Interview with Jon Roe about life on the road (The Calgary Herald)

Article Originally Published at The Calgary Herald

Life for a travelling band doesn't have to be all about eating fast food while getting crammed in the back of a van with all your equipment. For 71-year-old singer-songwriter Buffy Sainte-Marie, it's a steady diet of good food and plenty of gym time. The legendary writer of "Up Where We Belong" and "Universal Soldier" chatted with Jon Roe about life on the road, the Internet and recently hitting the studio with Randy Bachman. Visit swervecalgary. com for the full interview.

Are you working on a new album with Randy Bachman? We don't even know what it is. We just really like each other's music, and Randy and I both have a lot of songs that we love that have been overshadowed by our hits. There are a lot of songs that are-oh god, they're all different. Big rockers, some are like bossa nova. All kinds of stuff. We're doing it for ourselves, we don't know if anybody else is going to like it. But we're going to see what we're going to get. We recorded eight songs and we're very happy with them. We don't know what to do next.

You have this history being part of the '60s and the folk music of that time. What do you think is the lasting legacy of that period? It's kind of funny. It's not a lasting legacy so much as a reinvention of the most wonderful things of the '60s. I would say independent thinking. The Internet right now is very much like the streets were in the '60s when students ruled and people were standing up to unfairness in politics and business and corporations.

Do you find it easier to make a living as an artist now that a lot of distribution channels are through the Internet, or is it harder? I'll tell you what's really killing us is baggage charges for touring bands and for sports teams. Sports teams and the arts, we're right on the edge of not being able to continue. Sports teams and high-school bands and professional touring bands-it just costs me a freaking fortune everytime I get on a plane with my equipment and my band's equipment. In Australia, I think it was Virgin Airlines who were the first ones to address this and start giving touring bands a break on their stuff. Recently in the U.S., somebody came up with at least the idea of homogenizing and standardizing what the airlines can charge. Right now they can charge anything they want.

Have you lost the appetite for touring at all? I usually have a good time where I go. The hard part is the day before you fly and having to pack. You know you're going to forget something and you're wondering what the heck it is. The flying itself is long. But I work out all the time and I dance and I move and I eat like a champion. I have sashimi every morning for breakfast. I feed my brain first and I work out so my body's real healthy. I think I'm in better shape than I was in my 20s. All the band works out in a gym, and we eat real good. I don't think it's harder.

Buffy Sainte-Marie: Saturday, March 10. At Grace Presbyterian Church, 1009 15th Ave. S.W. Doors 7p.m. $35 -$40. 403-233-0904, calgaryfolkfest.com.
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Buffy Sainte Marie speaks to the Wild Salmon Warriors (Video)

Wild salmon are perhaps the single most amazing force of nature to those that know them. Swimming thousands of miles in their lifetime, salmon leave a glowing trail of life in their wake as they harness the power of the wide open ocean and nourish the people and ecosystems on land, river and sea. It is an honour to stand with wild salmon people as they know no disconnect from this cycle. They embrace it. They stand for it. Their love for wild salmon is a love for life.

Two young first nations girls, Kalilah Rampenan and Ta'kaiya Blaney sang songs and spoke about our salmon and then smashed clay salmon to the ground to symbolize what is happening to the Fraser Sockeye from spread of disease. Although they are only ten years old they realize the importance of the land and salmon that came here along side their people.

INFO: wildsalmonaresacred.org
http://salmonaresacred.org/

Buffy, performs in Chilliwack and says something to the Wild Salmon People

Buffy Sainte-Marie in Chilliwack March 4 (A Special Event)

Date & Time:

March 4, 2012

7:30 PM

Location:

Main Theatre

Price:

Tickets:

In advance: $35

At door: $40.00

Details:

Academy Award winner Buffy Sainte-Marie’s audacious attitude to life on and off the stage has inspired people around the world for over four decades. Not one to rest on her accomplishments, Buffy Sainte-Marie has never stopped channelling her infinite musical and artistic creativity. As one of the most spellbinding artists of our time, Buffy Sainte-Marie gracefully combines a high energy stage presence with cerebral songs that tell powerful stories. This rare and primal blend is a welcome joy to festivals and concert halls around the world.

Continuing in 2011 with a touring schedule that will take her across the globe, Buffy Sainte-Marie will perform throughout Europe; North America; Australia; and New Zealand. Her recent appearance at the Byron Bay Bluesfest coincided with the trans-Tansman release of Running for the Drum (Shock Records). Previously released in Canada (Gypsy Boy Music/EMI), the United States (Appleseed Recording) and Europe (Socadisc), the album is available for sale at Amazon.com and at iTunes.

An action-packed collection of Pow Wow rock, house remix, rockabilly and big love songs, Running for the Drum was a hit with audiences and critics right from the start. “A really wild, ear opening set for those that aren’t afraid to take the chance on something that rocks the boat against complacency and does it without a cudgel” (Midwest Records). Passionate as ever, Buffy Sainte-Marie uses her latest songs to cover an extensive array of commanding themes, including great loves and protest against environmental greed. In this past year, the album garnered twelve major music awards in Canada, including a Juno Award, an Aboriginal’s People Choice Music Award and an induction into the Canadian Country Music Hall of Fame.

In the early ‘60s, Buffy Sainte-Marie hit the ground running after the beatniks and before the hippies. All alone she toured North America's colleges, reservations and concert halls, meeting both significant acclaim and huge misperception from audiences and record companies who expected Pocahontas in fringes, and instead were both entertained and educated with their initial dose of Native American reality in the first person.

Since her first concert tours, Buffy Sainte-Marie has continued to grow her music in parallel with a remarkably diverse life of esteemed awards, political blacklisting, education, and fun. As one of the most singular artists of our time, she has created 17 albums of her music, three of her own television specials, spent five years on Sesame Street, scored movies, raised a son, earned a Ph.D. in Fine Arts, taught Digital Music as adjunct professor at several colleges and won both a Golden Globe and an Academy Award Oscar for the song, “Up Where We Belong.”

This multifaceted singer-songwriter was oblivious to the genre police whose boundaries were forcibly eradicated when this so-called ‘folk singer’ showed up with songs that would become ingrained in music history. Described as “one of the most successful and versatile songwriters of the last half-century” (The Guardian), Buffy Sainte-Marie’s international hit “Until It's Time for You to Go,” was recorded by Elvis Presley, Bobby Darin, Barbara Streisand and Cher; and “Universal Soldier” became the anthem of the peace movement. Lauded for her stunning live performances, Buffy Sainte-Marie’s concert set list these days includes not only the classics, but also surprises that will win over even diehard fans with its edgy energy, “… whether raising the roof with No No Keshagesh, breaking our hearts with Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee or punching the mic for the rhythm of Relocation Blues, Sainte-Marie herself was magnificent” (Telegraph Journal). www.buffysainte-marie.com

Accompanying Buffy Sainte-Marie on the road is a rocking 3-piece all-Aboriginal band from Indian Reserves in Manitoba, Canada: Leroy Constant (Cree) on bass and vocals, Jesse Green (Lakota/Ojibwe) on guitar, and Mike Bruyere (Ojibwe) on drums and vocals. “They’ve got the energy I need for driving songs like Starwalker and No No Keshagesh and it helps that what I sing about and where a lot of my songs originate is a world they know too: the realities of Native American passion, love, tragedy and music,” impresses Buffy Sainte-Marie. Available in tandem with Running for the Drum is Buffy Sainte-Marie: A Multimedia Life, an award-winning DVD, which offers fans a rare glimpse into her life and will help to fill in the gaps for those who lost track of her after the Johnson-Nixon suppression of her career. “The life, the career and the personality of an effervescent medicine woman are all beautifully caught” (Maverick Magazine). Since the release, this documentary has taken on a life of its own at film festivals across North America and Europe.

Buffy Sainte-Marie virtually invented the role of Native American international activist pop star. Her concern for protecting indigenous intellectual property and her distaste for the exploitation of Native American artists and performers have kept her in the forefront of activism in the arts for forty years. Presently she operates the Nihewan Foundation for Native American Education through which the Cradleboard Teaching Project serves children and teachers throughout North America.

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