When you’re talking to Duane Andrews, you just have to smile. He smiled easily and often as we talked about his career and upcoming CD release, and I detected that he was understating everything about himself. Modesty aside, he did appreciate Jean Hewson’s introduction of him at folk club last year as “the almighty Jesus Christ of the guitar from Carbonear.”

Duane is a cornerstone of the St. John’s indie music scene, and is a skillful improviser, at ease with many musical styles: traditional, jazz, country and classical. He is a member of several local bands and has performed with MOPAYA, THE DISCOUNTS, Dennis Parker, JENNY GEAR AND THE WHISKEY KITTENS, Fergus O’Byrne, THE CHIEFTANS and Danette Eddy.

His bio says that he “began playing his mother’s guitar at age 10,” and then has him graduating from St. Francis Xavier University with a BA in Music in 1994. I asked him what happened in between. “Well, I pretty much just kept playing my mother’s guitar,” he replied with a shrug. I asked him to dig a little deeper, please. Who were his influences? What were the milestones?

When he was in Grade 5, his mother, who “has an ear for music and can pick out a tune on just about any instrument,” started taking guitar lessons. That same year, Duane joined the school guitar group, which played mostly country music. There were strummers and pickers, he explained and he strummed his way through grade 5. There was “always lots of encouragement” at home and in the community, and he was influenced by musical relatives on both sides of his family: His Aunt Maime was a local country music diva who had played accordion for the dances when she was younger, and his Uncle Ern “played guitar, but seemed to have one of every instrument.”

He learned his first bar chord from Jenny Gear’s uncle, Pat Palmer who also lived in the community. While in grade 8, he travelled to St. John’s to take guitar lessons from Ward Pike, and in high school he studied with Wayne Young, a teacher who has influenced several guitar notables in St. John’s, including Kirk Newhook, Glen Colllins and Charlie Barfoot. In grade 11, since there was no music program at the school in Carbonear, Duane obtained permission to study music theory independently for credit.

While at university, Duane says he was one of a group of “classical rebels in the Jazz program:” students who weren't excited by their classes so they we went off and studied classical music together. Since graduating, he has continued to add to his repertoire, rediscovering Newfoundland traditional music and studying music composition in Marseilles, France on an intermittent basis. Oh yes, and so that he’ll “have something to fall back on,” he has also completed studies in Mathematics at the university level.

Duane’s debut CD, released July 5th, “honours the legacy of the great French Gypsy jazz guitarist Django Reinhardt.” His bio says that this project is “fusing the stylings of Reinhardt with Newfoundland traditional music and his own compositions.” I wanted clarification of that statement, so towards the end of June, on a cool summer evening at the Ship Inn, I spoke with Duane Andrews about this, his first solo project.

Duane’s eyes twinkled, as he told me about a time about two years ago when, on a cold winter evening in a café in Paris, he heard a guitarist named Moreno playing renditions of Django Reinhardt’s compositions. Duane was impressed, and listening to this music he says, “took everything I’d done to a new dimension.” Duane had pursued Jazz studies at St. FXU, so he was familiar with Reinhardt’s music, but he says of that particular night, “I got it; I realized what Django was actually doing.” For the first time in many years, he found himself challenged, both technically on the guitar itself and conceptually with new ideas about jazz. He came to understand that it was the most natural style of jazz for guitar because it utilized the instrument for its own properties and strengths, ather than having the guitar mimic another instrument.

He went on to explain that at 12 years of age, Django had backed-up Musette musicians, information which sent me on a web excursion to learn more about both Django Reinhardt and Musette-style music (see ‘My Internet Excursion’). When Duane returned from that winter in Marseilles, he began to explore Musette-style music with Steve Hussey, Frank Fusari and Patrick Boyle. They applied the style to traditional tunes from Newfoundland, Ireland, and Italy, and to Duane’s original compositions. Thus began the “fusing.”

They started with The Portugues Waltzes, which Duane recognized as a “sort of Portuguese dialect of Musette.” Steve Hussey explained, “Duane’s band is the first to meld Newfoundland music with Manouche in the same way that Django Reinhardt infused American Jazz with Gypsy melody. “ The recording offers eleven selections, including some familiar traditional tunes such as Breakwater Boys and Doherty’s in addition to The Portuguese Waltzes and three of Duane’s original compositions. The CD is enhanced: it contains transcriptions, a chord primer and chord charts for selected tracks.

My Internet Excursion

Django Info:

http://www.redhotjazz.com/django.html
A biography and a photo. Notice the resemblance to the photo of Duane on the CD?

http://www.djangomontreal.com/doc/DiscoContent.htm
Another biography.

Musette Musings:

http://www.accordionheaven.com/cgi-bin/cgiwrap/accordian/Store/AccShop.cgi/!ORDERID!/xxx/musette.html
Stated most simply, the Musette is a descendant of folkdance melodies from the Auvergne, blended with German influence (the accordion), Italian classical and popular song, Tzigane or Manouche (Gypsy) scales and string instruments, and American Jazz and swing rhythms… When German and Italian accordionists first began arriving in Paris, Bastille district, where the Auvergnat community was settled, the squeeze-boxes were thought of as a threat to the beauty of the music. (Report has it that some Augvergnat cafes where the "bals-musette" "regularly occurred posted notices prohibiting accordionists from playing the tunes!)… The banjo was the contribution of Manouche (the Gypsy people who lived on the outskirts of society, but in the heart of the city), Django Reinhardt first performed and recorded as a banjo accompanist to the accordion.

http://perso.wanadoo.fr/musette.info/GBHM-Histoire.htm
The appearance of the ("modern-style") musette is contemporary with that of jazz at the beginning of the 20th century. It grew deep roots towards 1880 at the heart of the Auvergnat and Italian communities gathered in Paris. The name comes from an instrument: the musette. Similar to the bagpipes, it is composed of an interchangeable pipe with several pierced holes and a bag of air. Using a bellows pumped under the right arm, the musician fills the airbag placed on his left and, by pressing on the bag, causinges the reeds of the bourdon pipe to vibrate….

http://www.slipcue.com/music/pop/france/aa_chanson/A_01.html
Musette music is…characterized by a prominent accordion, and by bleakly "realistic" lyrics -- often morality tales about fallen girls who come to tragic and untimely ends. Musette arose out of the fairly rough-and-tumble world of the bal musette, Depression-era Parisian dance halls that were usually filled with and controlled by gangsters. Hence, the style has a lot of the same declasse cultural mystique as early American jazz and blues, and for many decades was not necessarily accepted by polite society. (It sure sounds great, though!)