MY STORY:

Watch video, 7 MB wmvI think I started actually trying to sing purposefully when I was 7 or 8 years old. I was encouraged to sing for relatives and family friends probably simply because it was entertaining. But whatever it was to them, I was growing up thinking it was cool to sing. So as I got a bit older, even though I was still a typical insecure kid, I found the nerve to at least do that with some degree of confidence. I'm glad I had those reinforcing early experiences because they motivated me to want to improve and take music seriously ... or maybe too seriously.Yamaha guitar and Eurorack mixer

Enter the guitar ... I got my first one when I was 10 years old. You can imagine the action and feel of a nice new Sears $15 steel string. It was torturous to play but I still believe that it was a good way to learn because it took discipline to master it -- okay, I mean play a decent 'F'! Anyway, my parents wanted me to actually learn to PLAY the thing -- you know, by taking some of those dreaded lessons. So they'd drop me off with guitar in hand but instead I'd find a quiet corner in the building, skip my lessons, and jam. Guitar and rebellion were now united in my naive mind.

Then came the first few original songs. I was maybe 11 and "Stairway to Heaven" wouldn't be recorded for another 6 years ... and 'A', 'D', and 'E' chords were about all I knew. Add some pre-teenage lyrics and you get the point. Anyhow, by the time I was 14 I'd written a total of about 10 songs. And then my first public recording -- at summer camp! I remember being in one of the camp cabins and recording 2 original songs on cassette. Then they got played on the P.A. system for a few days and everywhere you went you heard my songs. It was a bit creepy but kind of useful for meeting girls. So that, and the fact that I was really starting to have some troubles at home, lead me to focus so intently on guitar and writing songs to the point that I was losing interest in school and behaving badly.

Digitech amp modeller/effects box Nope, I wasn't interested in anything but music. And every crisis that arose in my teenage life was just kindling for the fire of writing and playing. I rebelled like crazy and my parents began to see that music had taken over the controls. It's only natural that when I was being punished, they'd hide my guitars. And that always did the trick. It'd drive me nuts because I didn't need a phone, or friends, or TV. Just guitar. But when my parents weren't around, I'd search the house and find the guitars and nervously play a while with one ear to the door in case they came home. Things were heating up on the home front. And I was 15 now.

So next I began to run away from home. Often, I'd only go up the street to the public school and sleep on the grass or in some window-well behind a neighbourhood house. But this was how I was destined to live for the next few years -- at home and ... not. Sometimes my brothers would find me and invite me home for a decent meal and I'd move back for a while. But it wasn't long before I'd hit the road again.

Roland GR-33 guitar synthesizer As the years passed and I had more settled living quarters, I accumulated quite a lot of musical gear. I've owned an assorted batch of electric (Gibsons and Fenders) and acoustic (Ovation and other) guitars, amps, mics, effects pedals, etc. I even traded a Fender Stratocaster for a cheap car. I'm sure there are plenty of those kinds of stories. By the time I was 17 or 18, I was playing on the streets in Ottawa for a living. The Sparks Street Mall became my place of employment. I actually made decent money playing the streets in those days and I was kind of popular (not trying to brag, well maybe a little). I had long hair and a headband and a nice Ovation acoustic. I was living the life of a hippie, writing a lot, and dreaming of becoming a rock star while eating Kraft dinner.

Apex 430 microphone I was still just 18 when I met a guy named Bill Griffiths on Sparks Street. He asked me if I wanted to do some studio recording. That began a relationship in which Bill became my manager and then the manager for a band that I put together. Bill had REALLY good equipment. I can't remember all of it and I had only ever recorded on cheap stuff like cassette recorders. It was amazing! I learned so much from the time I had in his studio. I got a band together that included my brother, Les, on drums and a bass player and we recorded a demo tape with 8 original songs, some of which I still like today. We did lots of overdubs and it was the greatest experience finally doing multitracked songs on cool gear.

Les on drums, Paul on bass Bill actually took the demo to some record companies in Toronto but that's as far as it went. Still, I was young and idealistic and wasn't about to give up. And I had a cool demo to play for bar owners instead of doing an actual audition. Well okay, the vocals weren't so hot and the lyrics were still a bit immature but I thought the guitars rocked! I have to compliment my brother Les for his great drumming (he's in the photo on the right along with Paul on bass). If Les was writing this he'd tell you how he started out using pots and pans for drums. I remember we used to practice "Kiss" songs in the basement when we were maybe 12 or 13 years old and Les made a cymbal out of a toilet plunger for the stand and the lid of a pot that he nailed onto it for a cymbal. Mom wasn't too pleased when all the kitchen stuff started getting pretty banged up from Les' drumsticks. The neat thing about playing music with someone you know so well is that you eventually come to play very tightly together, almost intuitively. On the other hand, Les and I both had curly long hair and those headbands so we were often mistaken for each other.

Playing on the streets in Calgary Anyhow, Les and I worked as a team as we drifted from band to band. I began to play the club scene in Ottawa as a solo musician and in the band. I joined the Musician's Union and played my way into the "circuit" where you basically rotate from gig to gig at established clubs. The money started to get good and I started to learn the business. At one point I travelled to Calgary with a friend and played the streets there and a few clubs. On the right is a photo of me on the 8th Avenue Mall in Calgary that showed up in a magazine. I also became a born-again Christian (I'm actually Jewish) for a while when I was a street musician there. You meet all kinds of interesting people when you play on the streets and I have happy memories today of those experiences. On a side note, one thing you get lots of practice with when you're a busker is how to project your voice because you have to contend with lots of peripheral noise including traffic and public conversation.

Gibson Les Paul Back in Ottawa, I continued with the music scene, playing clubs and writing. At age 21, I was playing with a great band that included Les on drums, Paul on bass, and now a keyboard player named Al who I met at one of the many high schools I sort of attended (I seemed to keep getting kicked out!). This was my favourite band. We rented a big house and lived together for over a year. The basement had an awesome permanent set-up of gear: amps, drums, guitars, even spotlights. Friends and fans would drop in pretty much every night for a mini-concert and we got lots of practice in between paying gigs.

The black and white photo here taken in 1981 shows us at a gig at the Beacon Arms in downtown Ottawa. We called ourselves "Prodigy" (uh, we're not the famous band of that name, but you knew that!) and I'm wearing a t-shirt with the logo. There's my long gone Les Paul Deluxe gold top that I bought from Steve's Music for about $1400 (many, many payments on the layaway plan). Today that gorgeous guitar would cost at least $2500 without an expensive hardshell, plush case. Although you can't see him, Les is on the drums behind me. We always recorded our shows so I have it all on cassette in stereo. Maybe I'll post some of it eventually after editing out any incriminating public mischief: yes, I've had beer bottles thrown at me. Oh and let's not even talk about the hair...

Gibson Les Paul and Al on keyboards So it all sounds pretty groovy, huh? I had been out of school since age 16 and now I was in my early 20's just doing what I knew how to do. Many of our friends that visited the house or saw us play were much more responsible, lived with their parents, saved money, and got an education. But I was enjoying myself. At least, most of the time. I mean, there were fights and relationships, and rent to pay, and broken guitar strings. But all in all, it was rock-and-roll heaven (and hell). In the photo on the right you can just barely see Al, the keyboard player I mentioned above. And there's my Peavey guitar amp with a Roland Space Echo effects unit on top. That's another thing that would cost an arm and a leg today, if you could even find one they're so rare and coveted.

Roland-Ready Stratocaster Yep, it was fun. But I was envious of people that got an education. And somehow, I started getting mixed up about what I really wanted to do with my life. Music, rebelling, and partying became synonymous. And without getting into details, I just dropped right out of music without a warning. I moved out of that crazy house, left the band, sold my music gear, and started taking care of myself. I cut my hair and turned my back on the whole scene and went back to school. A new road was materializing for me and I wanted to study science.

Don't ask me why because I couldn't begin to explain it. But the same dedication I formerly had put into music was now going into learning science. I got a lot of crap from my music buddies who couldn't believe I would get out of music for science, of all things. But by age 23, I was back at high school in good old grade 11. Yep, I had to go that far back and start again. And I did very well because I was finally interested in school. Science seemed relevant to my life and I wanted to know much more than I did. My rebellious lifestyle had given me the benefit of being away from school long enough to decide that I wanted to go back there and this time I would do things right. So on I went through high school and then university. I got an Honours B.Sc. in biology from the University of Ottawa in 1990 and was trying to get into Medicine but I eventually decided that what I really wanted to do was to teach high school biology. In 1992, I graduated from teacher's college in London, Ontario and immediately landed a full time teaching job.

Rainbow blues bar in Ottawa Now, I have to admit that I did reluctantly do some gigs while I was in university but I just hated it for the most part. I wanted to get good grades to prove to myself and to society that I wasn't a screw-up and music just kept interferring with that. So I was really down on music for quite a few years afterwards. I didn't even own a guitar for 10 or 15 years. Or if I had one, I wouldn't play it very much. It just brought back too many memories. The photo on the right shows the band I played with while in university. That's me in the brown turtle-neck at The Rainbow Blues Bar in Ottawa. As you can see, I'm looking pretty respectable! And to show you just how respectable I really was...the tall guy in the white shirt was my friend, a police officer. He was also my ride home after the gig. Oh yeah, Colin James showed up and he played the guitar I'm using in the photo later on that night.

Cordless freedom And here's another photo taken at The Rainbow Blues Bar on a different night. Don't you just love cordless electric guitars? Of course that's when the batteries don't die on you in the middle of a song or you don't pick up a radio signal! With the cordless guitar, I get to walk into the crowd, dance a little and roll around on the floor (ie. make a fool out of myself), and then order a drink at the bar. I could even walk downstairs and out into the street during a guitar solo, which I often did. The people passing by must have (rightly) thought I was nuts. I can't tell you how many times, though, I wanted to chuck the guitar in a trash can and hop into a taxi and go home when I was doing this. Inevitably, I'd have to write an exam the next day and I was annoyed that I had to be up until 2 a.m. playing in a bar for a crowd of drinking revelers. But I guess the money helped me through. And in case you were wondering, that Fender Stratocaster wasn't mine. At the time, I didn't own any guitars. I would just show up and play, get paid (sometimes), and go home. Oh but the cool jacket was mine. What style, I had.

Lots of stickers on this guitar The photo on the right was taken in Hull Quebec when I was around 23 years old and I was just back in high school. Like I said above, I rarely played for quite a long time but there were infrequent exceptions. For a little while, I played country and folk songs (escaping rock music) on a street corner in the Byward Market in Ottawa with a trio called The Rideau Raiders (since the market connects to downtown Rideau Street). Although I really had trouble getting into country music, I loved the fact that we were singing 3-part harmony so I learned a lot about singing harmony with this group. Now that I think of it, the acoustic guitar in that picture was given to me by somebody in the Byward Market ... she just walked up to me and said "you need this, so here you go". That kind of thing wasn't unusual back then. But don't go thinking the stickers on the guitar weren't all mine. And boy, I look like a young Jim Croce.

Fast-forward to 2005: I'm now 43 years old and teaching full time at the greatest school in the world. And in the past few years I've delved back into music as a hobby and managed to keep my head about it all. I've put together a little home recording studio and I've written and recorded a bunch of songs that I want to share with you on my Demo Songs page (more info. below).

Thanks for reading and keep on following your dreams!

   Elliott Kimmel


MY MODEST HOME STUDIO:



Listen to my demo songsDEMO SONGS:

Okay now, head on over to my Demo Songs page and listen to some of the stuff I've written and recorded. I've provided lyrics for all songs with vocals and there's even a music video with more of those planned. But be warned, this is independent stuff so it's not polished.


© 2005, Elliott Kimmel, all rights reserved