David Kalmusky's Journal December 97

Growing up in Stratford, with a music studio in the back of the house, famously referred to as “The Backroom” in several books about the music scene in the 60’s-70’s, and by world renowned musicians, like Richard Manuel (the piano player from “The Band”), John Till (the guitarist from Janis Joplin’s last band), most of Ronnie Hawkin’s players passed through the “back room” of my house in those days, and my Father himself, having road stories from working with Ian and Sylvia (The Great Speckled Bird), Todd Rundgren, Jerry Reid, David Clayton Thomas, well.... no sense in wasting the rest of the page on name dropping, I just wanted to paint the fact that I grew up surrounded by the music industry from the day I was born a 3rd generation Kalmusky musician.


Kalmusky Family	David and Kim	Ian and Sylvia w/ Ken Kalmusky	The Band w/ John Till & Ken Kalmusky	John Till, Sandra &Ken Kalmusky

While still in grade school, I would jam with my fathers friends when ever given the chance. I think my earliest musical performance memory, was at about age 9 or 10 playing Bass for “I’m in the mood for love” at an out door jamboree with my Father on guitar, and his girlfriend Karen singing. I’m sure I sucked, however, I felt like a veteran by then, I had been banging about the house on various musical instruments since I was 5 years old, at age 11, I formed a band with a bunch of 15 and 16 year old kids. In the true essence of what later became Spinal Tap humor, we named ourselves "Black Pearl"

By age 14 I teamed up with my buddy Jay Riehl (credited and renowned drummer, and owner of Signature Sound Studio, not back then of course, nowadays I mean.) We would not only play at the highschools, and any community events we could get on , but we were also out playing clubs on more weekends than not. At the age of 16, I fronted my own band (Lower Level) and opened shows for Lorena McKennet, Streetheart, and Downchild, I also played the club scene extensively as a freelance guitarist, and got a few opportunities to do some studio work. I played on my first session at age 14 at Canada Sound Recording Studios, and was on the road full time by age 16.

Jay and I created a single (Back then a vinyl 45) of the theme song for the Canadian Olympic Skaters, the “Champions on Ice” theme, it was the finale for their Ice show, and was featured on the CBC News, the flip side of the single was an original I wrote with Jay called “Corner of Infinity” and I hope to god none of those singles still exist, cause It was brutal. In the studio, I had Iced Tea cans lining the ledge of the control room window, and I took a slug of a beverage full of cigarette butts right before my vocal performance, I sang the track regardless of the nausea and pieces of filter stuck in my throat, we stayed up all night mixing, and drove to Toronto to deliver the master that morning, it was pressed later that day, sold 1000 units, and I quit smoking for several months !

When David Gilmour from Pink Floyd was in a law suit with Roger Waters for the name Pink Floyd, he did a few solo records, and touring in his solo band, was Gregg Dechert, and Jodi Linscott. When David won the suit, and put Pink Floyd back together, Gregg teamed up with Mick Ralphs to put British rock band Bad Company back together. They did a reunion album, and a tour, before Gregg decided to go solo, and put his own band together. Gregg auditioned me at 17 years old, and asked me to join his efforts.

That band had many different phases over the several years of existence, morphing between the bands “The Gregg Dechert Band”, “Why”, and “C-4” I was a fairly constant member, coming and going a few times as the industry occasionally interrupted all of us involved, with various other offers. At one point, I got a call to tour with Scott King who had a single out on Sony at that time, I left and went out west for a while to do Scott’s tour, when I returned, I rejoined the Dechert band immediately.

The band had changed from it’s original incarnation. The music Industry had taken Jodi Linscott from us, she got a call from Pete Townsend to tour with The Who. We carried on, and added British pop singer Natasha England to the mix, to work on a record, and do some touring, however in the end Gregg received calls from Tom Cochrane, but ultimately took a gig from the company Roland, on an endorsement, to be in their all star band, touring theatres. Later Gregg settled in Sass Jordan's band.

Our efforts in the end, resulted in recording 2 albums worth of stuff, one of which was partially recorded in the same studio that Lenny Kravitz recorded his "Let Love Rule" record in New York City. Nothing from either albums was ever released. I personally, through my involvement with Gregg, got to meet, and hang with Dave Gilmour, Roger Daltry and band, played on several outside sessions with Gregg, and really got comfortable with the studio, Gregg taught me allot about laying into the volume pedal, and going for it, his contributions musically to what I do today, remain some of the biggest influence I've had in this business. From what I understand, He is still playing, and teaching Piano. We haven't crossed paths in nearly a decade.

At age 18 I joined a rock band called "Roxide" and toured for about 6 months, living in a cube van, and hotel rooms above clubs, I returned to Stratford after that episode, and put a recording studio together with Jay Riehl, and Scott Mathews (juno award nominee for pop album "Boats and Rivers") Scott being a bass player, Jay a drummer, and I a guitarist, led to the obvious putting a band together, we all had our separate agendas, each of us being a freelance musician / producer / songwriter, the band was really secondary, the band as a result was named "Plan B"

We, with our spiral perms, parachute pants, and hightop runningshoes (oh the awful early 90's) recorded a single, shot a video, and actually got a return call from the president of Capitol Records at the time, asking us to pursue a few more songs, however, the singer of the band was in the midst of becoming a chiropractor, Jay was getting calls to tour with Jim Witter (Now on Curb records) and Scott simultaneously received an offer to work as a sound designer for The Stratford Festival.

When I realized things weren't going to happen, I accepted a gig replacing Sean Ashby (Sarah McLachlan's guitarist) in a country band he was working with at the time, which involved me picking up, and moving 3000 miles west to Calgary, where I based myself while I toured coast to coast playing country music in a town near you for about 2 years.

My first country rig was remnants of my big rock concert rig from the Dechert days, playing Dwight Yokam tunes through 2 Marshall stacks and a 5 ft rack full of gear, on a Kramer Sustainer guitar. When I returned from that 2 year episode of playing 6 nighters 51 weeks a year, I came back with a Telecaster, and a fender bassman with a compressor pedal. (To the non musicians reading this, all that means, is that I adapted to my environment quite well)

While out west, I could be in Calgary, Vancouver, or Winnipeg, and occasionally someone would walk up to me, slap me on the back, and say "HEY WOODY", when I'd turn around, they'd always exclaim, "oh, sorry buddy". This happened allot, so I started inquiring, "Who is this Woody character?", from what I was told, I had a dead ringer twin, but from the back only, another guitar player, in another band on the road, named Woody, with the same hair, and apparently (according to some waitresses) the same ass. Why am I telling this story? believe it or not, it has significance in the outcome of my life to date.

On my last stretch with the country band, I had already put in my notice, and was working my way back east, planning to stay in Ontario when I got there. We were playing "Gilley's" in Thunderbay Ontario, we drove all night, from somewhere like High Level Alberta, and arrived on the Sunday. We didn't begin till the Monday, so we decided to check out last week's band on their last night. I walked into the club, and I saw what looked like myself, on stage, bending down, turned around, tweaking the volume knob on the guitar amp, I instantly realized, that I was looking at Woody, whom I had never met, but for 2 years been mistaken for.

Not knowing who I was, Woody, on break, between sets, walked right off stage, through a large crowd of people, straight up to me, stood right in front of me, held his beverage of straight whiskey right up to my nose, and slurred "Smell this, smell what I'm drinkin !" Apparently I caught them on a celebration, it was a friend of the band's birthday, the whole band was pretty much corked. However, excited to tell Woody my stories of mistaken identity, and also inquire about why he walked right off stage, right up to me without knowing who I was.

I was cut off by Woody, before I could even get my thoughts out, he said "Oh, by the way, you must be Dave, I'm Woody, people have been slappin me on the back, saying "Hi Dave" all across Canada". It turns out, we knew all about each other, the whole time.

So, moving on, I'm around the ripe old age of 20, back in Ontario, I've landed several studio gigs playing on records, jingles, soundtracks etc... and I've once again re-teamed up with my comrade Gregg Dechert on yet another episode mentioned earlier, and one night, about 6 months in, the bass player (Mark Irmler, who was also in the band I was in out west), flew off his motorcycle, into a telephone poll, and busted himself up pretty good.

Visiting him in the hospital, I ran into his girlfriend Jen, and one of her friends (Cherie) from Jen's hometown. After the visit, I took the two girls out to dinner, and drove them home.

I called them the next day, for some information about Mark, and ended up talking to Cherie (Jen's friend from the hospital) for about 2 hours on the phone, we met for lunch about a week later in a small town close to where I was playing. The following week, I picked her up in her hometown, and we were never apart from that moment on, for about 4 years. We lived in Calgary together for the first year, traveled the country together, and settled in Kitchener.

One night, out on the town in Kitchener, in walks, believe it or not, Woody, it turns out, he, and his girlfriend live in an apartment about 4 blocks from Cherie and I, amazed with what a small world it really is, we hung out for the evening together, and Woody (Jason, he has a real name) and his girlfriend Annie, become Cherie and my closest friends in the area.

I had seen Jason on TV a bunch of times, in Jamie Warren videos, and on the occasional television show here and there, but was never really quite sure if it was my long lost buddy from out west, sure enough it was.

After hanging out for a while, Jason though it would be fun to actually work together, so he bugged Jamie Warren (at that time had "One step Back" on the charts, and was signed to Mercury Polydor) until he agreed to hire me to play in his band with Jason. When Jason got the call to tour with Charlie Major, I was already in place in Jamie's band, to cover Woody's parts.

That was a pivotal point in my life, I met a ton of the other recording acts, their players and managers in the industry that year, and started playing on country records, and touring with major country acts ever since.

While in Jamie's band, and living in Kitchener, I would go for my morning coffee at the "Go Internet Cafe", I didn't know how to turn a computer on, let alone understand e-mail. But after a short while of putzin' around in the mornings there, I had a hotmail account, and free webspace at geocities.

I built the worlds ugliest website, mostly text based, with as many annoying little animated gif's as you could handle without having a seizure. It was a dorky "Hi, my name is David, and I play guitar website" with a brief biography page, (certainly nothing as extensive as this novel) a photo page, and a guest book.

Because of web searches for Pink Floyd, David Gilmour, Todd Rundgren, Jamie Warren, yada yada yada, the site received an un real amount of hits. The guest book filled up quickly, and as I went on the road, I ignored the site, mainly because I didn't have a computer, and I didn't have time on the road to search down public computers, and Internet cafe's. I would get tons of e-mail from Jamie fans, or people wondering what was going on, or looking for tour dates, even the occasional angry e-mail, from people who missed a concert in their hometown because it wasn't on my website, this was back at a time when most of the recording artists didn't even have their own websites.

After a year or two, life got busy, really busy, I began playing on at least 5 or 6 records a year, I was touring with Lawnie Wallace, Stephanie Beaumont, and Farmer's Daughter, before I realized that first off, a website was too big a responsibility to maintain with my schedule, Cherie and I had broken up, so I was living on the road, pretty much full time at the beginning of 98' (this is not a sad story, you can put the violins away, she has a husband, and a beautiful baby girl, and we are all close and dear friends) She may be infact mad that I brought her up on this page, but for those of you who knew me through those years, knew her just as well, everyone in the business that I worked with, got to know her as well as I, and this in fact, is a bit of a "Life story", so I couldn't imagine leaving any of it out, especially her. NEVERTHELESS, (I keep getting sidetracked) living on the road, touring, recording, frantically busy, and I needed a real website, not a text page with animated gifs, so....... enter Robert Carey.

His first words to me, regarding my sad little geocities website were, "Well, I'm proud of you for learning how to do all that stuff, but quite frankly, your website is giving me a headache ! Robert was the Bass player for Lower Level, (the band I fronted when I was 16), he is now a computer guru for a living, designing software, creating data bases from scratch, graphics design, marketing, etc.... he started his career on TV as "Rob, The Computer Guy", an on air personality on Much Music, and has continuously climbed ladders since then, obviously in ways other than getting stuck doing my little site.

This is when this site was officially born, around 1998. Thanks to Robert, I really don't have to do much now, other than babble in a few e-mail's like I am doing right now, and e-mail in a few pictures from the road and my schedule once in a while. Although I've failed miserably at even those simple tasks at hand in the past, I will really try to do better in the future. And hey, at least you're not staring at a bunch of spinning animated gif's at geocities !

So there you have it, some babblings about my life, from my birth, to the birth of this site, and the very first journal entry (although written after the fact) I'm sure the other entries will be 1/10th the volume of this one ! Take care everyone, we'll see you out on the road somewhere.


Top of a mountain	Alien landing pad	Thrilled	Traveling in the van	Broken Down


Annie and Cherie	David and Jason (Woody)	Jason & Annie's wedding


David's first guitar	A little more passive	Black Pearl