Because of the recording equipment available, there will be recordings made of each student as part of the curriculum. The recordings will serve to document progress made by the students during the week. The students are free to take the recordings home to continue to learn from and study.  There will be two separate classes offered: one concerns the art of song, a comprehensive demonstration of techniques of songwriting, both musically and lyrically. The art of song will also entail harmony, chord substitution, rhythmic regard, thematic content, and some musicology, in terms of understanding the birth and evolution of song writing as we know it. In the same class, there will also be a good measure of focus on the composition of lyrics: what role, words, in regards to texture, rhyme, rhythm, scansion, story, theme, and singability, play in the crafting of contemporary song.The second class will be devoted to the art of voice: an extensive course in singing, complete with vocal strength building, phrasing, and practical methods and necessities regarding vocal expression. Note, these are two separate master classes. The Art of Song will be scheduled for mornings, between 10am and 1pm. The Art of Voice will be scheduled for afternoons, between 2:30 and 5:30pm. A student is free to apply for both classes if he or she chooses.In order that the class be comprised of serious and dedicated applicants, Gino will personally choose students for this 2012 course, after listening to a demo or any recording, (Mp3 or Mp4) submitted by the perspective student. Once Gino has selected the students, he will personally contact them via skype or telephone.The price of the master class is as follows:$1,250 for 5 classes given over the course of a workweek (each class 3 hours—15 hours total) Recordings are included.Gino’s management is available to help guide and inform students in regards to hotel and transportation for their stay in Oregon. Applications are being taken as of this week.

Contact: coapro@verizon.net for more details

There you were, full of hope and promise, destined to be Dave Clark, when in a twinkling, there goes the charming baby face, vanished into the cosmos, doomed to the black and white pages of the family photo album. Oh the heartbreak, as every once-doting aunt is suddenly loath to pinch your cheek, and inclined to keep a healthy distance from this newly spawned creature with a unibrow and a voice that keeps dithering between soprano and baritone midstream.

If not given to long stretches behind locked doors, questioning the bathroom mirror as to whether to part the do left or right, or in the middle, or not at all, it is a mysterious phase when one is prone to be idly dreaming away much of the day, rapt in self-tortuous, lyrical trifles and tidbits, jotting down profound inconsequentialities, trying to ape one’s favorite Lake poet; at the same time, having his   disproportionately grown, pimply nose, too often buried deep in girly magazines lying in shadowy corners of unfrequented household wings. Ah yes, the salad days of the tyrannical little head, lord and master of a boy’s universe, mad butcher of rational thought, otherwise known as puberty.  I had a job at Eaton’s, a department store in Montreal. On Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays I bused my way downtown to St Catherine Street and pitched socks and undies to the passing world. I was paid a whopping fourteen dollars for my fourteen hours of services every weekend. No windfall, but still a welcome sum for a man-child who just hit his teens. On one particular Saturday I remember trying to answer a couple of mind-numbing questions about whether a certain pair of Jockey’s was the appropriate size, while some short and round elderly lady, who mulishly insisted upon opening up every package in the department, spread a pair of white shorts across her pelvis, claiming she and her husband were blessed with the exact same measurements.

Suddenly, while the sunburst-coiffed, wobbly-ankled old woman in stilettos kept prattling on, soon veering off into protracted tangents about her Harry (medical nitty-gritties unfit for a boy’s ear), I found myself helplessly swept away by a certain sound in the distance—a bass run in particular.         F-C-C-D-F-F-D-C-D / F-C-C-D-F-F-D-C-D. . . best I could tell.  Of course the brass and guitar were shadowing the riff but the woofy sound system in the high ceilings made them secondary to the bass.  Besides, I could have bet, then and there, the run was the bassist’s own brainchild that any clever producer would have seized upon and handed over to the rest of the band.

Then came the harmonica followed by this piercing, high-pitched voice, singing, “I was born in Lil’ Rock / Had a childhood sweetheart / We were always hand in hand. . .I was made to love her/ Built my world around her. . .”“Young man”, cried the woman, posing in the three-way mirror, pivoting left and right at forty-five degree angles, spanning the shorts across her rather generous mid-section. (Now and then she would quit the pivoting, zoom in close, pucker her orange lips, bat a plastic lash, give herself a once over, moan a couple of words in some foreign language, then zoom out and merrily resume the pivoting.) With her thumbs locked in, stretching the elastic waste band to its limit, she continued, “Young man! Don’t you think these are a bit on the snug side?  My Harry might do better with a size forty-two, don’t you think? She paused and looked at me in disbelief. “Stop staring at the air, why don’t you, and fetch me a forty-two!” she snapped, clicking her tongue.  I couldn’t rightly make out the gratuitous commentaries beneath her breath that ensued.But, no earthquake, burning building, or falling sky, nothing in the world, be it earthly or divine, let alone a tetchy old girl posing in a mirror with a pair of Jockey shorts eagle-spread hip to hip, could have torn me away from that lovely rare air I was staring off into. Carol Kaye’s* licks seemed to be the perfect counterpoint and balance to Stevie’s voice, weaving this way and that around the drums, passing effortlessly through roots, seconds, thirds, fifths and dominants. It was all so harmonic, jazzy, rhythmic and sensual—something I hadn’t heard before, and a technique of playing that would be etched in my memory from that moment on.  Bass had suddenly become a voice and not just footing buried below the surface.“Kids today, I swear,” grumbled the old woman, flinging the shorts at my wide, unblinking eyes and bopping head, as she turned and walked away.

As soon as Tricia entered the kitchen, still rubbing the sleep from her eyes, I sprung the plan on her. What a sport my woman is—only a pause, a half yawn, a raised brow followed by a scarcely audible “m’kay”.Sandy River seemed a little faster, a little colder, and a much deeper shade of jade green than when we had last kayaked upon it a year before. Because of a couple of violent winter storms, a good many old growth trees were downed here and there, lying half exposed in the river like dinosaur fossils.

First order of the day was to stay away from those sharp claw-like roots and jagged boughs—sure to puncture the Eagle if we weren’t careful to keep clear of. By July the river usually slows somewhat, owing to the snowmelt most often coming in April and May. But because of the persistent cool weather, Mount Hood is still heavily capped in white fluff; thus the colder and quicker torrents than usual.Every turn or attempt to avoid the uprooted trees and new rocks that had rolled down due to erosion had to be planned at least 50 feet in advance. We were floating along pretty fast. Suddenly we could see three huge fallen rocks and a couple of downed fir trees lying in our path. Tricia and I tried to determine which rocks to navigate between, but hell, it was too late. No matter what muscle we both put into it, we couldn’t seem to steer away from that giant slice in the river that almost looked like some man-eating sea creature swimming straight for us.     First came the collision with the stone, then came the ninety degree swerve, then, the hiss and roar of rushing current and, as if it was happening in stop action, with only future reflection and analysis to fill in the missing frames, we flipped over and found ourselves both flailing in forty-five degree water.

I have been kayaking for years, and in some places that are considered high risk: like the St Lawrence Seaway, the Puget Sound, even the Pacific itself. I never gave much thought to wiping out, especially in the Sandy, a deceptively quaint, bucolic looking river, at least if you’re vantage point is Dabney Park where the river hasn’t much to go before it merges with the Columbia. One hears of the many reported accidents and deaths over the years, but it has been easy to attribute them all to either foolish risk taking, some teen with one too many in the tank, or some hormone-vexed adolescent who jumped off the Troutdale Bridge trying to demonstrate the size and composition of his stones to his peers. Suddenly I understood the river’s hidden treachery firsthand. Forty-five degree water is a big blow to the body and brain. It is hard to think clearly as you’re reeling and gasping for air due to shock.  It is simply almost impossible to catch your breath for the first minute or so, as your chest contracts and heart shrivels. Tricia and I were caught in the rushing current, tossing and swirling this way and that. Tricia had the early wherewithal to grab hold of the side ropes attached to the kayak, whereas I found myself trapped in the icy torrents, doing everything I could to keep from being pulled under by a lower cross current. Life preserver and all, it was as if someone kept pulling the rug from under my feet taking me under. For the life of me I couldn’t make it to the overturned boat.  But as bad a fix as I was in, it was of great relief to me to see Tricia holding on and with her head above water—one thing less to worry about while my own frantic survival calculations continued.  Suddenly I felt a large rock beneath my feet and tried to spring myself forward and get into a headfirst swimming position. It worked.

There we were, white-faced and blue-lipped, bobbing in eight feet of charging water, barely hanging on to the slippery inflatable, wondering what our next move would be.How that woman can maintain her composure through such a sticky wicket, what’s more, find it within herself to produce a little rational thought from the murky depths, I just don’t know. I say this because whilst I was still gnawing at the air, trying to fill my lungs with H2O, Tricia was now giving free rein to strange and unbefitting mutterings, so it seemed to me at the time—something about, wallets, keys, cameras and other important personal belongings that the river had just swallowed.  “W-w-what?” I said through my chattering teeth, amazed at how she could take such precise inventory over lost articles while we were still over our heads in snowmelt. Somehow we had drifted towards a pile of logs that forced the kayak to a standstill—at least one pickle solved. Suddenly we had leverage and could slowly pull our way to more shallow waters. “Camera!” Tricia shouted out of the blue. I managed to snag it before it floated down river. (I suppose I’ll never look at a Ziploc the same way ever again.)“C-camera, in tact,” I said, holding the plastic-sealed camera up like the fresh catch of the day, smiling and shivering, with the occasional twitch shutting and rebooting my brain now and again.“There! There! My wallet,” Tricia cried out,  chasing a couple of birds out of their tree. “S-seems to be floating towards the shore, “ I assured her calmly, now sensing my manhood return to me, at least in certain areas above the neck.  Just as the heavy, newly cash-replenished, coin-filled, plastic-laden wallet began its trajectory to Davy Jones’s locker, a man by the shore scrambled into the water with a long and pointed branch, and with slightly mad eyes stabbed the thing as if it was a shifty Chinook that had been escaping the point of his spear for hours.“Got it!” he yelled. Pickle two now solved.“You guys best get out of this water,” he suggested, as he tossed Tricia’s life sealed in a freeze bag at us. He reached out and handed me his long branch.“Here, this might help, while you try to locate your paddles,” he added—ah yes, pickle number three.The staff proved useful only in keeping us from running into sharp roots and other large stones, but it was the palms of our hands that eventually lead us to our lost paddles.Tricia and I stopped at a small desolate beach to try and get warm and dry ourselves off in the sun.  I think it was mostly just to get the nerves settled and spy on each other’s feelings. “You okay?” I asked, plopping my wet bottom on the sand.  “You?” Tricia said, plopping hers.

“Okay,” I thought to myself, dude must be pretty slick at Halo or Warcraft III, or whatever the latest is.Flash forward to a bright spot in the top right-hand corner of my eyes and a bright red unidentified flying object hurling through space headed my way. “The Chinese flag?” I mused.

But not a single star out of the five could be seen. “The Red Planet about to hit me on the head?” End times, maybe, but unlikely. “The ghost of Rocket Richard? But, alas, no number nine.  Finally, twirling through the air flooded with gobos and follow spots, now arcing downward, then floating to the stage, in what seemed like slo-mo, almost looking like a large and rare Amazonian butterfly, wings outspread at my feet, was a pair of bright, shiny, red-laced nylon panties. I sang the words to whatever tune I was singing at the moment, but in my head I heard Pacino saying, “Just when I thought I was out, they pulled me back in.”

The Rose had fallen prey to flooding a day or two prior to our scheduled concert. A generator, the length of mid-size semi, stood outside the stage door, roaring and rumbling away full throttle. The dressing rooms and green room were lit only by candlelight—the generator being primarily relegated to the stage lights and sound. It was cold—that northeastern clammy kind of cold that bores through your clothes and finds the marrow of your bones and the folds of your chords in no time. The hallways sounded terribly lonely and echoey because of the lack of heat. A man had to carefully weigh the cold, hard facts when choosing between relief and the sting on his cheeks, as he reflected over an ice-cold toilet seat. The Rose Theater had the air of a toppled Big Top—everybody scrambling with a blank, slightly stupefied look on one half of their faces, the other half silently screaming, “the show must go on.” And on the show went. I have played the GTA (Greater Toronto Area) a number of times in the past, but despite the hurdles, to my memory, this was my favorite night of all. It was like playing to a thousand smiling friends whom I hadn’t seen in over 4 years.  Nothing like a warm welcome that makes a singer to sing better.Rein, Damian, Jay, Ben, Patrick, Dave and Gordan,  were ‘on’. Nick saved the day a few times over at the monitors and brother Ross’s ears grew just a little bigger for this one at the front house. After an ungodly wake up call, hours of red tape and travel from Thunder Bay, missing bags, and cold thrones in Brampton, at the end of the day, a looming letdown turned into as close a perfect night as it gets on stage.

Besides an offering to the Red Cross, and a few other foundations, words and thoughts are mainly what Tricia, Anton and I have to offer to so many Japanese folks hit by the recent quake and tsunami.  We are thinking of you.

As I peeled back the bumpy layers beneath Newman’s dressing, I suddenly realized I really ought to stop eating, hungry as I was. No telling what I would find if I burrowed my plastic fork and mined any deeper. The pale, rusty edges soon became shades of vermillion until by the middle of the stack there was hardly a green leaf left. I could have mistaken the contents of my plastic holder for some steamed rhubarb, except for the other diverse shades of brown and yellow here and there. “Why not excavate a little deeper,” I thought, “This is beginning to feel like science class.” I dug till at last I found proof of Stephen Hawking’s statement. There it was in all its mysterious viscous glory: lifeless black pulp floating in what looked like a small oil slick or octopus ink. “F…in’ gross,” I whispered to myself. Like the proverbial worm-infested apple, it wasn’t so much discovering the black ooze at the bottom of my dish that troubled me, but wondering what part of the ooze had worked its way up to the top leaves that I chowed down without looking.

The next morning I was having breakfast with brother Joe, both of us ravished. I was murdering my vegetable omelet, my nose entirely too close to my plate, as I lifted my eyes and noticed two rather stout, expressionless gentleman dressed in dark trench coats, marching our way.  Somehow I had a strange feeling these boys weren’t autograph hunting.  “Mr. Vannelli?” one man asked. The other followed with, “Mr.. . .Gino Vannelli?”        “Mmm—mmm?” I answered cautiously, with my mouth full.       “Is this your brother, Joseph Vannelli?“         I waited for Joe to speak for himself but suddenly found myself to be his reticent advocate. “Yes”, I managed to enunciate, swallowing a rather big sliver of my omelet at the same time.“You’re both in the country illegally, sir. We’ll have to ask you both to come with us.”

“Where might that be?” I posed.“The airport—or county jail—your preference, boys”, mumbled the other narrow-lipped man, like a ventriloquist. Just when I couldn’t figure what had gone wrong, I remembered the minor snag two days earlier at the Montreal airport, our first point of departure.  Management, as we were told, had pursued all the necessary visas and docs needed for us two Canadians to go play in Pittsburg and Philadelphia that weekend. But it being a Saturday morning, and management nowhere within reach, Joe and I couldn’t be absolutely sure all the legalities were in order at Customs and Immigration.  In light of discretion being the better part of valor, we elected to tip-toe our way through, keep as tight-lipped as possible, hoping the officer would have our papers in hand; and if not the case, then try to act normal and skate through as visitors, trusting the visas would somehow catch up to us en route. Well, of course, it being the pre cell phone, instant message or twitter age, we never got a word back on the matter—that is, until the moment the two men in black showed up at the coffee shop in Philly. So, there we were, now 3pm, on a plane back to Canada, actually being deported, feeling a little like extradited wise guys, wondering how in the hell we would ever make it to Philadelphia in time for the Spectrum show that night.“So,” croaked the Customs officer at the Montreal airport,” It’s the infamous Vannelli brothers!” Joe and I immediately put on our best lamb-led-to-the-slaughter faces, trying to squirm our way back into good standing with the Man.“Here!” barked the officer, ”here are your dam docs—we had ‘em here all along!”“Well then, what’s the problem, officer; why won’t you let us through?” I pleaded.“You lied!” he snapped.“You said you were visiting, when you weren’t!” Having once argued over a small technicality with a cop regarding a ‘rolling stop’, knowing very well that mounting even the most watertight defense would only fuel the fire, I said, “Sir,” in the calmest voice I could fake, “ Our sincerest apologies, we never meant to deceive you or anyone…we were just trying to make the concerts and not leave investors, promoters, ten musicians, fifteen crewmen, not to mention over twenty thousand fans in a lurch, ” I said, hoping I hadn’t left any vital piece of information out that could prop our case. While the officer stroked his forehead, shook his head and groaned, debating thumbs up or down, I tried to keep a lid on acute visions of plucking the eyebrows clean off of my manager for having left Joe and I in such a fix.  “Get out o’ here!” he blurted out, “but I’m not guaranteeing what they’re gonna do to you in Philly—you’re on your own now.”It was now 7pm. Let alone having missed sound check (the eight deadly sin), the grim likelihood of not making the concert was finally beginning to dawn on me. There were no more commercial flights out that Sunday—least none that would get us to Philly. The only option left was to charter one. It was about 8:30 when the turbo prop we had been lucky enough to snag was about a hundred miles from the Philadelphia airport. “Three-fifty, she’s going, three-fifty!” we’ll be there in a few, guys”, shouted the pilot, while we bucked and shuddered trying to keep our nose above the storm clouds. It was almost 9pm when we hit the tarmac. Whacked, low on blood sugar, and three thousand bucks broker, my last plea to the hefty, black-mustached Customs-Immigration officer in Philly was, “ Sir, I see by your badge that you’re probably Italian.“What does bein’ Italian have anyting to do wit your problem?” he answered, with his big head cocked to one side.“Do you know that there are over ten thousand people waiting to see my brother and I at the Spectrum.”“Your point being. . .”“Well, Lou. . . if I may. . . the last Italian to have accomplished that was Frank Sinatra. Don’t you have any sense of how important this is, not only to Joe and me personally, but to a whole bunch of our proud paesans?” After a moment or two of careful reflection, the silence brought to an overboil, Officer Lou waved his hand and said, “Ahh, get the f. . .out o’ here you damned dagos. . .oh and by-de-way, have a good one!” he added, as Joe and I ran, tripping over our feet down the empty halls, juggling our bags, while scrambling for a taxi stand. After a record fast shave and shower, hair wet, strips of TP plastered here and there on my neck and face, wiggling into my stage clothes in the back seat, we finally arrived at the Spectrum. I dashed onto the steps leading to the stage. It was 9:20.        “What the hell, Gino! You’ve almost given me a heart attack! Where in the blazes have you and Joe been? Don’t you know it’s a 9 o’clock show!?” hollered the road manager over the rumble of stomping feet in the crowd. “Ready,” I said.<

On came the new over-sized, black double-knit sock cap, the ray bans, the New Balances, shorts and a few layers of sweaters, and off I went for my usual morning road run. (Best way to beat a bad night’s doze is to meet the sun (or, in this case, gray sky) head on—get things moving a little.) “Nice show, Gino,” heard someone say. “I must have a “G” on my forehead or back,” I thought to myself, as I headed up to Chateau Frontenac.

It was a three-hour ride to Montreal, with two stopovers: one for drinking a cup of Joe, the other for getting rid of it. Got to Montreal and had just enough time to lay my bags down, grab a quick shower and head to sound check.  Standing at the center of that sixty-foot wide stage, a little unsure of where the lip lay, blinded by what seemed like divine rays of near-death white light, brought on by the four giant spotlights coming out of pitch blackness, while running the opening of Crazy Life and Stay with Me, I found it quite easy to get a little wobbly at the knees and say to myself, “Oh dear, I don’t have a thing to wear!”Place des Arts is one of those halls that can cut the legs off of any performer who doesn’t one up it’s imposing grandness with one simple, healing mantra, ”Whatever?” Greatest nerve tonic in the world, that word is.  Sound check ended at 5:30. I was back in my hotel room by 6, just enough to collect my stage stuff. Of course, I couldn’t decide what to wear, so I brought way too many duds. (The stage always brings out the finicky, ambivalent woman in me) When in doubt I leave such life-and-death decisions to the dictates of the mirrors in my dressing room. Black leather it was going to be.“Yo. . .yo. . .me. . .me. . .ah. . .ah. . .ooh. . .ooh. . .“then, “Five minutes to show time,” said the voice over the back stage intercom system. And suddenly, from a floating piece of driftwood I found myself bopping before three thousand people, as if a gunman with two Colt 45’s in each hand, firing shots at my feet, kept saying, “Dance!”  My thanks to the boys in the band: Reinhardt Melz, Damian Erskine, Jay Koder, Greg Goelbel, Patrick Lamb, Nick Moon, Jocelyn Couture, David Grott, and brother Ross, for making the night in  Montreal a night to remember.

Been scratching my head trying to figure out a new opening to the show and where to put, let alone what other songs to add, to the new show.  So, I took a trip down memory lane, stopped at Nightwalker and found what I think could be the tune to jump-start the night—now, to explain the whole sequence to the lighting directors.  Tomorrow, rehearsals with the whole band begin, but for now, it’s off to a morning hike, work on the stage legs, maybe sing a couple of choruses of       Summers of my Life to the yellowing trees.

Jeff Lucas was a neighbor. He attended the same high school my son did. He was, and is still loved and admired by all in our small-town community. He died in Afghanistan doing his duty to country as a Navy Seal. The way his mother’s eyes still well up at the mere mention of his name tells it all.

Thank you for any small contribution you can make to the
Jeff Lucas Memorial Stadium Fund.

Go to www.jefflucasmemorial.com to make donations