The Vancouver jazz scene has something that no other Canadian jazz community has: Cory Weeds. Some would say that the jazz web in Vancouver begins at the club Weeds owns and operates: Cory Weed's Cellar Jazz Club, which takes up shop in a basement not far from downtown Vancouver. It's the epicentre of the scene.
For Vancouver to have such a highly respected jazz club it takes guts, nerve, vision and maybe a little craziness. Weeds is not "just" a jazz club owner; he's a jazz club owner/musician (highly talented saxophonist)/record label owner/impresario/community supporter and diplomat. He's also married, with two small kids. How he does it all, nobody knows, but Weeds has built a complex web that keeps growing far beyond Vancouver, to the U.S. and around the world.
With his record label, Cellar Live Records, Weeds is able to support Canadian musicians with innovative live and studio recordings that have gone from "bottom of the pile" to "top of the pile" over the past 12 years for jazz radio programs, including my own show, Tonic, on CBC Radio 2. Weeds is the guy that makes the deals, says what the albums will look like, manufactures, distributes and promotes the albums. The musicians get an album out of the deal that they can sell off the stage when they perform. It's a win-win. Artists such as P.J. Perry, the Nightcrawlers, Amanda Tosoff, Joey DeFrancesco and Lewis Nash all grace the Cellar Live record label. The web just gets bigger.
"What I get from the label is immeasurable," Weeds once told me in an interview, meaning such things as calls to perform with some of the world's elite jazz artists. He, in turn, books them to play at the Cellar. The web expands still further.
There's a lot of hard work involved, of course. Vancouver's jazz scene has a wide selection of outstanding musicians to support, such as Tilden Webb, Karin Plato, Jodi Proznik, Miles Black, Bill Coon, Mike Allen and Rene Worst. And that's just a small sample of the incredible jazz talent the city has to offer, without even getting into the its avant-garde jazz scene. Weeds balances the needs of the jazz community and the audience, and to do that he has to juggle egos, realities and hopes.
In my opinion, the Vancouver jazz scene is fortunate to have a man like Cory Weeds. And he's a guy who's unafraid of what the future may bring. As he told me, "Some day a young, gutsy 26-year-old is gonna come along and say 'it's my turn,' and when that happens I'll step aside."
Any takers? Something tells me there aren't too many candidates who could fill Weeds' shoes.
Related
The Jazz Evangelist: Calgary, a whole new jazz town
The Jazz Evangelist: coffee, tea and Diana Krall in scanties