An Interview with Bob Bossin

IO...SUUEllN de musiqUL'folklorique canadienne ~ ~ --- II ~'That's what an interviewfolk songs withhave Bobalways Bossindone Bob Bossin met with the Bulletin editors one Sundaymorning in June. He was in Calgary to attend a wedding, the festivities for which included a sweatlodge ceremony(in lieu of a stag party), which Bossin had attendedthe night before: an exampleof the community activity which featuresso strongly in his conversation.Mter transcribing the interview, we edited it somewhat,removing somerepetitive and tangentialmaterial and reordering it. This version was sent to Bossin, who reworked it drastically while travelling to the NDP conventionas part of SvendRobinson's team. At one point he found that it was necessaryto rewrite someof the questionsto make them suit the answersbetter! (This is one reasonwe have removedour individual attributions from the dialogue.) He continuedto sendrevisions up to two weeksbefore our final pasteup. The singer's painstakingconcern to find the best expressionof his ideasprovides an interestingcounterpoint to the image he sometimesenjoys playing with onstage,of the wild hippie, as in his hilarious anecdoteabout being interviewed by CBC upon the 1991 victory of his old friend, Bob Rae, and the Ontario NDP. Whether or not he himself usedall the drugs that Rae passedover, as he claims in that routine, in fact Bossin is an extremely intelligent and thoughtful artist, qualities we believe are demonstratedin the substanceof this interview, as well as in its genesis. Sinceyou are a banjo player knownfor your political songs, have to buy a ticket to hear. They hooked us, made music it seemsa good guessthat Pete Seegerinfluenced you. slick and mass-produced,and replacedthe music that comes naturally. But the natural thing is to be singing in our own What I do is similar in many ways to what Petehas done, way about our own subjects, including lots of subjectsthat but I don't do what I do becausehe did it. Undoubtedly the now get weededout by the censorshipof the marketplace. path is easierfor me to go down becausehe clearedthe trail. That's what folksingers do; they still sing those other But I nevermodelled myself after Pete.I don't seemuch simi- songs. That's what Seegerhas done, and that's what I do. larity in our music. There is more similarity in our subjects, We're throwbacks.We are professionalfolksingers, which is and even more in what we don't take for our subjects. He almost a contradiction in terms, though not quite. Because didn't write and sing becausethere was a market niche for while we do sing for money, we don't createthe stuff for the somesong or subjectand neither do I. We're folksingers, he money. If I wasn't being paid I would still write and sing long beforeme. And there are not a lot of modemfolksingers, pretty much the samesongs. I don't think nOh, here's a song at least by my definition. that could really get popular" or "Here's a song that I could sell to so-and-so."I know thereare peoplethat write that way. Which is? In fact, they write somereally nifty stuff. But I'm not one of them. I write about the things on my mind, which are the Folk music is the music that rises naturally from a com- things on the minds of people in my community. munity. As a definition, that may not be airtight, but I seeit like this: Making music is an absolutely natural thing to do, What got you started in music? What got you started as a as naturdl as running, as natural as 'speaking. [ can sure see career musician? that in my daughter,who is two. Peoplejust sing. And left to our own devices, we'd sing about anything we'd talk about. Singing was like breathing. I just sang, we all did. My Peoplehave always sung their protests,just as they have sung dad usedto sing as he walked around the house,and my mom their love. They made up songs about their friends. About did, too. I was also raisedaround show business.My dad was tragedies, controversies, work. They made up songs for a booking agent, booking acts into night clubs in southern weddings, played songs for the dance, made up a tune and Ontario. We went out to lots of clubs and shows,and my dad dedicatedit to someoneon their birthday. [f people in the would bring the entertainershome for a meal. So show busi- community were talking about something-cutting down a nesswas a pretty natural milieu for me. forest, putting in a highway-they sangabout it too. I startedperforming in school showsas soon as I was old But that natural music-makingdropped off as the music enough to do it. I did imitations-Ed Sullivan and the like. industry took over and inserteditself betweenthe makersof And took great joy in it. You see, I was a terrible athlete; musicand the consumersof music. Songsbecame commodities maybethat's why I startedto perform. It was somethingI had you purchasepre-fab. In order to havemusic, we by and large a knack for, as opposedto catchinga ball, for which I had no think that we have to pay Sony. Real music is the stuff you talent at all. CanadianFolk MusicfBULlE7JN...ll So that was the beginning. Playing music came later. In of the music, and was probably anathemato it, but folk was fact, I got Ds in music at school. But I listenedto music, the on the radio and in the clubs. The Mariposa Folk Festival pop of the day. The radio in the kitchen would play, started. I must have been all of 14 or 15 when I went to "Hummin'bird, hummin'bird, sing me your song" and "The Orillia for Mariposa and, oh, it was a thrill! wayward wind is a restless wind" and So there was a sea of folk music to "Have you talked to the Man upstairs, I swim in, and I did. I stoppedlistening to 'cause he wants to hear from you?"- pop music and never really startedagain. pre-rock and roll pop music. The music Anne Murray revived on Crooning. How did you get into music as a career? Then, I think it was 1954, the radio changedand, all of a sudden,there was The real impetuswas political. In the "Rock Around the Clock" by Bill Haley late '60s, early '70s, so much was And His Comets, and shortly after that, happeningall over the world. The Viet the early Elvis records.And, boy oh boy, Nam war was on. Paris, Prague,Colum- they were something!They just rocked, bia University all exploded in '68. The they touchedme, they were rebellious. I - . .- -- -- killings at Kent State were in '70. wantedto be like Elvis and, at the ageof YoungBob Bos.~in meels Pal Boone. Canadiancampuses were less turbulent- nine, I askedfor a guitar. I didn't get an Phorogrophscount"Rob Rossin we are Canadiansafter all-but it was electric guitar, becauseyou needed an probably the mostexciting momentof the amplifier too, and my parents didn't want to spring for it. century to be around the university, and I just had the luck to They thought I wouldn't stick with it. So I got a $20 be there. We really thought we could changethe world. We Serenader. were naive, but in our naivete we threw ourselvesinto the That's where it started,rock and roll on the radio and G, biggestissues of the time with suchpassion and energy.It was C and D7 on the top three strings of the Serenader.I begged a wonderful time to be 20 years old. my dad to take me to the touring rock and roll shows that Meanwhile, the hippie culture flowered. What was really came through Toronto. I saw Fats Domino, Gene Vincent, at the core of the hippie movementis subjectto different inter- Buddy Holly, The Platters, Elvis. pretations, but there was certainly a rejection of bourgeois But then, very quickly, as I recall, rock and roll turned values. So I found the hippie culture exciting too-though I bland. For maybethree really good years, it was wonderful, was never innocent enough to be a dyed-in-the-woolflower raunchy, rebellious music-Little Richard and Jerry Lee child. Lewis, people like that-and then suddenly it was "Sixteen The hippies brought with them a whole new batch of candlesmake a lovely light, but not as bright as your eyes music. Music was sacredto that movement-as it is to all tonight." Industrializedmusic pitched to a genericteen market. political movements. Everything from the Beatles, clearly Pat Boonesinging "Long Tall Sally" in a squeakyclean voice. LSD-influenced, to the Jefferson Airplane ("We are all Then in '59, when rock and roll was at its nadir, I heard outlaws in the eyes of Amerika"). The music wasn't just "Tom Dooley." It stoppedme in my tracks. This was a song music, it was the voice of our rebellion. that seemedto be about something.Was it a true story? Were And I thought, in 1970 (at the ripe old age of 24), if I these real people? I was fascinated. have a gift, it is to take ideas and cast Musically, as sungby the Kingston Trio, them into plain language,to createa kind it was dreadful. But it hinted at a story, of folk expression of an idea. So I and I wanted to know the story. thought I saw a useful, socially respon- So I went to see the Kingston Trio sible role for myself: I could use folk when they cameto town, and, during the music to expresssome of thesealternate, show, they said, "There's a group socialistic ideas and, in that way, reach coming up that you are going to hear a young people already keen on changing lot about, called Peter, Paul and Mary." the world.

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