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When longhaired, bearded folk musician Arthur McGregor opened the doors of his Bronson Avenue music store on Oct. 4, 1976, he had only a vague notion of why he was doing it.
Unlike most people who open retail stores, making money wasn’t his motivation and that, at least, would save him from a major disappointment.
“I really didn’t see it as a business,” recalls McGregor. “The only thing I planned was a place where you could learn from active musicians rather than books. It grew organically from there.”
McGregor will receive the annual “Unsung Hero” award at the Canadian Folk Music Awards on Sunday, acknowledging the contribution of his Ottawa Folklore Centre and the musical community it created before collapsing into bankruptcy in July.
In its near 40 years doing musical business on Bronson and Bank streets, the Folklore Centre has employed more than 300 people, not including hundreds of teachers who between them have taught tens of thousands of students in everything from guitar to didgeridoo, from piano to Uilleann pipes.
Arthur Mcgregor, who founded the Ottawa Folklore Centre in 1976, will receive the “Unsung Hero” award at the Canadian Folk Music Awards.
That organic growth helped spawn the Ottawa Folk Festival, numerous community choirs, the Bytowne Ukele Group (BUG) and scores of one-off musical gatherings, the latest in September when McGregor and a bunch of greying folkies gathered at a Parliament Hill protest to give a full throated rendition of “Harperman.”
Many talented and successful musicians have emerged from Folklore Centre teachings — Alanis Morissette, Tony D and Lynn Miles among them — but McGregor says his greatest satisfaction comes from hearing from or about the three and four generations of amateurs who passed through both the rickety Bronson building and, since 1998, the more spacious building in Old Ottawa South.
Like the woman at a business dinner anxious to reminisce about her developmentally disabled son who took harmonica lessons from the late, great harp player Larry (The Bird) Mootham.
“She told me her son hadn’t been able read until he was eight but during his year with Larry his reading gradually improved and he started doing really well in school.
“Music builds right brain and changes the way you think,” adds McGregor. “Children who learn music do better in math and sciences. Music is all positive.”
And as anecdotal evidence of how the Ottawa Folklore Centre community has spread, McGregor notes with some pride that he heard from a former customer recently returned from a trip to Taipei in Taiwan.
“He was in Taipei wearing an old Folklore Centre T-shirt and this guy comes up to him and says, ‘Hey, I used to take lessons there.’
“It’s cool that Alanis went through the Folklore Centre and achieved what she did,” he says, “but for me, those other stories trump it.”
Lynn Miles, who taught voice to Morissette, says the centre was a “town square” for local musicians.
“I taught there, worked in the store. had my guitar repaired there and bought my gear there,” she says. “It was incredibly important to many musicians. We were able to teach a couple of days a week and make enough money to be musicians on the weekend. It allowed us to have the lifestyle you need when you’re a musician and allowed us to take the time off to tour. Arthur was very understanding about that.”
McGregor, seen here in 1992: ‘Music changes the way you think. Music is all positive.’
Before opening the Folklore Centre, McGregor started Roosters Coffee House at Carleton University and managed it for three years before opening the now defunct Nozzle club.
Things started well at Bronson Ave where 300 students were soon trudging up and down the narrow, wooden stairs to take lessons in the flimsy constructs that were music rooms.
“It was pretty decrepit,” chuckles McGregor. “We once had the Rankin Family teaching step dancing upstairs and I had to tell them to stop because I thought the floor was going to collapse.”
McGregor’s late first wife, Terry Penner, helped keep the centre economically viable in its formative years with an outside job but finally joined the business, mostly to manage the growing music school and keep the books.
“She was the left brain and I was the right brain of the organization,” he says.
Penner was diagnosed with breast cancer in 1992 and after years of therapy was in remission when the couple decided, in 1998, to elevate the business from — as McGregor puts it — a mom and pop business.
“When Terry died in 2000 I spent a long time trying to figure out how to do what she’d done,” he says. “I even hired business consultants to explain it to me but it didn’t take.”
The Folklore Centre was grossing $1 million in annual revenue during its later years but was never able to make large profits.
“We made money every now and then and in the middle years I was making a surviving salary,” says McGregor.
Last year, with the centre hovering on the verge of financial collapse, the music community rallied and raised $25,000 to keep the store and music school afloat.
McGregor says he was deeply touched by the support.
“It told me I had been on the right track,” he says, “but not necessarily that I was still on the right track. That was a message I missed.”
McGregor, now touring as a sideman with Celtic Rathskallions, his wife Wendy Moore’s kids’ show, admits to mixed feelings over the Folklore Centre’s bankruptcy — relief to have ridded himself of 24-7 financial stress and guilt and distress that teachers, students, suppliers and others all lost money when the bank’s whip finally came down.
“There is this huge emptiness in a chunk of my life,” he says.
If he had scripted the end, he would have closed the doors of his debt-free Ottawa Folklore Centre or sold it as a going concern.
“The Folklore Centre’s time as a business concept has passed,” he says. “The idea of passing things on by word of mouth is dying. You can buy a Mac computer and get 15 guitar lessons for free or you can lie in bed and order a guitar and have it delivered in two days.
“It might not be a very good guitar but there seems to be a difficulty these days in perceiving the value of personal service. And music demands personal service.”
Among the talented musicians who emerged from the Folklore Centre are Alanis Morissette, Tony D and Lynn Miles. McGregor’s greatest satisfaction, however, is hearing about the generations of amateurs who passed through the centre.
McGregor consoles himself with the positives — the massive community impact and the feel and love of music his Folklore Centre brought to the generations who passed through its doors.
“If I had been a better, less questionable businessman the Folklore Centre would have been a very different place,” he reasons.
“I would have liked to have finished on a positive note, but as many people have told me, 38 years isn’t a failure. The end is only part of the story.”
ccobb@ottawacitizen.com
twitter.com/chrisicobb
查看原文...
Unlike most people who open retail stores, making money wasn’t his motivation and that, at least, would save him from a major disappointment.
“I really didn’t see it as a business,” recalls McGregor. “The only thing I planned was a place where you could learn from active musicians rather than books. It grew organically from there.”
McGregor will receive the annual “Unsung Hero” award at the Canadian Folk Music Awards on Sunday, acknowledging the contribution of his Ottawa Folklore Centre and the musical community it created before collapsing into bankruptcy in July.
In its near 40 years doing musical business on Bronson and Bank streets, the Folklore Centre has employed more than 300 people, not including hundreds of teachers who between them have taught tens of thousands of students in everything from guitar to didgeridoo, from piano to Uilleann pipes.
Arthur Mcgregor, who founded the Ottawa Folklore Centre in 1976, will receive the “Unsung Hero” award at the Canadian Folk Music Awards.
That organic growth helped spawn the Ottawa Folk Festival, numerous community choirs, the Bytowne Ukele Group (BUG) and scores of one-off musical gatherings, the latest in September when McGregor and a bunch of greying folkies gathered at a Parliament Hill protest to give a full throated rendition of “Harperman.”
Many talented and successful musicians have emerged from Folklore Centre teachings — Alanis Morissette, Tony D and Lynn Miles among them — but McGregor says his greatest satisfaction comes from hearing from or about the three and four generations of amateurs who passed through both the rickety Bronson building and, since 1998, the more spacious building in Old Ottawa South.
Like the woman at a business dinner anxious to reminisce about her developmentally disabled son who took harmonica lessons from the late, great harp player Larry (The Bird) Mootham.
“She told me her son hadn’t been able read until he was eight but during his year with Larry his reading gradually improved and he started doing really well in school.
“Music builds right brain and changes the way you think,” adds McGregor. “Children who learn music do better in math and sciences. Music is all positive.”
And as anecdotal evidence of how the Ottawa Folklore Centre community has spread, McGregor notes with some pride that he heard from a former customer recently returned from a trip to Taipei in Taiwan.
“He was in Taipei wearing an old Folklore Centre T-shirt and this guy comes up to him and says, ‘Hey, I used to take lessons there.’
“It’s cool that Alanis went through the Folklore Centre and achieved what she did,” he says, “but for me, those other stories trump it.”
Lynn Miles, who taught voice to Morissette, says the centre was a “town square” for local musicians.
“I taught there, worked in the store. had my guitar repaired there and bought my gear there,” she says. “It was incredibly important to many musicians. We were able to teach a couple of days a week and make enough money to be musicians on the weekend. It allowed us to have the lifestyle you need when you’re a musician and allowed us to take the time off to tour. Arthur was very understanding about that.”
McGregor, seen here in 1992: ‘Music changes the way you think. Music is all positive.’
Before opening the Folklore Centre, McGregor started Roosters Coffee House at Carleton University and managed it for three years before opening the now defunct Nozzle club.
Things started well at Bronson Ave where 300 students were soon trudging up and down the narrow, wooden stairs to take lessons in the flimsy constructs that were music rooms.
“It was pretty decrepit,” chuckles McGregor. “We once had the Rankin Family teaching step dancing upstairs and I had to tell them to stop because I thought the floor was going to collapse.”
McGregor’s late first wife, Terry Penner, helped keep the centre economically viable in its formative years with an outside job but finally joined the business, mostly to manage the growing music school and keep the books.
“She was the left brain and I was the right brain of the organization,” he says.
Penner was diagnosed with breast cancer in 1992 and after years of therapy was in remission when the couple decided, in 1998, to elevate the business from — as McGregor puts it — a mom and pop business.
“When Terry died in 2000 I spent a long time trying to figure out how to do what she’d done,” he says. “I even hired business consultants to explain it to me but it didn’t take.”
The Folklore Centre was grossing $1 million in annual revenue during its later years but was never able to make large profits.
“We made money every now and then and in the middle years I was making a surviving salary,” says McGregor.
Last year, with the centre hovering on the verge of financial collapse, the music community rallied and raised $25,000 to keep the store and music school afloat.
McGregor says he was deeply touched by the support.
“It told me I had been on the right track,” he says, “but not necessarily that I was still on the right track. That was a message I missed.”
McGregor, now touring as a sideman with Celtic Rathskallions, his wife Wendy Moore’s kids’ show, admits to mixed feelings over the Folklore Centre’s bankruptcy — relief to have ridded himself of 24-7 financial stress and guilt and distress that teachers, students, suppliers and others all lost money when the bank’s whip finally came down.
“There is this huge emptiness in a chunk of my life,” he says.
If he had scripted the end, he would have closed the doors of his debt-free Ottawa Folklore Centre or sold it as a going concern.
“The Folklore Centre’s time as a business concept has passed,” he says. “The idea of passing things on by word of mouth is dying. You can buy a Mac computer and get 15 guitar lessons for free or you can lie in bed and order a guitar and have it delivered in two days.
“It might not be a very good guitar but there seems to be a difficulty these days in perceiving the value of personal service. And music demands personal service.”
Among the talented musicians who emerged from the Folklore Centre are Alanis Morissette, Tony D and Lynn Miles. McGregor’s greatest satisfaction, however, is hearing about the generations of amateurs who passed through the centre.
McGregor consoles himself with the positives — the massive community impact and the feel and love of music his Folklore Centre brought to the generations who passed through its doors.
“If I had been a better, less questionable businessman the Folklore Centre would have been a very different place,” he reasons.
“I would have liked to have finished on a positive note, but as many people have told me, 38 years isn’t a failure. The end is only part of the story.”
ccobb@ottawacitizen.com
twitter.com/chrisicobb
查看原文...
