitars and they plan to release their debut later this year.
McGlashan has also been dusting off the old Mutton Birds songs, as a long-awaited reunion tour is finally kicking off next month in New Zealand. The gigs will mark the band's first time playing together in 10 years and 20 since their first album's release.
"It took us a long time to agree to do it because The Mutton Birds, as a group of people, are very unsentimental," says McGlashan. "For years, people would ask us if we wanted to reform and we'd always scoff at that."
"It'll be fun getting our songs back together again," he adds.
An additional demand on his time is McGlashan's career in scoring for television and film. He's worked with filmmakers Jane Campion (An Angel At My Table) and Toa Fraser (Dean Spanley and No. 2). For 2006's No. 2, which was awarded the World Dramatic Audience Prize at the Sundance Film Festival, McGlashan wrote the APRA Silver Scroll Award-winning "Bathe in the River." The song proved to be the third biggest New Zealand single of all time. Originally recorded by Hollie Smith, McGlashan recorded a version on Marvellous Year.
No. 2 was based on a play, also written by Fraser, and it's coincidentally being presented at the PuSh Festival, Jan. 31-Feb. 4 at The Cultch, featuring Madeleine Sami.
One of McGlashan's longtime collaborators and friends is fellow New Zealand musician Neil Finn, of Crowded House. McGlashan has performed with Crowded House, Marvellous Year was recorded at Finn's studio and Finn provides backing vocals. McGlashan was also part of Finn's 7 Worlds Collide Project, which spawned a 2009 record entitled The Sun Came Out. Other musicians featured on the charity record benefiting Oxfam include Johnny Marr, Liam Finn, KT Tunstall, Jeff Tweedy and Phil Selway.
It's not all work and no play, as an additional extra-curricular activity McGlashan and Finn participate in is a regular whiskey night where the musician attendees attempt to describe the various types on hand using musical metaphors.
"We all sit around and each person brings a different bottle of whiskey and we end up with these crazy descriptions like, 'This one is a big D minor chord with some quiet high G sharps at the top' or 'This one thinks he's Elvis but he's really Billy Joel,'" says McGlashan.
No matter where his career takes him, songwriting will continue to be his top priority.
"As a writer I think I'm just driven by the same things that are driven by anybody who does this, which is that you get sick if you don't do it," he says. "The other things I've done, writing music for TV and films, have always been to support that need I have to write, the need I have to sit down and try to describe what's around me and put it into a song. I'm lucky to have grown up in New Zealand where that's been possible."
want an authentic sound, the thinking goes, he's the go-to guy. Back to Love, his first on the RCA imprint, is actually his sixth solo album. Some of the tracks (like "Writing on the Wall") could be outtakes from Al Green's The Belle Album with the same sort of intense groove/trance/Memphis vibe used to build the music.
Everything Hamilton does is worth checking out.
- Betty Wright and The Roots - Betty Wright: The Movie (S-Curve)
Rating: 7 (out of 10)
The Roots are much more than Jimmy Fallon's house band although that regular late night TV gig probably makes records like this possible. Here they back up Miami's Miss B, Betty Wright, who may be more well known now for her work with Joss Stone than any of her own classic tracks.
They did the same thing with John Legend in 2010 for Wake Up! although that disc mainly featured cover tunes from the '60s and '70s.
This time around The Roots brought Wright into the studio with all new material that shows she has lost none of her power as a writer and a performer.
Awkward guest spots from Lil Wayne and Snoop Dogg are a mistake but otherwise this collaboration was long overdue.
