Ken Whiteley

Amazing acoustic Alchemy from a masterful journeyman and a crack cast of accomplices.

Ken Whiteley's creative curiosity seems to push him to continually explore music's many possibilities, and we're all richer for it. Heading into his 40th year as a performer, the Toronto singer, songwriter, arranger, mult-instrumentalist, and producer has traversed an amazing soundscape, sometimes discovering new tunes as much by chance as design.

Consider his latest project for Borealis Records, Ken Whiteley & The Beulah Band. Ken and his son, Ben, have been playing together off and on for more than a decade and when they began tossing around ideas for their first-ever co-production effort in early 2014 the younger Whiteley suggested a working strategy.

"He was encouraging that this be a folky record and to go for a greater consistency," explains Whiteley senior, "because you know, I'm pretty eclectic and I do a lot of things. I'm not going to change who I am, but after I sat down to write songs for this album Ben might say, 'make it more like a jug band,' or whatever. So we played around a lot with the feel of the songs."

And the album is consistent at least on one point: that everyone sticks pretty much to the same acoustic instruments throughout, Ken on guitars, Ben on bass, with Frank Evans (from The Slocan Ramblers) on banjo and Rosalyn Dennet (From Oh My Darling) on fiddles. But underneath that the quartet sets a wonderful pace, taking their cues from swing, jazz, rural blues, jug band grooves, country waltzes, gospel, Appalachian. or Cajun gates, and hints of the wider world, Asian influences or Hawaiian slack key, with a few good chuckles in the bargain.

As familiars to the Toronto roots scene, Evans and Winnipeg's Dennett are closer in age to Ben Whiteley but along the way they found a moving organic vocal chemistry with Ken.

"The more I got to know them the more it seemed like a really good fit, especially the way the harmony vocals really came together. You can't just buy a vocal blend. There are things you can do to tighten it up but if the voices don't blend it's never going to be great. With Frank and Roz, I felt we had that right away."

Those delicious harmonies take flight on numbers such as the Watson Family's The Lone Pilgrim with the exotic sounds of sruti box organ and bowed strings to affect an eastern drone backdrop, one of five tunes drawn from historical sources. Add Rev. Gary Davis's Feel Just Like Goin' On (with a tasty vocal cameo from Basia Bulat who employs Ben in her band), or the happening Beulah Land borrowed from the Georgia Sea Islands gospel tradition.

An original song, Friends All Over The Place, features a chorus with Ken's compatriot Mose Scarlett and The Good Lovelies' Caroline Brooks, among others, celebrating his musical community. Harmonies continue on the gorgeous, easy-going How Fast Flies Time that Whiteley co-wrote with Arthur Renwick, and again on the spare, lazy ballad Straight To You.

The expert tunesmith takes unexpected lyrical inspirations from all over, especially when he's mining the humour element. Hear the way he adapts an excerpt from the Tao Te Ching to the gently thumping blues of Try Not To Fail complete with a kooky mouth trumpet sections, or the piece he first wrote for Amos Garrett called Hands On That Guitar that pokes fun at guitar players.

Then there's his nutty gastronomic dissertation Indian Buffet, geared to those of us who love Indian food. The confirmed vegetarian raves that. "A good Indian buffet is a beautiful thing". It also chimes in with his long-held interest in Eastern cultures and other global music traditions tied to precious recordings such as One World Dance (2007).

Whiteley spent about six months writing new songs and sorting out covers before recording began in June. His masterful guitar picking takes center focus on much of it when he isn't strumming along in rhythm but Beulah Band's dozen tracks are truly a band effort. Evan's banjo and Dennett's fiddle get their time to shine too, for instance, on the endearing cover of Pete Seeger's Quite Early Morning, which closes the album for a tribute to the recently deceased folk icon.

"He was a huge influence on me at a lot of levels. I took that off a CBC podcast I heard when he died about a year ago. I sat in with him onstage when he was 89 and just that force of spirit, it's about 'us' as opposed to 'me', about how we're all in this together. It was so moving. I sometimes do another song of his too, Take It From Dr. King, about how we're blessed with what we've been given by those who've gone before and how we have a responsibility to those who come after us."

At 63, Whiteley takes that role quite deliberately, crediting examples such as Seeger and genre-crossing maestro David Amram before him, passing on his expertise to new generatins. In addition to seven Juno Award nominations for his own music (two wins), Whiteley has chalked up two Grammy nods and another 22 Juno nominations as a record producer, often for Borealis, the label he helped found nearly 20 years back.

Born in Pennsylvania but a resident of Canada from age five, he grew up amidst a legacy of career musicians including his older brother, Chris, and now his niece Jenny, and son Ben. Following his public debut at 14 in a Yorkville jug band, he took in his first Mariposa Folk Festival in 1969. He returned to play Mariposa in 1972 in the now legendary Original Sloth Band, which found notoriety across North America.

That was just the start of his life-long collaboration with so many other musicians. Today Whiteley's name is attached to about 150 records in some context.

"I sometimes joke that I never went to university, I went to folk festivals instead, starting from when I was 13 years old. I think that's where I absorbed the idea, that there are connections between musics all over the world, that the lines which divide us area pretty arbitrary, and that music has the capacity to bridge some of those lines. I remember being up in the highlands of Haiti in the late '70s with my guitar where no spoke English and my Canadian French was useless too, but we could play music and sing together."

For a guy who found his 'promised land' in music decades ago, the Beulah Band seems to be one of the most satisfying encounters yet. - Penguin Eggs, Issue #65: Spring 2015

KEN WHITELEY
One World Dance
Borealis/Koch

Whether as solo artist, collaborator; sideman or producer; Toronto’s Ken Whiteley has long been one of the most valuable players on the Canadian blues, gospel and folk music scenes. This time around, Whiteley is mostly in a stylistically-broad blues mode offering tracks that range from a powerful acoustic arrangement of Death letter Blues, Son House’s Delta blues standard to tightly arranged electric band tracks like Whiteley’s own Everybody has the Blues featuring one of Amos Garrett’s patented electric guitar solos. On the title track, Whiteley enlists Mark Mosca steel drums and Cuban percussionist Mario del Monte to deftly fuse strains of blues and world music. The most infectious number is That’s When I Need a Song, a kind of secular gospel tune. ****
Podworthy: That’s When I Need a Song

November 15, 2007 edition of The Montreal Gazette.

Mike Regenstreif
Assistant Editor: Ottawa Jewish Bulletin
Music Reviewer: Montreal Gazette
Music Reviewer: Sing Out Magazine
Host/Producer: Folk Roots/Folk Branches features, CKUT radio
- Mike Regenstreif, Montreal Gazette

Whiteley serves up lunch counter of styles
Byline: Bill Robertson Special to The Star Phoenix
Edition: Final
Section: Arts & Life
Column: Audiofile
Type: Column; Review

KEN WHITELEY

One World Dance
Borealis

Guitarist extraordinary Ken Whiteley is back with another treasure trove of songs, sounds and styles.

On One World Dance he takes us through the gentle R & B sway of one statement of his faith, Everybody Has the Blues -- with lead guitar help from Amos Garrett -- the high-octane, rockin' boogie of Get At, and the sweet ballad of life's possibilities Going To Be.

Then he throws in some humorous ragtimey feel with Lunch Counter Encounter and its lively acoustic guitar solo, some Dobro guitar on the old country blues number Death Letter Blues, and some spirited gospel with Dobro accompaniment and some great bass vocals from Pat Patrick on Two Wings.

Yes, it's a lunch counter of musical styles and possibilities here, including some cha cha, complete with Latin percussion and steel drums on the title track. There is some slow blues feeling for a song about the end of a relationship and the coming on of Whiteley's least favourite month, November.

Whiteley's justly renowned for his fine guitar playing but his voice, which can sound a little strained, as on Trying To Find My Way, really glows through that ballad Going To Be and resonates a sad earnestness in Still Can't Believe You're Gone. This is a lovely album. - Bill Robertson Special to The Star Phoenix

One can tend to forget how talented Ken Whiteley is when he seems so overexposed these days. He's into his gospel thing, his blues thing, used to be into the jug band thing and does kids' reocrds, produces and you-name-it.

All of which creates an impression of a rather eclectic individual who's all over the map. But with One World Dance, that's exactly his point. This 12-track record has pulled it all together, reminding you just how supremely talented Whiteley is.

His unconventional voice works perfectly with many musicial styles and this disc delivers big band and gutbucket blues, gospel, swing jazz and even a samba with steel drums.

Secret weapons across this entire disc is found in piano player Joe Sealey, who positively steams on the brillant "Going To Be", the disc's most powerful track.

Yet there are many: "Still Can't Beleive You're Gone" is a beautiful intimate paean to loss while "Death Letter Blues" conjures the devil and drowns him in the Delta.

In an odd turn, Whiteley takes over a Cuban supper club with this slick arrangement - punctuated by Sealey's piano, Mario del Monte's congas and mark Mosca's steel drums - that might make Boz Scaggs jealous.

"That's All Right" closes the disc on a blues/gospel note with tasteful ragtime guitar and three-part harmonies, leaving you wanting more. A very solid record from a man who wears the world on his sleeve. - Eric Thom, Penguin Eggs, Issue #36 Winter 2007

Looking at some Must-Listen CDS reviewed;
Jeff Mahoney The Hamilton Spectator
(Hamilton, Ontario, Canada)
12-01-2007

Ken Whiteley
One World Dance
Borealis Records

Whiteley charges into this with guitars and dobros blazing and voice a-growl. The result is a passionate, robust set of blues, with jazz and Latin garnishes, even some gospel. The strengths of this appealing album are its guitars and the driving, cleverly sprung tempos and chordings. Whiteley's voice and lyrics really score on Everybody Has The Blues, Get At and November, but they slip out of blues idiom in the CD's rare weak moments. - Jeff Mahoney, The Hamilton Spectator

Mister Versatility

Ken Whiteley’s various musical achievemnets are already the stuff of legend. And now the Toronto-based, multi-instrumentalist has just releasd the rather good, One World Dance. Pat Langston waltzes into this interview.

Maybe if we start a petition, he’ll do it. Ken Whiteley – whose sprawling musical knowledge of folk, blues, gospel, you name it, once earned him the label of “a playing encyclopedia” – really needs to shoehorn his memories into a book. Sort of a “the story so far” because, despite his trademark bush of whitening hair and beard, Whiteley’s still only 56.

The idea of a Whiteley book isn’t mine. It was Chris White, artistic director of the Ottawa Folk Festival where Ken Whiteley has played several times, who threw out the idea recently. As White noted, “If you think about Canadian folk and roots music, he’s got an incredible perspective.”

White is bang on about this restless and accomplished performer (his latest, excellent solo release is One World Dance), songwriter (300-plus tunes), collaborator (the Whiteley Brothers, with bro Chris; one-third of the beloved Scarlett, Washington and Whiteley), recording artist (six Juno nominations; credits on albums by Leon Redbone, Willie P. Bennett and many others), award-winning producer (Raffi, Fred Penner), multi-instrumentalist (20 including mandolin and guitar), and all-round folk-roots guy (former artistic director of the Mariposa Folk Festival; co-founder of Borealis Records). Oh yeah, he’s also the dad of bassist Ben Whiteley, who plays on the new album, and uncle of singer-songwriter Jenny Whiteley.

Does the word engaged spring to mind?

Sounding far younger than his age, Whiteley, speaking by phone from his home in Toronto, brims with posterity-worthy memories, stories and humour. Pennsylvania-born of Canadian parents but raised in Toronto, he still recalls the minutiae of his own early musical encounters.

“When I was five, we stayed for a summer with our great-uncle Dave. He would sing Stephen Foster songs holding his cello like a guitar. Chris and I would sit up in the attic and play these records on this wind-up 78.”

His paternal grandfather, he adds, headed up Northern Ontario’s Whiteley Orchestra during the 1920s and ’30s. His maternal grandfather, meanwhile, “came from the tradition where everyone should always be ready to give a song or story, and he was always asking us to perform, even when we were little kids, at special gatherings.”

As an elementary school student, Whiteley says with a chuckle, he was the only boy in the class who would sing out loud. By the time he was 12, he was so into folk and blues that he stopped listening to AM radio. Then, in 1965, he heard Keith Richards’s slide guitar on a Rolling Stones tune and “I realized it was all a continuum and that the Stones were listening to the same things I was.”

A couple of years later, Ken, older brother Chris and Tom Evans formed The Original Sloth Band, still fondly remembered by many for its folk, blues, jazz and jug-band eclecticism. The group recorded three albums in the 1970s. During that same decade, Whiteley launched and ran Shire’s Coffee House in Toronto’s North York area.

“We bought all these chairs from a divey hotel on Jarvis Street and mounted lights in juice cans,” he remembers, earning $35 a week for his efforts. He hired, and sometimes sat in with, Brent Titcomb, Stan Rogers and other budding folk heavyweights.

Another multi-Whiteley project, the Junior Jug Band, played kids’ concerts during the 1980s. Ken’s own R&B outfit, the Paradise Revue, also carved out a niche.

Since then, well, you’ve already read the Reader’s Digest version of Whiteley’s current musical CV.

In fact, on One World Dance he pays tribute to his consuming passion. That’s When I Need a Song is about exactly that.

“Songs in so many ways enrich our lives, when you feel good, when you feel bad, when you are protesting, when you’re celebrating, when you’re whatever,” he says. Whiteley wrote the tune, one of several featuring Amos Garrett on guitar, with fellow Toronto musician Eve Goldberg. He and Goldberg also teamed up for the swing blues Lunch Counter Encounter. “I can get melodic, harmonic ideas perpetually but don’t always have something to write,” Whiteley says.

Co-writing is one way that music helps people connect. And connecting is, for Whiteley, of bedrock importance.

“All of us on this planet have a responsibility and the opportunity to connect,” he says. “I’ve made connections with people that I couldn’t speak the same language with and we’ve been able to play music together.

“At the most profound level, I feel in performing it’s possible to create a situation where I’m a conduit for energy that’s coming from beyond me and we create a big circle with the audience. Essentially, it’s a spiritual pursuit for me.”

All this talk of spirituality prompts the question of whether Whiteley is a religious man. Careful to - Penguin Eggs, Issue #35, Autumn 2007

Toronto’s “Everything” Guy: Ken Whiteley
Sing Out!, Vol 52, No 1, Matt Watroba

“I didn’t go to University, I went to folk festivals.” Ken Whiteley proudly admits from his home in Toronto, Ontario. “So through the ’60s I was soaking it all in like a sponge: whether it was hip, traditional British music like the Young Tradition, or the old Appalachian singers like Almeda Riddle and Frank Proffit, or the old blues singers and revivalists like Mike Seeger and later, David Bromberg – it was all exciting, it was all great, and I just wanted to learn it all.”

And learn it all he did. Known throughout the United States and Canada as a multi-instrumentalist roots performer, award winning producer, and performer of songs for kids, Ken Whiteley has been spreading the gospel of roots music for more than 40 years. Born in Pennsylvania to Canadian parents, Ken’s father taught architecture at Penn State and then at Kansas State University. In 1956, the family moved back to Toronto. Ken was five years old. A few years after that, his grandparents came to live in their house.

“Both my grandparent’s were involved in music,” Ken remembers. “My grandfather was from an era where you would always expect everybody to have a song or a story to tell at a family gathering. My father’s father had been a band leader in Northern Ontario in the 1920s. He had a group called the Whiteley Orchestra, and my Uncle Eric played drums in that. So on both sides there was music. My father had wide ranging musical tastes. One of his favorite things to do while he was watching sports on Saturday was to have the sound off and the Metropolitan Opera on. So it would be a football game or a baseball game and opera.”

Ken, along with his older brother and musical partner Chris, had lots of instruments around the house to pluck on and experiment with. This made them ripe for that brief time in the early sixties where folk music ruled the popular music world. Ken recalls, “In 1962 I was 11 and Chris was 14. Hootenanny was on TV and so our taste and ears were sort of drawn to that. In a period of about a year-and-a-half we went from the folk music that was on A.M. radio to discovering Pete Seeger and then Bob Dylan, Woody Guthrie, Lead Belly, and Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee. By 1964, we were making weekly treks to Sam the Record Man and buying all the blues re-issues by players like Son House and all those singers.” Along with the blues influence, Ken recalls being struck by both the music and the philosophy of Pete Seeger.

“There was a big difference between Pete Seeger and the A.M. folk music. Pete Seeger spoke to your conscience. He talked about real people. It was not about slick guys in matching outfits, it was about the real concerns of people and making a better world and talking about real feelings.”

Ken and Chris Whiteley continued to soak up the recorded music, but it was the opportunity to see some of their heroes in person that inspired them as future performers. In 1964, the Mariposa Folk Festival was forced to move from Orillia, Ontario, to the Toronto Maple Leaf Ball Club at the last minute. This made it possible for the Whiteley brothers to convince their parents to let them take a subway ride to an event that would change their lives. Ken remembers it like this: “The stuff coming up from the States was a big influence, but it played out in a particularly Canadian context. The 1964 Mariposa Folk Festival was, in many ways, a life-changing event. I saw Mississippi John Hurt meet the Reverend Gary Davis for the first time ... sitting in this ballpark and just trading songs. And then, that same afternoon, I saw Skip James do his very first performance for a white audience as he talked about being rescued from the hospital by Dick Waterman because people wanted to hear him play. I was just blown away. It was so great.”

The following winter the brothers began seriously collecting and playing this old music – especially American jug band music – and by the summer of ’65 The Whiteley brothers started Tubby Fats Original All-Star Downtown Syncopated Big Rock Jug Band and began performing. By the mid-’60s, Ken and the jug band entered the music business. They booked gigs, had people booking gigs for them, and joined the musician’s union. They also started volunteering for the Mariposa Folk Festival, often assuming the role of taking care of the same old blues musicians who originally captured their imagination.

It was at this time that the jug band morphed into The Original Sloth Band. They recorded three albums and became sought after live performers. The music combined the blues and jazz from the jug band tradition. Ken described them like this: “The way the New Lost City Ramblers took this broad range of country music, which went all the way from the old ballads and the old-timey music, to strains of bluegrass. They covered the whole range of country music. In a sense, we were doing that with a whole range of - Sing Out!, Vol 52, No 1, Matt Watroba

Ken Whiteley - One World Dance
Borealis Records - BCD187

A review written for the Folk & Acoustic Music Exchange
by Tampa Blue (tampablue@tampablue.com)

The American South has given birth to some great literature, wonderful food and world-shaking music, including the blues. All parents are happy when they see their offspring out on their own, independently conquering the world and sending home messages of their well-being.

Ken Whiteley's One World Dance is one of those messages sent by the blues and it says, "I'm alive and well and living in Canada!"

For those unfamiliar with Whiteley (folks like me) you can tell he's got it right from the first bar of the first track, Everybody Has The Blues. Actually, I could tell from the opening chord. The music is sultry and the temperature is just where steam first begins to appear. Then he comes in with the vocals. The phrasing and attitude are reminiscent of BB King. Whiteley understands the importance of feel so well that he holds the reins through the entire piece, never letting it get out of hand, setting the mood and building the tension for more to come.

It starts coming with the second track, Get At. This is one of those boogies that will make a lame man walk! The dual guitar work between Whiteley and Amos Garrett is masterful.

Masterful is a perfect word to describe this collection of mostly original tunes. Masterful and amazing. It is amazing how masterfully Whiteley covers a wide range of the blues palate. He is able to be faithful to his own sensibilities while working in each of the sub-genres. Not only is the instrumentation masterful but the song writing is as well. Whiteley's weakest work still sets goals so high that most song writers can only hope to occasionally reach them.

The title track is definitely not your father's blues. And, to be honest, I did not care much for it on first hearing. But I have decided that I needed to open my ears and allow Whiteley to broaden my tastes a little. The music of this blues/world-beat fusion song is infectious and I have found myself listening to it repeatedly.

There are a couple of treatments of "traditional" tunes. This version of the Son House song, Death Letter Blues is right on the mark. I don't think that even Son himself could find any fault here. And the blues spiritual, Two Wings, is so powerful, so beautifully done that it will move the heart of the most hardened sinner!

So, the blues another of its children. Ken Whiteley's One World Dance can sit at the table with all the other far-flung offspring of the South. Nice to meet you!

Track List:

* Everybody Has The Blues (Ken Whiteley)
* Get At (Ken Whiteley)
* Going To Be (Ken Whiteley)
* Lunch Counter Encounter (Ken Whiteley/Eve Goldberg)
* Death Letter Blues (Traditional adaptation, arrangement by Ken Whiteley)
* Still Can't Believe You're Gone (Ken Whiteley)

* Two Wings (Adaptation, arrangement by Ken Whiteley)
* One World Dance (Ken Whiteley)
* November (Ken Whiteley)
* That's When I Need A Song (Ken Whiteley/Eve Goldberg)
* Still Trying To Find My Way (Ken Whiteley)
* That's Alright (Adaptation, arrangement by Ken Whiteley)

Edited by: David N. Pyles
(dnpyles@acousticmusic.com)
Copyright 2008, Peterborough Folk Music Society.


- Tampa Blue, FAME

“In Freedom Blues Canadian roots music icon Ken Whiteley has crafted a timeless set of songs that address both contemporary and historical struggles for the freedom endemic to a healthy, progressive society. Deftly drawing on a wide range of musical sources including blues, gospel and, for lack of a better word, folk, Freedom Blues is a landmark album in Whiteley's career and Canadian roots music in general.” ~ Grammy Award winnning musicologist, Rob Bowman - Rob Bowman