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playing. You get really fine-tuned to doing it too. In terms of singing, it teaches you how to sing really loud. That’s where I’ve learned my control… from playing on the street, belting it out and getting my voice heard a block away. Then you sing in front of a microphone! Y’see that’s why that singing from those old record- ings from the ’20s and the ’30s style sounds that way! Those singers were used to singing in front of audiences unamplified, so when they got in front of a microphone they sung the same way. So partly, I learned to sing, sometimes from those old recordings, in that same environment that those people were singing in.”
As his craft became finer honed, Petunia began playing occa- sional shows in bars – “opening for someone maybe, for Neko Case one time.”
In more recent times, Petunia has also played or opened for various artists from Phil Alvin and Exene Cervenka from LA punk outfit X to Wanda Jackson. “She’s a very graceful, elegant South- ern lady, very subtle in a powerful way. She barely said anything… I’ve got a lot of respect for that!”
hen the restlessness got the better of him, Petunia would hit the road again for adventure, finding places to play along the way: “You can’t play four nights in a week when you’re hitchhiking. You’d have to book a show every two weeks or some- thing… so you had time to get there… though they are lots of stories of me not getting to where I was supposed to get! I found a car, hitchhiking, and that became how I got around partly. And then I left the car in the prairies and hitchhiked to and from the car – I’d leave it places where I knew it was gonna be!”
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Over the years, sometimes settling in different places for a few months or years at a time, things took a natural course and he started touring more and more, booking dates for himself as a solo artist, but also building an extensive network of musician friends across Canada and beyond.
“I have probably played with a hundred, or two hundred, or maybe three hundred musicians across the country because I’ve hitched all over for the past decade. You end up meeting a lot of people! Some may move on – to different places and countries. Some you see again, some you don’t. Some of the older guys might suggest some younger guys to play with… it’s really nice.”
The Vipers were such a crew of musicians. “I used to travel to
Vancouver and pick up with various musicians – these guys were amongst them. When Ray Condo passed – a legendary awesome talent – I picked those guys (Stephen and Jimmy) up along with Sam on bass and later Marc.”
Now working with The Vipers is balanced with time spent on solo work alongside his network of local players. Petunia remains very much in control of his destiny.
“I figure I got my own hand. And if I’ve got my own hand I can manage my own hand. It might not be a great hand, but it’s my own hand! Not to say that we won’t sign a record contract at some point… but I would like to be in control of when I tour and when I don’t. Right now it’s half the year, 150 shows a year, that’s pretty good… and you record, you rehearse, you hang out… I don’t listen to a lot of music. I read books. I’d probably rather sit by a fire. Or hang out by a river or something.”
As Jean-Luc Godard said: “It’s not where you take things from – it’s where you take them to.”
Look out for a return visit to the UK and Ireland from Petunia
& The Vipers sometime between in late 2013 to early 2014. Check out Morgan Carrier’s award-winning video of Cold
Heartbreaker at
petuniamusic.com
petuniaandthevipers.com
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