Music has always been, and continues to be, a large and integral part of my life. I learned to play guitar as a child. I formed a rock band at age 17. I played in country bands for 16 years, and then with my kids and other family members for a number of years. I was also a professional DJ for 20 years.
My Grades 1, 2 and 3 school years were rather dismal. Then we moved across town (in Meadow Lake) and I started Grade 4 at Martin Gran School with Mrs. Selatticci as teacher. She was a most wonderful teacher. Suddenly I loved school. I even got a full recommend. Best of all, Mrs. Selatticci taught me how to play guitar. I had a Gene Autry guitar (with horse and rider embossed on the front) that my mother had bought for me the previous Christmas.
I was a straight A student from Grades 4 to 11. Then I took a dive. Actually, more like I dropped off a cliff. Except for English literature and composition, and music, my interest in school totaled zero. My interests were girls, cars, bodybuilding and power lifting, sports and music.
In semester one of my senior year in high school, my guitar skills had developed to the point where I figured I could put together a rock band. So I did – Rick and the Raiders. We played the rock and roll of the day – the British invasion of the Stones, the Beatles, the Byrds, the Animals, the Hollies and the West Coast music of the Beach Boys and the Mamas and Papas. We played for all kinds of venues including weddings and community dances. We also played country music and old time music.
Yep, we were a rock band that could play polkas, old time waltzes, schottices, everything. We picked these tunes out on guitars or sang them. I’m usually not too concerned about being presumptuous, so I’ll just say that we had a dynamite band. We could really play and we had a universal appeal, within a 50-mile radius of Meadow Lake.
If you wanted to be known as a “great” guitar player in the 1960s, you had to know how to play Walk Don’t Run (Ventures), Apache (Shadows), Maple Sugar, E String Breakdown, Pipeline, Under the Double Eagle and Let’s Go and Wipe Out (with a drum solo). I was good, but I wasn’t the best guitar player in the Raiders Band. That distinction went to Wally Ankney, lead guitarist. He could play anything and play it extremely well.
Wally and I used to hole up in my upstairs bedroom in our old house on 3rd Street East and pick guitars for hours on end. And we drank a lot of coke. Seemed to give us more energy and creativity to play.
Steve LaFontaine from Green Lake was also a great little player who provided bass rhythm for us (bass rhythm bar chords on a regular electric guitar, since we didn’t have a real four-string bass guitar.
Danny Charpentier, my best friend, was a lead, back up , harmony and chorus singer. He really contributed to the Raiders band. And we had Dale Bauman, a really good drummer who couldn’t sing. As for girlfriends? Yes, so many – for all of us in the band. I blame them for my poor showing in my high school classes. Many school nights I spent at the Hub Café in Meadow Lake with the girls. But that aside, I met my future wife at a dance we were playing for in Makwa. That’s another story, but a most fortunate one for me.
When I enrolled at the University of Saskatchewan in 1966, my bad habits from high school followed me. I generally did not go to many of my classes. I spent the majority of my time playing football, on the wrestling team, in the weight room and swimming pool and the library. And I played rock music with some real rockers at university parties. These guys were talented, but they weren’t going anywhere. But then either was I. So we were all friends and enjoyed life. On weekends, I loaded up my old ‘61 Merc with eight or nine kids (tied our suit cases on top) and headed for Meadow Lake for a weekend.
During the early 1970s, I played and sang at a few school functions and stepped in for awhile with Pete Bahrey’s old time band. And that was about the extent of my musical involvement.
In 1976, I was employed by the Wilkie School Division as a physical education teacher at McLurg High School in Wilkie. I hadn’t been a player on the music scene for quite some time. I was commuting from North Battleford, working hard, teaching, coaching and helping my wife raise our two children. Life was good, but there was something missing. I missed playing in a band. So I put together the Genesis (not to be confused with the British megaband). Again, we were billed as a rock band (playing the 1970s rock of the day), but we played country and old time music as well. So really, we were a middle of the road band with a rock name. I recruited Theresa Sander, a Grade 12 student at McLurg to sing, Rod Talmadge from Warman (a cousin to Wally Ankney of Raiders fame) to play guitar, Shelby Williams to play drums and my old friend, Danny Charpentier to play guitar (he learned during the 10 years after the Raiders) and sing. We practiced in our basement on Sunday afternoons. We played for school dances and community dances. On one occasion, we played for a school dance in a northern community. The crowd wouldn’t let us quit, wouldn’t let us out of the gym. We finally got a police escort. It was a long night.
I taught for only a year at McLurg High School and then moved on to my first principalship at Vawn-Edam High School in Vawn for three years. On one occasion, I put a real good band together to play for a school fundraiser – a community banquet and dance to raise money for our football team. I was lucky to have persuaded my friend John Archer to step in with us to play bass and sing. John was a professional player and singer and had toured with the likes of Ian Tyson. Then, I put music on hold again for a few years.
In 1980, Lawrence Sehn (the Lawrence Sehn family band) asked me to join his band and lead it. I did. Lawrence was a great guy. He played accordion as he had for many years. Now we were playing wedding dances for daughters of mothers for whom Lawrence had played 25 years ago. We played old time music, country and 1950s/60s rock and roll for weddings, anniversaries and community dances. Lawrence’s sons, Gerald (drums) and Glen (guitar and vocals), and their wives, Valerie and Noreen (vocals), were in the band. And it was here I met Eddie Marchewka who played fiddle and bass in the Sehn band. We became good friends. Sadly, after a couple of years, Lawrence passed away suddenly and the band disbanded. Some time after Lawrence’s passing, Eddie and I decided to form a new band – the Rhythm Aces.
Eddie and I were adamant that our goal was to be as good as the big name bands in the Battlefords. We were popular but to be honest, I don’t think we quite achieved that lofty goal. I confess Blue Denim’s George Armstrong was a better singer than I, and so was Harry Startup. Don Tatchell with Blue Denim was an amazing drummer.
Our first band consisted of Eddie Marchewka on bass guitar and fiddle, Norm Woytowich on accordion, Larry Laliberte on bass and guitar, Willie Leibel on drums and me on rhythm and lead guitar and vocals. We were a solid middle of the road band – country, rock and roll and old time. We played together from 1982 to 1996, a solid 14-year run.
In the late 1980s, I also put together a church band. We played for church dances, and church weddings and anniversaries in the Battlefords, Lloydminster, Prince Albert and Saskatoon.
Over the years, like most bands, some band members dropped out and new ones joined. Robert Allen from Glaslyn succeeded Willie Leibel on drums until he was replaced by my son Gary, who turned out to be an exceptional drummer (both Willie and Allen were excellent drummers, too). Lillian Kopp (Classic Trading, North Battleford) was with us for a couple of years – an exceptional singer and a good bass player. Yvonne Snyder stepped in with us for awhile. We appreciated her talent as a lead singer.
Then in the 1990s, we put together our best band – Eddie, Norm, me and Gerald Klein (from Eatonia, an awesome rock guitar player). We were the old guys. My son Gary on drums and vocals, Danny Schnee on guitar, saxophone, bass, banjo, drums and lead, backup, chorus and harmony vocals and John Nordstrom on guitar were the young guys and they were gifted musicians.
Danny’s dad was Dr. Paul Schnee, medical health officer. Danny was a card. He would play the bird dance on the sax, then jump off the stage and dance with the crowd as he finished the song. He could move from instrument to instrument during a number with ease. No one had more fun on stage than Danny, and his party spirit was infectious. Danny is currently teaching music at the University of Alberta in Edmonton.
John’s dad was our minister. John went on to take his formal music education at Grant McEwan College in Edmonton. He was a mainstay with Saskatchewan Express and the lead guitar player for Captain Tractor, an internationally acclaimed Celtic rock band.
My youngest daughter, Janice, also played guitar in our band when she wasn’t away playing high school sports. Another singer who stepped in with us was Dave Clark – great voice and drop dead handsome. Our last dance was a big Ukrainian New Year’s affair in 1996. It was a big deal. We had everybody there and Val Montgomery joined us for this one. Val had spent 10 years on the road as a professional singer and keyboard player. We had a band that night, let me tell you. We finished off in grand style.
