I was lying on the floor of a friend’s apartment one early Saturday morning many years ago. I had crashed there the night before, settling comfortably into my piece of carpet. I can recall the texture of sunlight as it was just beginning to trickle through the vertical blinds when my buddy dropped the needle on David Bowie’s 1972 album, The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars. 

Coming from nothing, a strange heartbeat-like rhythm faded in, and time stood still. It’s been twenty years since that moment, and I’ve probably listened to the album a thousand times. I’ve internalized every note, lyric and turn of that album and with it I have grown to be the musician I am. It was only once I started talking with intent to other musicians about their influences that I realized what I experienced on that dirty carpet of an inner-city apartment. It was the feeling of falling in love.   

Welcome Why We Create, an ongoing collaboration and partnership with Arts Commons that endeavours to explore the creative processes of artists working in Alberta. My name is Kenna Burima, musician, songwriter, producer, educator and writer. I am also a lover and cheerleader of artists.

"I believe that each of us, at least within our art, is the sum of our influences." – Reed Shimozawa, guitarist, musician, songwriter, producer  

Clocking one’s musical influences would seem easy enough, but in truth, it takes a fair bit of self-awareness and humility to look at your artistic output and realize you are not as unique and singular an entity as you thought. But as legendary Calgary guitarist, musician, songwriter, and producer Reed Shimozawa says, we artists are sums of sometimes disparate parts. And many of those parts are from our childhood. 

“When I was a kid, I'd drive around in the back of my parents’ car and listen to AM radio,” recalls Reed. “I really believe it was formative for me because, on AM radio in the 70s, you could hear anything. You could hear Blue Öyster Cult, Charlie Pride, Elton John, Alice Cooper, you name it. It just had to be a hit, a popular song. That's it. I can remember hearing these songs for the first time they became part of my awareness of what music was. And I think it was actually a wonderful thing…to grow up having access to music like that. It forced me to be open to almost anything.”

Talking with Reed reminded me of my own childhood moments of musical awareness. The moment when I went “Ah this, this is music.” For me, it wasn’t 70’s AM radio in the back of a car. It was in bed falling asleep to my Dad’s worn-out vinyl of Miles Davis’s Kind of Blue, or my Mom’s beautifully pristine copy of Glenn Gould’s 1981 The Goldberg Variations. When I return to those moments or watch the face of another artist like Reed light up when he mentions Destroyer by KISS, we’re not talking theory. We are talking about love. 

This is what seems to be at the heart of Classic Albums Live (CAL). Founded in 2003 by musician Craig Martin, CAL brings what I personally would call “the canon” to life; note for note, cut for cut, using the best musicians. Orchestras around the world have been doing this for centuries and it is with the same exacting meticulousness that hundreds of gifted musicians across Canada are given the opportunity to do so too. Through CAL programming, seminal albums from the likes of The Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, The Beatles, Tom Petty, and Pink Floyd are lovingly re-created onstage for fans whose memories and indeed, their identities are embedded within the music. Yes, CAL sells nostalgia, but to actually do so takes a certain level of dedication, skill and most importantly, love. 

Speaking with founder Craig Martin is a treat. A guy so clear on intention, focused in approach and expansive in his love for the music, that an actual empire has been built around this concept. And the best part? It’s about not only about solidifying the musical canon but celebrating the musicians themselves and positioning them onstage to fully embrace their skills and musicianship.  

“These musicians are the ones who hunkered down in their bedrooms, dedicating themselves, learning licks for years, playing in subpar bands,” muses Craig. “We give them a place where they can really shine, and it's a rewarding experience to do these recitals of masterworks. Just earlier this week I was talking with Alex Sarian, (President & CEO of Arts Commons) and he had a very interesting comment. He said that CAL provides the safety of a good show. And I thought that's a cool way to put things. When we say note for note, we mean it. Audiences are going to get that. There's a mutual trust there and certainly an understanding of the difference between what CAL is and what a tribute show offers.”

Everyone I spoke to involved with CAL has this beautiful appreciation that there is a place for everything and everyone when it comes to music. It takes all kinds, so to speak. From the coffee shop cover bands to open mics, we want to experience the music we love live. Why should this desire be restricted to the music of Bach, Beethoven and Brahms? Gimme some Bon Jovi. As a lil’ farm kid, I’d board the school bus each morning and pop the cassette of Bon Jovi’s Slippery When Wet into my yellow Sony Sports Walkman, and pray that the bullies would leave me alone for the 45-minute ride. Full disclosure, they didn’t, but “Livin’ on a Prayer” became a hopeful incantation sung under my breath curled up in my seat. I survived all sorts of childhood trauma with the music of Bon Jovi, Def Leppard, and Twisted Sister in my ears, even as I was programming Bach's Prelude and Fugues and Beethoven's Sonatas into my fingers. At some point, we find what we love, or it finds us. 

“I started taking guitar lessons around six or seven,” recalls Reed. “I was serious. I was super clean cut, you know, A- student, but there were these kids that had long hair and earrings and smoked cigarettes, and it all felt a bit dangerous, but I was intrigued. ‘We heard you could play guitar’ they said, and I was in. The music that I played with them, I grew to love; hard rock, metal, guitar music, you know? It was the early 80s and honestly that was the coolest music. It was a bit rebellious and certainly something your parents wouldn't like.”

What we love influences us. Mention The Cars to rock vocalist, writer, and producer Nick Walsh (who also happens to be the CAL GM) and his eyes light up. There’s nothing better than listening to a musician talk about the music they love, and by the end of our conversation, I was a Cars convert.  

Nick’s musical experience is extensive, to say the least; from early nineties Juno Award-winning Canadian hard-rock band Slik Toxik, bands Famous Underground, and Moxy, running studios and working in film and television, Nick knows there’s a place for everything. When we chatted, he was starting to think about his upcoming CAL gig at Massey Hall in June singing none other than Bon Jovi. My heart skipped a beat. 

“I guess with long hair people think I'm strictly a hard rock or a metalhead or something,” laughs Nick. “But I listen and appreciate all music. I’ve been known to throw on some smooth jazz when I’m cooking, you know? Music has its place and it's for your soul. That’s part of why we love coming to Calgary. The room [Jack Singer Concert Hall] is just absolutely beautiful to perform in. The crew are top-notch as well. We do go to a lot of theatres around North America, and sometimes –– I’ll be honest –– it's the luck of the draw. You'll get a crew that really doesn't know either the music or their equipment, and you struggle a little bit onstage. But coming to Calgary, to the Jack Singer, we always know that everybody we’re working with is top-notch, and it's great. That transfer of energy naturally happens because you're not worrying, and you can focus on giving the best performance you can. These are fans we’re playing to, and they know the music note for note as much as we do.”

If there’s anyone in Calgary up for the challenge of note for note, it's award-winning and universally celebrated bassist Lisa Jacobs. There isn’t a stage she doesn’t light up with her musical prowess and brilliant stage presence. Lisa admits that though she doesn’t have a dream CAL album, she knows every single note of Lauryn Hill’s 1998 masterpiece The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill (same, girl). She’s just not all that interested in recreating it live. That said, she does dig the process required to get onstage for CAL concerts. Doing several CAL runs over the years and ever the student, Lisa admits it’s still a bit of a thing when it comes to sitting down and learning the lines of Led Zeppelin's John Paul Jones, or Trevor Bolder of the Spiders from Mars. 

“The process of note for note has been a radical challenge because it’s not the way I grew up playing music. That said, I feel really lucky because I've learned a million different ways to understand music, and I tap into them all at different times. I was jamming a couple weeks after back-to-back runs of Bowie and Zep and I had this moment where I was doing things I wouldn’t have even thought of a month before the shows. It’s cool to experience the influence of deep diving into someone else's creativity, and then directly seeing the effect of it. How I am putting things out in the world has changed. I’ve internalized their style and their understanding, and they were showing up in my own playing, my own creativity in real-time. It's just this wonderful way to access music.”

We musicians seem to in truth be a pretty simple bunch. It’s not easy being a gigging musician but, really, we just want to play what we love, do so with people who are a good hang, work with top-notch tech and get paid appropriately for our time, energy and talent. At the end of the night, Nick says it best: 

“You know what’s really cool about being on stage with CAL? It’s that at the end of the night, I get to thank the audience for coming and celebrating with us some of the greatest music ever written and recorded in the last century.” 

Catch Classic Albums Live doing The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars on Thurs April 3, 2025 at 7:30 pm at the Jack Singer Concert Hall at Arts Commons.

Catch Kenna Burima at the National Music Centre on Sat March 29 at 11am for a solo piano concert of the same album and a special workshop @ 1:00pm with NMC Electronic Engineer Jason Tawkin talking all things Ziggy.