CCMA 2014 - Ed Ringwald is up for a CCMA again-Steel Guitar player of the year! Good Luck Pee Wee! His band "Western Swing Authourity" is up for ROOTS Artists and Group or Duo..as well as his band mate Shane Guse up for Fiddle and Mandolin player - EDMONTON - The intersection of twang and swing isn’t exactly the biggest junction in country music, but the members of Western Swing Authority are doing their best to keep vintage crossover sounds on the map.
It’s been five years since Shane Guse instigated the all-star band with six others from the Waterloo, Ont. region and they’ve been drawing serious attention from the start. Now WSA is nominated again for multiple CCMA awards, including Best Group and Best Roots Artist, with individual nods to Ed Ringwald (steel guitar) and Guse (fiddle) in specialty instrument categories.
For Guse, that added recognition is just icing on the cake.
“We’ve always done this for the love of the music,” he explains. “It’s a style that we didn’t always get a lot of opportunity to play, but things have fallen into place very nicely.”
Guse had specific players in mind from the start. Given their busy separate careers playing sessions and backup for other artists, they had all worked with each other before, but never in this configuration. Guse’s wife Stacey was a natural for her vocal prowess and enthusiasm for the material. The couple are chief songwriters for the group when they aren’t adapting other standards.
Ed Ringwald (steel guitar, Dobro and lap steel) has his own connection to the roots of western swing, given his early sojourn in Texas studying with Bob Wills’s guitar player Maurice Anderson.
Paul Chapman (electric and acoustic guitars, mandolin), Matthew Lima (upright and electric bass), Dan Howlett (fiddle, mandolin), and drummer Jim Boudreau add to the long list of collective experience behind the band, with past connections to Ian Tyson, Gordon Lightfoot, Tommy Hunter, George Fox, Jason McCoy and many others on both sides of the Canada-U.S. border.
Guse, 41, has already won the CCMA Fiddle Player award twice. He started bowing at 10 and grew up performing in his family’s band, playing a lot of old-time fiddle tunes. His introduction to western swing came from an old Merle Haggard take on Cherokee Maiden that his parents played.
“It was my favourite song and I wanted to hear it again and again and again. As I got older, I got into bands like Asleep At The Wheel and then further back into guys like Bob Wills, Spade Cooley and Milton Brown. There was something special about the music. It has a great energy and it’s really happy music. Of course it’s got lots of fiddle too, so that appeals to me.”
Also handy with mandolin, viola and cello, Guse gained his early experience in clubs, leading to extended stints in contemporary country with George Canyon, Dean Brody and others. The origins of western swing go way back to the 1920s and 1930s, but that fusion of styles remains a favourite.
“It’s a mix of country, big-band swing, jazz and blues. When you squish them all together, you get song structures with country elements but jazz changes and chords and swing chords. In a group, you’ve got fiddles and steel guitars to do all these things that would go to the horn players in a big band. So it’s got something for everybody.”
For the fiddler, spontaneity is key to making western swing fun to play and a big reason he looked up to older players when he was a kid.
“I couldn’t believe how they were coming up with it, just off the top of their heads, and I remember thinking ‘I really want to be able to do that.’ Now I love the element of improvisation. I think for all the guys in the band any format where you’re allowed to stretch out and improvise is appealing. That’s what calls to them.”
WSA’s self-titled debut disc came out in 2010. The followup, All Dolled Up (2012), brought them a whole new wave of enthusiastic fans and critics with its mix of original songs and covers of Bob Wills and Louis Jordan. The oddest track was a reworking of Henry Mancini’s famous Pink Panther Theme that works unexpectedly well.
This past spring, the group released a single, One Of Us Is Lying, featuring one of Stacey Guse’s finer vocal performances. The band is due out with their third full-length, as-yet-untitled album in October, the first release in a new contract with On Ramp Records. Guse promises a mixed bag of covers and standards, various songs mostly co-written with his wife.
“Stacey has a really broad palette when it comes to music. She loves old big band and jazz material but she’s also a huge R&B fan and country fan. That’s part of the reason she can sing the way she does. In a band like this, she can take all those elements and come out with what’s needed.”
Western Swing Authority will be part of several events during Country Music Week: an appearance in the Tribute show at the Winspear Friday, a label party for On Ramp Records later that night, and a performance at the President’s Gala on Saturday.
CCMA nominees:
http://www.ccma.org/_Library/CMW_201...s_FINAL_v2.pdf
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ED (Pee Wee) is up for another award
