DB: You have just finished another successful tour. How did it feel this time around?
RB: Quite surreal in the sense that when you start as a band, you have expectations and dreams and you work toward those happening. It's surreal, and it's a dream that we never thought would happen. It's been a very strange thing but very rewarding...it's without words. Every night we all felt grateful to be there, stunned at the amount of people that are there, and stunned at their reactions. They go crazy; they know every lyric from eight years of age to eighty. It's unbelievable.
DB: You've just released your double Brave Belt CD. What made you decide to re-release this album now?
RB: The fact that the internet is so active; people can now speak to me indirectly. We've come to the realization that people care about it (Brave Belt). We had many e-mail requests for this old product and it was just a matter of us approaching Warner Brothers/Reprise and making a deal for us to release it.
DB: Can you give us an idea of what your mentality was like in that period (during the Brave Belt years), of what you wanted to accomplish musically?
RB: I just wanted to do something musical. I had just left a band that was number one at the time on all of the charts, both albums and singles. I knew that I couldn't compete with The Guess Who; I knew I couldn't find a voice that was as recognizable, as versatile, and of such quality as Burton Cummings'. I knew that I would always be a second-rate Guess Who because I didn't have all of the elements and machinery working on my own, which took (The Guess Who) about eight or nine years to get going. I decided that I was going to do something totally different so that nobody could say that this (new project) wasn't as good as The Guess Who. They may not like it, but I didn't want to be compared.
My love, growing up on the Prairies, was country music. Neil Young was with Buffalo Springfield at the time. It was really cool, the fact that he was doing country and folk. When you get successful, you can do pretty much whatever you want.
When you are successful with a band like BTO or The Guess Who, you can get pegged into a certain rut or hole. You are still lucky - you have a certain type of people who keep buying your music - but then you can get typecast and have to keep making that same music, and you can change only slightly. It's risky to bounce around and change your type of music. Generally, you are held to a sound and that becomes your sound. That gets branded as your sound, and all the copycats start with it because the labels are looking for that sound. This explains your token Madonnas and token Backstreet Boys. With (Brave Belt) I didn't want that. I wanted to stay away from everything. I met Chad Allen (who had been in The Guess Who) in a hall at the CBC and he asked me to help him produce a record, so I said yes. We began writing together and after a short period he said that it didn't sound like his solo project any more...it sounded like a band. I agreed and we brought in some more guys. Ultimately, Chad didn't like the way it was going so I got Fred Turner in and we got heavier. Hearing those two albums (Brave Belt I / II ), you can hear the progression from where I started until the very last tip before we became BTO. Really "Brave Belt III" was re-titled "BTO I".
DB: "Brave Belt": did you decide upon that name alone or was it a group decision?
RB: We had all tried coming up with names, and looked to other bands for inspiration. Take 'Buffalo Springfield', whose name means nothing. That was the name of two tractors that (the band) saw outside of a construction site and they put these two names together. I knew that a name didn't have to describe the music and yet the name becomes the music; the music goes with it. I chose the name 'Brave Belt' from a conversation that I had. I was talking to this guy and he told me "if you want an Indian-sounding name why don't you use 'Brave Belt', meaning that when a man becomes brave he carries scalps on his belt". It's kind of gross, I suppose, but when you've been really scalped by the press and critics after leaving The Guess Who, why wouldn't you turn the name around? Like The Guess Who's Wheatfield Soul. When we first went to Toronto all the bands were imitating James Brown. Our music, being totally different, was branded by the press as "Wheatfield Soul". We turned things around this point and we ended up naming our first album Wheatfield Soul, leaving those guys in the dust. That album sold a million copies and had "These Eyes" on it. I wanted to take the name Brave Belt and turn it around and make it a proud name.
DB: Listening to the two CDs, the music is just as strong as anything The Guess Who or BTO put out...
RB: I listened to it last night for the first time since we started this project. I went out to my car and put it in and went to an empty parking lot and just listened and read the little pamphlet that came with it. After two or three songs I burst into tears. I thought "what a struggle for me to come from this band that had been number one and to find this music that I didn't know whether or not would be successful, and I really didn't know what it would become". When you play all that as a body of work there are four great songs, four mediocre songs and four bad songs. I didn't know it at the time; I was just doing my best. It was an innocent time of soul-searching. I got those guys (the other band members) right out of school. They were complete non-musicians that I trained. Nobody would play with me when I left The Guess Who. I was completely black listed. I couldn't get a decent musician to play with me, except Chad Allen, who had also been in The Guess Who and left. He and I bonded together, and I might not have gotten started without him even though he left sometime after that first album. It was his getting together with me that got me started on that road. Those albums are so important to me because, for the first time, I was making my own music, paying for it, finding strengths in it, and going through the process of finding the right music for the record. It led to me becoming a stronger producer for BTO and to ultimately help make them one of the strongest little bar and radio bands.
DB: I must admit that I had never heard the music of Brave Belt until recently, but when I listened to it I had the feeling that I had always known it. Do you ever feel disappointed that Brave Belt wasn't more successful at the time?
RB: Yes, but in fact it was. BTO was Brave Belt. With The Guess Who, it took us fifty-something singles before we had hits. I don't think that bands that make it on their first album are as strong as bands that don't: there is nowhere to go but down. The mentality in those days was to sign a band and hopefully the band would "get it together"; hopefully build on their strengths. It was just an evolutionary process that took us to almost every label on earth before Warner Music signed us.
DB: Is there a particular song from this release that grabs you as more powerful than the others.
RB: There are two, because of the great singers they feature: Chad Allen and C.F. Turner. The best Chad Allen song is "Dunrobin's Gone". I played that about five times yesterday. It's described as a 'Canadiana' song. It's a wonderful radio song. It has acoustic guitar and lots of harmony and you can sing with it right away. The Turner song is "Never Coming Home". That song really sounds like any BTO album. That really shows the two sides of the band. I, as a vocalist, like to fill in the blanks. My songs are like cheap Neil Young copies. Those two songs condense the two albums. They also show what the audiences wanted. I was desperate to keep the band together and find something that the public would like.
DB: What would you say were your biggest influences in that period?
RB: The first album's influences were James Taylor and Coco, and then they switched to Credence Clearwater Revival and Rolling Stones on the second. If you listen to Brave Belt III (BTO "I"), you hear both of the earlier albums.
DB: What about inspiration? After years of making music, is there one thing that stands out in your mind as a driving force?
RB: I learned at an early age that I was given something special when I was born, and that was the gift of music. When I was five I had violin lessons. I would go on the bus by myself; I couldn't even read with my violin under my arm, but it was a learning experience and I ultimately persevered. No matter what happened with BTO, The Guess Who, or anything that wasn't successful, it was always a learning experience. You take all the things that frighten you, and when you can get them to work for you all of sudden people are calling you a success.
DB: We've saved our most serious question for the last: on the cover of "Brave Belt I / II" you're wearing some pretty funky digs. I have to ask...do you still have the jacket?
RB: Actually, my son Tal has it now and he may wear it on the cover of his next album cover. I was in Winnipeg at the time, and that was typical for what we would wear there. That coat is made out of six coyotes. Every once in a while my kids would go through my closet and say what weird clothes I have; that jacket, bell-bottoms, and the like. Last closet-cleaning my son Tal saw it and said 'this coat is really cool'. I asked him if he would like it, since I had long since grown out of it. So, yes...it's still around (laughs).
By Dave Brosha, CanEHdian.com (November, 2001)
