Todd Crawshaw has been the executive director of Yardbird Suite for about a year and a half, but you could say Edmonton’s oldest jazz club is in his DNA. “My parents were beatniks and beboppers in the late ‘60s, so there’s probably a one-in-three chance I was conceived after a Yardbird show,” he laughs.
One of his first memories is being five years old, sitting on his dad’s shoulders in the back of the Yardbird, watching the “late great” Tommy Banks blowing the audience away with a wall of sound. “I remember seeing Tommy with a really big orchestra, and what I recall from that particular show is that I was overwhelmed. I was raised in a household where there was always music going on, but that was literally the first live band presentation I had seen in all my five years. To come back full circle now, at age 52 as an employee — I know if my folks were still around, they’d be pretty proud.”
For most of his life, the Yardbird was an institution in the city, one he likens to the Fringe Festival in the sense that even non-jazz lovers are aware of it. “But in the last 15 years, in particular with the fragmentation of choices, our awareness has really gone down among the general public, to the point where if I went to Whyte Avenue and talked to 20 people, only two or three would know who we were. My big goal is to try to get some awareness of this cultural gem in the city.”
While it’s been around for 100+ years, jazz remains niche — at least in the minds of non-hepcats. But Crawshaw says the idea of jazz being some inaccessible musical form you can only enjoy by listening to the notes the bands aren’t playing doesn’t hold up. “When I was at the Rock Fest, I remember putting up a poster of Miles Davis in my office, leading one of my board members to come in and say I should be working for the jazz society, not the rock society. I said, you know, Miles is in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. And when I talk to rockers today, and try to get them into the club, they say they just don’t like jazz. And I say, well do you like Steely Dan? That’s a jazz man that masqueraded as rock. In BTO’s ‘Lookin’ Out for #1,’ Randy Bachman’s guitar and is pure [Canadian jazz legend] Lenny Breau. Jazz, because of its age and its pedigree, has its tendrils into almost every other western music. So my definition of jazz is a fairly big tent.”
Thanks to Crawshaw’s philosophy, the Yardbird’s big tent is expanding to include local musical staples like Colleen Brown and Martin Kerr, with plans for reggae shows in the works. Basically, Crawshaw says, if you ever tune to CKUA, CJSR or CBC Radio 2, he’s confident you’ll enjoy any given Yardbird show, including the shows this month.
Norway’s Tord Gustavsen will paint a “sparse, beautiful atmosphere” on Feb. 16. Cory Weeds & Champian Fulton, “some of the most incredible players in the nation today,” will rattle the Yardbird stage the next day. And on the 21st, Ottawa’s Alex Moxon will host Yardbird’s Tuesday Jam, which includes local, emerging musicians playing with professionals and encourages audience participation, even on stage. “Part of the Yardbird mission is to give incredible performance opportunities to the next generation of players. And we have a very good relationship with MacEwan [University’s] music program. A lot of their kids are going to be coming to our place every Tuesday for jams. And jams are pretty special to me, because it’s where the younger college students who are just getting their chops are often playing with guys who have been around for a long time. So you’ve got this combination of fresh upstarts as well as very well-established folks on stage.”
Fly on in to Yardbird almost any day this month for a show you won’t see anywhere else.
