First Indie Cassette Release!
Over the winter of 1977 I did a gig at the Jam Factory, a big, beautiful restaurant in Nelson. I arranged to have the concert recorded by Peter Offerman, an engineer I had worked with in Vancouver, and we put together my first indie cassette, “On The Rocks.” (Artwork by Ron Sayer)
We combined the solo concert with some mixes of my first studio session with a couple of my favourite Calgarians (Ron on piano, Bill on the bass) and Robin Metcalfe on drums and percussion. I still had a lot to learn about recording, but it was a tentative baby step…
1978 was an interesting year. After leaving the Kootenays, I spent a few months playing solo in some of the toughest bars in BC and Alberta, and arrived back on the West Coast exhausted and discouraged and nursing a broken heart. It was almost as if the whole back-to-the-land interlude had been just a dream… but life, as they say, goes on, and there were more wonderful adventures waiting just down the road for me.
I rented a room in a tumbledown old house in Kitsilano from my high school buddy, Michael Heiden, and started playing a lot of music just for the fun of it again. I was still studying jazz on my own, and enrolled in a music theory class at Langara College to try and figure out how it all worked.
Michael was busy making guitars and playing in a bluegrass band, and I was busking down at the liquor store with our roommate Robin, picking up some spare cash to make my car payments. We were all pretty broke, but happy. I was really happy about not playing in bars anymore.
Click on the picture below to find out what happened next…
The Kitsilano Kat Kickers: Michael Heiden, Alison, Michael Dunn, Kitty King
alisonhogan.com 