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"Satisfying as hell. And fun." The Headstrong interview... By Rick McGrath The Georgia Straight, January 20, 1972 Headstrong? Trippy name, sure, but also fairly descriptive of the musical attitudes of these four very talented Vancouver musicians who will, and I don't doubt it a bit, change a few opinions of the quality of the local acoustic music scene. What I'm trying to say is that these boys got talent and ability and desire. When was the last time that kind of a combination failed? But I may be getting ahead of myself. I first heard of Headstrong from an old friend of mine, Stu Clugston of the Richmond Review. Stu and I used to be folk freaks and university newspaper hacks back in the old days, and we still get together to jam a bit. Stu decided he wanted to pick up on a bit more theory than Peter, Paul & Mary songbooks offer, and so he started taking lessons at Bill Lewis' Guitar Haven. The instructor turned out to be Peter Mendieta, and Peter just happens to be one of Headstrong's two guitarists. Stu raved and the old curiosity was piqued. Two phone calls later and I found myself at one of Headstrong's frequent rehearsals. The first group member I met was Al Davis, who plays bass, piano, accordion, guitar, and contributes one third of the vocals. Al used to play piano and accordion with a trio at the Hotel Vancouver's Panorama Roof. He used to stroll around the tables, ostensibly aiding the digestive processes. Laugh if you will, but Chilliwack's Bill Henderson played in Al's trio for the year between the Collectors and Chilliwack. Bill Henderson replaced Terry Frewer. Peter Mendieto replaced Bill. Al is a native of Vancouver; he started playing piano when he was six, and took up the bass three years ago. He's thirty-one, intense, aware, and one hell of a musician. The rest of the group includes Dave Miller on guitar, bass, piano, kazoo and vocals; Mike Clapham on drums, percussion, & whistles; Peter Mendieta on guitar, bass, harp & vocals. Dave Miller has been into music since he was 14 and keeps himself going with guitar lessons. Mike Clapham is from England, and for awhile ran and owned the Drum Village on Broadway. He has since bought out, but still runs the place. Right now he is working on manufacturing a drum kit he has developed himself. He's 33, married and has two kids. Mike is, and you pick up on this the first time you hear him, a competent jazz drummer. The licks are there. Peter met up with Al at the Hotel Vancouver, and he also had been doing a lot of acoustic rehearsals with Dave Miller. Originally Peter had plans to teach school, but found he couldn't hack that system. So he started teaching the guitar at Bill Lewis and he's still at it. Al Davis explains how they got together: "I had known Mike for a long time and then we met the other guys and we first started playing in March, 1970. We'll have been together two years this March. At first we just were having a good time, you know, playing Proud Mary and then jamming for half an hour, and after about six months of this we were getting together two or three times a week and going completely crazy about the fun we were having. Then it flashed on us to get a band together. "About this time last year I was getting really excited about the lyric and the feeling and artistically, it's satisfying as hell. And fun. There's a lot of heaviness to the counter-culture side of life, and you don't always have a lot of fun. I hadn't experienced a lot. And I don't see a lot of people as happy as they were. And we get serious about our music, and that can become a down side of it. After two or three months in the Studio you start getting conscious of what's happening and how it's going to fit into that certain aspect of the audience that you can make money from. And then you get into the trip of making money. "When we started, we were just falling on the floor laughing, having fun. Where did that go? That's the kind of thing we've been talking about in the last few months, talking about it and getting it out. We're trying to get rid of all those shells that come around you. Because it's really easy to become a serious band. And that shows in frustration when you play. We've got images of ourselves as a really successful group. And we want it to be really positive without any of these trips getting to us. That's the prime concern." Headstrong has played around town a bit, but not that much to become known at all. They did a gig at Gassy Jack's backing up Albert Collins, a Sunday night at the Cellar, and lunch concerts at local universities. And The Fifth Day Club. But they are in a rather unusual situation in that they don't have to play to survive; All the group's members have good jobs, and there is this lack of pressure that becomes evident in their music. They're trying to get the sound honest to themselves, and that's what I really dig about the end product: no hype and no bullshit. They play what they like and they're hoping that if other people dig it, then that's cool. Musically, I can only say I haven't been as impressed since the old Spring days. Miller and Mendieta both play exciting, killer guitars. Miller, in the short time I listened to them, seems to be responsible for, say, sixty per cent of the lead work… and it's lead guitar with a vengence: flowing, building, shifting and highly imaginative. Mendieta's styling tends to be more subdued than Miller's frantic wailings, but he does have the ability to cut loose with red hot licks that could fry the socks off a filet of sole. Peter also displays a control of the wah-wah that far exceeds anything I've heard locally in the past years. It is not what they do individually that's really important, though, and any talk of personal ability must pale in the light of their ability to play together. Mike Clapham is, as I said earlier, a drummer with his roots in jazz. There is a finesse and understatement to his work that sometimes works at odds with their more rocking tunes, but the cat is certainly an exacting musician, and it could most certainly have been the acoustics of their rehearsal room that toned his work down. Al Davis is an amazing bassist, perhaps all the more so when one considers he's only been at it for three years. Al's bass is reminiscent of most of the really good lead players: he's always in there, pushing, filling, making his own highly individual statements in answer to the lead guitars. Vocally, Headstrong seems to be very interested in three-part harmony, and all the songs I heard were original material composed by the group, and they exhibited a finesse and comprehension of songwriting that was refreshing, to say the least. The direction of their lyrics is positive and unusual enough to make the words interesting on their. So kids, in retrospect I'd say that the addition of this group, who have been recording on their own out at Steve Grossman's PBS studios for the last ten months, should be welcome news to the Vancouver Rock scene. Their first master should be ready in four months, and Al & crew are really trying to get some live exposure around town. Keep on truckin… and support your local musician.
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