What: Jack de Keyzer with Gary Preston and the KingmiXers
When: Friday, 7 p.m. (doors at 6)
Where: Tally-Ho Sports Bar, 3020 Douglas St.
Tickets: $20 at Lyle’s Place, 770 Yates St., and the Tally-Ho
Note: De Keyser plays the Duncan Showroom tonight
When singer-guitarist Jack de Keyzer was a kid living in England during the early 1960s, Cliff Richard and the Shadows were big. Really big.
“That’s what got me enamoured with the electric guitar,” de Keyzer said, paying special tribute to Hank Marvin, lead guitarist for the Shadows. “I’m about 10 years younger than those guys, but whenever you read interviews from [Jeff] Beck or [Jimmy] Page, they always cite Hank Marvin as an influence. A few years later, we had Cream and [Jimi] Hendrix and all that, so that kind of clinched it for me.”
He got his first guitar in elementary school, but he remembers its arrival being anti-climatic.
“My parents didn’t know much about music, so the guitar was probably way too big for me. It kind of sat at the foot of my bed.” When the family moved to Hamilton, Ont., in 1965 — de Keyser was 10 — he got a “cheapo electric guitar,” and was off to the races.
The Beatles became a worldwide phenomenon about the same time, but the British-blues die of Cream had already been cast. De Keyzer’s fondness was not for the pop music of the Fab Four, but the rocking electric blues being made fashionable by everyone from the Rolling Stones to Jimi Hendrix.
“Blues is the backbone of everything I do,” de Keyzer said. “I play a lot of different styles of music, from country to rockabilly. But if it doesn’t have blues running through it, I don’t like it. It’s got to have that greasy blues thing going on.”
De Keyzer, whose tour schedule includes dates tonight in Duncan and Friday in Victoria, has made a fine living for himself since turning pro at 17. He is self-managed, and releases records on his own label, Blue Star Records.
“Oftentimes, I find when you add one person to the mix, everything seems to take 10 times longer,” he said of the decision to be his own boss.
“I’m easy to get ahold of, but I’m kind of an impatient person — I like things to happen. I don’t want to wait around to find out what’s going to happen. I want to find out right away.”
Although he is successful — de Keyzer has won two Juno Awards and seven Maple Blues Awards in his career — he isn’t exactly alone. He works with promoters and agents for tours, and picks up bandmates depending on the province. For his dates this week (his first in Victoria in decades, according to de Keyzer) he will be joined by drummer Billy Hicks and bassist Jay Stevens, who often back up Nanaimo blues favourite David Gogo.
The first big act de Keyzer worked with was Richard Newell, a beloved harmonica player from Hamilton known as King Biscuit Boy. He was an amazing talent, but a terrible businessman, de Keyzer said, so Newell went looking for less-stressful sideman work under someone else in the early 1970s. He found it with the legendary Ronnie Hawkins, who agreed to bring de Keyzer along for the ride.
De Keyzer played with him from 1973 to 1977, at which point he joined the Bobcats, who were on their way to becoming rockabilly royalty around Toronto. De Keyzer eventually left to lead his own band in 1985, and has been at the helm of his own ship ever since.
De Keyzer said he was equipped with the necessary skills to go solo thanks to Hawkins.
“Ronnie is a hilarious guy, and he’s a great bandleader. He’s so great with people; that’s what I got from him. I got a real knowledge from him on how to talk to people. He was a lot of fun.”
What brings de Keyzer to the Vancouver Island area is the Hornby Island Blues Workshop, which begins May 8 and runs until May 14. De Keyzer is making his fourth appearance as an instructor; if possible, he arranges his schedule to include what he considers “an amazing experience.”
He loves the laid-back lifestyle of Hornby, having grown accustomed to a similar pace back home. De Keyzer lives on a few acres with his wife and two of their five children in Clarington, Ont., having moved there from the Toronto suburbs six years ago.
“I haven’t lived in downtown Toronto since I was 30,” he said proudly.
A week on Hornby gives him plenty of time to reflect on the good people he has met during his career.
“How they put together 10 musicians from across Canada, and all these students, and houses borrowed from people and lessons all day long is amazing. Three concerts during the week, and if that wasn’t enough, a concert at a theatre for the general public the day after. They are a smart bunch, I’ll tell ya.”
