features Over the Edge ° February 01 C.R. AVERY LAYS DOWN THE BEAT AT Cornered at = C oldsnap py John Hall e moment of 2011? ity in Canada? What was your favourit What is your faxvourite C COLDSNAP 2012 Over the Edge has a word with ‘Rock and Roll’ Matador JESSICA N SHAPIRO COPY EDITOR s part of the Prince George winter music festival, As 2012, East Vancouver-based artist C.R. Avery put on a show at the Ramada Hotel that warmed a northern audience. A self-proclaimed outlaw hip-hop harmonica player, beatbox poet, and punk piano player among other titles, Avery enjoyed his time in the northern capital with some beers at Nancy O’s, and said the Coldsnap volunteers “are treating me like gold.” His first tweet upon arriving to the city was, “I can smoke in my room. Boom”, and when asked to give a poetic line about the north said thoughtfully, “Slow down and French kiss. Icy Cool’s in her mouth.” In Prince George Avery performed a solo show, but others may have seen him in the past in the spoken word trio Tons of Fun University, or as the lead singer/harp play- er in his rock & roll band The Special Interest Group. His multi-talented and raw performances are inspired by other powerful legends like Leonard Cohen and as Avery said, “the grand papa of it all”, Bob Dylan. His Coldsnap line-up featured some freshly penned songs, including a Valentine’s Day tune “written for an upcoming show where admitted he’II be nervously follow- ing an act by a feathery Burlesque dancer.” He covered a Bruce Springstein song, ‘57 Channels and Nothin’ On’, inspired by a slip of the remote in his hotel room, where he lamented having lost 45 minutes of his life to bad TV. Finally, he orchestrated a sing-along where the audience belted out lines from one of his more popular songs, ‘My life is based on a true story’. “There are some songs that I like to play often at shows — they are like friends in tough INSET: The Keytar, who suffered from a brief cocaine addiction in the 80s, gets invited up by C.R. Avery to help perform his last song of the night MAIN: C.R.Avery performing his self-described ‘hobo erotic’ style of slam poetry rooms,” said Avery about those familiar tunes fans remem- ber from other solo shows. Avery raved about used bookstores in one of his beat- box poems, and when asked what his favourite novel was he answered, “Anything by Bukowski, but used book- stores usually can’t hold on to many copies before they get scooped up, and the kids steal them from the libraries, which says a lot about his writing.” He also suggested that anyone craving more great slam poetry should listen to art- ists Tara Hardy, Chris Gilpin, Derrick Brown, and Persian spoken word master Anis Mojgani. Avery’s career as a musician started at 20, and in 15 years on the job he has produced more than 15 albums, many of which can be purchased on the iTunes store. Av- ery’s music and stage presence evokes a lot of emotion in his fans, and when asked, “What does it feel like to make people shiver with your music?” he responded, “The ques- tion is, ‘what does it feel like when people don’t shiver?’ His goal is to get shivers 2 and the answer is, ‘it sucks up his own spine, and then he can be confident that the audience is feeling his energy too. As he said in one of his songs, if he’s not sweating by the end of the show, the audience isn’t getting what they deserve. Avery is an earnest musician who looks in the eyes of his fans, asks them their names, and accepts praise warm- heartedly. At the end of our interview he left us with a quote from his idol, Bob Dylan: “Well, I try my best to be just like I am, but everybody wants you to be just like them.” A CR Avery Musician “When I got to go on tour for the first time with my 18 year old daughter and a 10-piece band. It brought two worlds together for me - my world as a parent, and my world as a performer. Arts Wells e011 also crossed my mind because it was a pretty unique atmosphere - lremember the side door of the Sunset Theatre was Open and I could hear the crickets, and my audience was sitting all around me seeming abnormally captivated.” “A very underrated city that I love is Saskatoon. It has tons of stuff like Broadway, an incredible spoken word scene, deadly rock and roll, and underground.”