Going home - musician Shirley Eikhard

Canada's Shirley Eikhard has logged a few decades in the music business, playing, singing and writing songs, but she is not as well known as she deserves to be, primarily because of her decision to perform less in the last two decades and devote more time to composing. The owner of a deep, distinctive voice and a warm, friendly stage persona, Shirley Eikhard may not be a "household name" but within the music industry, recognition has been solid.

It wasn't always this way for Eikhard, who achieved stage success from an early age. Nurtured onto her life's path by musical roots, Eikhard grew up in Sackville, New Brunswick and Amherst, Nova Scotia, in the midst of a musical family. Her mother, June played country fiddle and dad, Cecil played bass, so Shirley's earliest memories are of her parents performing - on radio shows and in concerts around the Maritimes. Brother Brent also played various instruments. At the age of three, little Shirley would perch behind the drum kit, absorbing the atmosphere. Guitar and piano became her favoured instruments and she was soon an accomplished folk and country musician, appearing at the Mariposa Festival when she was just 13. While still in her teens, she had made several guest appearances on CBC-TV's Tommy Hunter Show, Drop In and Singalong Jubilee.

By the age of 15, Eikhard was performing in bars. "There was one bar in Prince Edward Island called the Prince Edward Lounge and I had to literally leave the stage and go sit in the kitchen because I was underage," she laughs.

But it wasn't all amusing. Saloons are a "dues-paying" venue for mature musicians, let alone a young teenager with an unformed ego. Bar patrons fueled by alcohol are a notoriously tough audience, vocal and even physical in their disapproval. "There was one time in Vancouver in 1972-I'll never forget it," Eikhard recalls. "I actually had things thrown at me on stage, so you can see why, when someone that young is on stage, you have those kinds of things happen to you, you have to sort of grin and bear it. Even though you try not to let it affect you...but the harm was done. That's why I became more reclusive."

By "reclusive" Eikhard means that she performed less in public and turned more to songwriting, a craft she enjoyed and had already succeeded at. "I love to sing, but songwriting has been my number one love," she says.

Hal David (of Bacharach/David songwriting fame) encouraged Eikhard to devote more time to writing. "Learn the craft understand the rules, and then you can harness the inspiration and break the rules," he told her. "Until then, I had been waiting for inspiration, which is really just another excuse for being lazy? she says. "He reminded me that songwriting's a bit like mining for gold-you have to move a lot of dirt before you can find the nugget."

There's a pile of nuggets now, as perhaps 300 tunes now make up Eikhard's body of work, many covered by recording stars like Emmylou Harris and the Pointer Sisters. Anne Murray recorded It Takes Time when Eikhard was just 15 and Kim Carnes covered it more recently. Chet Atkins' 1973 recording of Pickin' My Way was an Eikhard song and Rita Coolige's I Would Not Change a Thing and I'm Still Learning About Love are Eikhard compositions. Bonnie Raitt scored a huge hit with Something to Talk About. Ginette Reno, a much undervalued Canadian singer, has just recorded her first English language album in years, and has included Eikhard's Once In a While.

Eikhard has even composed the scores for two plays by George E Walker, one of which won a Dora Award, and there are two Juno Awards on her shell

Writing may be a more solitary pursuit than performing, but Eikhard has also collected some impressive writing partners. She struck up a friendship with Sylvia Tyson when she recorded Tyson's Smiling Wine in 1972 and they have since teamed up to write several tunes including Christmas Came Early This Year and, for the Pink Cadillac album, Diamond Love, I Walk These Rails and Gypsy Cadillac. Alannah Myles covered Kick Start My Heart which was co-written with Chris Waters. George Fox, Luba, Larry Gowan and Nashville's Steve Bogart number among her other songwriting collaborators.

In the summer of 1994, Eikhard got a call from Cher's manager asking her to come to New York, where Chef was filming a movie. It seems Chef wanted to collaborate with Eikhard on some songs. They spent two days with Pat McDonald penning songs in a hotel room between Cher's time on set. One tune that came out of the session was a song about vampires, Lovers Forever, which has not yet been recorded.

Through the years, while finding great success in folk, country and pop genres, Eikhard harboured a love for another kind of music.

In 1963, the Eikhards had moved to Oshawa Ontario. Ten years later, at age 18, Shirley settled in Toronto to be near the music business. It was there, in her late teens, that Eikhard met Cleo Laine and became very interested in jazz. "I considered myself an oddity back then, with country music and folk music and then jazz," she says. Rock never really appealed to me."

Listening to vocalists like Laine, Peggy Lee, and Carmen McRae, and to players like Chet Baker and Paul Desmond, Eikhard absorbed it all. Studying the music of Antonio Carlos Jobim, she talks about how she loved "the intricate chord formations, especially once the whole melody has been established. Most players love to play his songs and improvise," she says.

She may have loved jazz, but she didn't feel it was an economically viable career direction. "I've been recording for 29 years," she points out, "...and back then I was really into the country thing, but into my teens and twenties, even though that [jazz] was the kind of music I would have preferred to have done, it would have been really tough to get signed by a record label back then, and I didn't have a strong sense of speaking up for myself then, so I just kept my little songs to myself."

The lure of jazz persisted, however, and finally, in October 1996, Eikhard went into a studio with some of Canada's best jazz musicians and recorded The Jazz Sessions, a CD compilation of 13 of her own tunes. Bass player George Koller, percussionist Mark Kelso and Bob Erlendson on piano made up the band. Guest players Mike Murley (sax), Ed Bickert (guitar), Kevin Turcotte (trumpet) and drummer Art Avalos joined in on some tracks.

Deane Cameron, president of EMI Canada, and the influential Bruce Lundvall, president of Blue Note, heard The Jazz Sessions and wanted to release it. After more studio work, most of the instrumentals were deleted and six new tracks with Shirley on vocals replaced them. EMI/Blue Note released the CD in March under the new title Going Home (named after the only instrumental tune remaining on the album).

Going Home has twelve tracks, a mix of tempos and moods from light to dark, all but the title tune enhanced by Eikhard's distinctive voice. Band personnel again included Erlendson, Kelso and Koller.

"I used to see Ed Bickert (guitarist) play with Paul Desmond whenever he came to town, and I knew he would have to be part of the record," Eikhard says. If We Had Never Met is a gem, a classic jazz lament enhanced by that husky, smoky voice, Erlendson's piano and Bickert's quiet guitar. "Mike Murley played sax on one song," says Eikhard, "About Last Night, which was a tune that needed his input to put it over the top."

On Bruce Lundvall's recommendation," Eikhard continues, "I went to see Marcus Printup, a young trumpet player with three recordings on Blue Note Records, and he came up to Toronto to play on it." Printup joined the session for Disciples of Cain where his trumpet is soft and plaintive and Nothin' Like Love.

There are uptempo songs including Crazy From The Heal A Little Fun and Nothin' Like Love.

The Jazz Sessions CD has its own charm including more instrumentals to highlight the talents of the band. There is the bouncy Enigma, Song For Lesley and the very plaintive The Hunger Never Dies. Eikhard sings scat on All That Commotion and regular vocals on Count To Ten. Both Jazz Sessions and Going Home are a respectable jazz outing.

One of a handful of women who write, arrange and produce their own records, Eikhard is also self-managed and finds the demands of contracts and business deals cut into her songwriting time. "One thing that's giving me consolation is knowing that this is a finite thing...by the summer I'll be able to write songs again. You never know what's going to come out." I suggest that she might find herself writing songs about contracts and business deals. Hoots of laughter, then she says that for balance in her life, she forces herself to focus on other things. She composes with guitar and piano, "I use both of them to write on," she explains, "and as we speak I'm learning to play the saxophone. I've got six cats and they're all packing their bags, because when you're learning, you make a lot of squeals, but it's an amazing instrument." There's genuine excitement in Eikhard's tone as she says, "when you learn something brand new, it takes you back to childhood."

It's been more than 20 years since Cleo Laine and John Dankworth described Shirley Eikhard as a "musician after our own musical hearts...we think she has greatness ahead Of her." Eikhard seems sure to stay in the jazz genre now. "It took me this long to get to this place," she says, "no matter what happens I definitely will stay in this genre...this is the music that I love," says Eikhard. "It feels like I've finally gone home."

Shirley Eikhard is scheduled to perform in the Vancouver area in June.

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