Pat Travers Takes A Band

Canadian Guitarist Expands Basic Unit For U.S. Surge

by Fred Schruers

Pat Travers and his two band mates slide into the thickly carpeted restaurant looking like a cross between peacocks and gunslingers and it's obvious that their just completed rehearsal has gone well. It's not that Getting It Straight*, (Polydor) Pat's third and latest album, is red hot commercially; what's making these boys strut is their prospects - they have an audience that loves them, in England, Canada and the U.S. and they can see growing into a much bigger one when they add a fourth member and a fourth album to the roster.

Wiry, frizzy-headed drummer Tommy Aldridge, last heard from in Black Oak Arkansas, sits down hard; he's just spent a week auditioning for - and making - a band that's gone through five drummers in two-and-a-half years.

"Don't call us a power trio anymore" says Pat almost immediately, "We've been a four piece band for the past five months, touring England, and we will be again when I replace the rhythm guitarist we just let go. I don't want to play three-piece anymore. In fact, I never wanted to play three-piece."

Why then did Pat's two 1977 albums, Makin' Magic and Getting It Straight*, (like his 1976 debut, Pat Travers) feature just bass, drums, and his own guitar and vocals?

"We simply couldn't find any decent players. It wasn't for want of trying - we must have gone through 30 or 40 guys, and they were all just toilets. That's back in England - the playing standard in London is just zero at the moment.

"We need not just a rhythm guitarist, but somebody who can contribute - including singing. If the guy's got a different style than me, It's that it's much more interesting. I mean, I've got a big ego, but it's not that big. Then, once we get a stronger four man nucleus, I might add a precussionist and a sax player. With a second guitarist, too, I would be free to play some keyboards and synthesizer on stage."

Tommy Aldridge and bass player Peter Cowling, who is better known as Mars, listen with interest. These "boys who make no noise" as Travers calls them, arehearkening to Pat's definition of their developing sound. The spindly, shaggy-haired guitarist goes on: "Mars and I have gotten so used to each other, there's a lot little things we do just blinking eyelids. Our music sounds rocky and simple - we want it to - but to make it more interesting for ourselves, we do things in funny time signatures, and it's hard to play with a drummer who can't keep steady time. If I drop playing rhythm to play a solo, and the background is not there, it just blows my mind - I can't play without the foundation. But with Tommy I'm hearing things in his drumming that really makes sense."

Pat sounds like a very astute teacher of advanced heavy metal. On record, and reportedly on stage, he spews out the kind of scraping, sliding, looping guitar lines that inevitably recall Jimi Hendrix - another North American (Pat's from Ottawa) who had to migrate to London to make a break for himself.

But even though it's the first city to give Pat the support and recognition he needed, Pat now finds London "horrible - I just can't bear it anymore." Some of the reasons emerge in his "Life In London" on Getting It Straight*: "Life in London is bittersweet /Spray can slogans all along the street /Some kind of revolution in the town /Razorblades and safety pins you look like a clown…"

And that's not Pat's last word on the punk phenomenon: "the only real way I'm aware of all this punk shit is by the music papers and , ah, by the lack of sales for our current album. But all our English gigs have been sold out; people haven't changed as much as the press would have you believe. The journalist have really gone over the top. They're so trendy; six months after they promote something they're knocking it."

Pat, then, is planning a move back to the states - probably to Florida. Tour dates he played in Texas and Florida late last year were heartening: "We were really surprised, man. We were the bottom of a three band bill (Mahogany Rush, and the since disbanded Widowmaker preceded them) and we would come on to find everybody in their seats. Not out smoking their last couple of joints, but in their seats at 7:30, shouting out song titles to us. It just completely floored us - one of those things that make it all worthwhile. You have to work a lot harder to pry the headliners off their pedestals, but you got to try. That's the healthiest attitude to take."

Pat, who played his first gig at 14, got a job as guitarist and sometime singer behind Ronnie Hawkins a few years later. One of rock's grand old men, Ronnie is probably most famous for fronting The Band during their growing years. But, says Pat, "Ronnie stagnated. That's one of the reasons I had to leave. I just outgrew him, but I don't regret playing with him - it was great experience for me."

Travers disclaims any strong influence, but does admire Jeff Beck and Al DiMeola. "I did have a Beck album sitting around my place, and I listened to it and started to notice a few things showing up in my playing - just things I realized I could do, having heard them."

Pat's difficulties forming his ideal band - "I loose three or four months off my life every time I have to fire a drummer" - have let to an unusual approach to building studio tracks: "Once the backing track is recorded, I'm never really sure what I'm gonna do. I just go in and have 'em put on the cans, then play along with it to get some ideas, lay those down, then play along with them. Then I get into studio effects. That's how a full sound comes about - I just search and peck, you know.

"That does make for problems live - like, I don't think we could do a proper representation of "Stevie" (a highly engineered song of advice to his 21-year-old brother) onstage. Maybe I'm discounting the merits of the song itself, but I think what makes that number is different tape speeds and reverse echo - things you can't do live."

Pat already has some songs for his next disk worked out, on demos where he plays drums himself: "I can hardly wait to record those songs, man; I hear all the embellishments in my head, but the demos really sound spare. Maybe one of these days they'll have some electrodes to stick on your head, and they'll just start the tapes running, and it'll all come out." Pat lets out a little snicker, then looks across at his veteran sidekick Mars. "We're ready to play. This is a band, and we just want to get out there and do it, really good and honest."

* The original article repeatedly misnames Pat's 1977 Puttin It Straight album

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