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Searson
The population in this idyllic,
whistle-stop farming community that you Six generations of iconic Searsons have dominated the landscape here, the latest being three, 20-something sisters, who form a dynamic eclectic Celtic music band with their father Mike and close friend Jamie Gardner of Pembroke. About a kilometre west of the fabled intersection here smacked-dab between Hyndford and Highway 41 is the Searson family home accompanied by the original log house which was built in 1847 and which is now preserved as a tin-roofed shed. It is there on Searson Road leading north from Renfrew County Road 22 that Erin, Heather and Colleen Searson had music and especially the Canadian Celtic brand engrained in their mindset at an early age, thanks in small part to their grandfather Eddie, who purchased a fiddle in Renfrew for $2 at age 15 and was still playing it up until 1982 when he died at age 97.
It’s with that background that the band
called Searson has emerged as one “We’ve been opening up new fields to be seen and to be heard,’’ said Mike Searson, who plays vocals and guitar. “This is what we do for a living.’’ Searson has played in little taverns like the one in Douglas, Ont., near Hydnford, strutted its stuff at Hurley’s on Crescent St. in Montreal, the larger- han-life Barrymore’s in Ottawa and at untold numbers of festivals, Highland Games, concert halls and bars across the continent. They’ve been in venues such as Butte, Mont., Savannah, Ga., and Detroit making close to 150 appearances a year. And on May 24, Searson played on Wall St. in Manhattan at The Full Shilling on Pearl St. in the heart of New York’s financial district where they unveiled a release of their second CD Follow. And on June 15 and 16, the Claddagh Irish Pub in Indianapolis will play host to the band. Like the freight or passenger trains that would roar through this community in CN’s heyday, Searson, complete with step-dancing by the girls, roars. One newspaper reporter deep in the heart of Georgia called Searson “a cross between Shania Twain and the Cranberries.’’ “Our music is a mix, Celtic rock and more and more country pop,’’ Gardner explained. “We’re on the edge with our style. It’s kick-ass Celtic,’’ said Heather, who plays in the background on bass, vocals and bodhran. "Kick-ass is a term that was used for us two years ago and it has stuck. We’re enthusiastic and it comes across. We love it so much. The music is so up-beat that the crowd gets into it.’’ The roar starts with the first set with Colleen, who seems to be blazing away at the speed of sound with that fiddle and bow. “Colleen is very aggressive,’’ Erin said. “She’s an extrovert at taking control of things. She’s right into it. She loves to push that fiddle.’’ Colleen is literally almost out of breath and red-faced after a few numbers because of her exuberance that seems to take the place of drums which are absent from the group’s collection of instruments. “We have no drums behind us so I like jumping around,’’ Colleen said. “It’s true, you do get out of breath. After you have performed a few numbers, you need to catch your breath. It’s physical and mental fitness. It’s a total body workout.’’ Earlier this year at her grandfather Harry’s request, Colleen jazzed up the Barry’s Bay funeral of Jack Conway, a family friend and fiddling-music lover, by strumming a heart-felt rendition of Glengarry is Home to Me on the fiddle. Up there at the front of the stage with Colleen is Gardner on fiddle and mandolin, while Erin works from the side on piano, lead vocals and mandolin and Mike is on lead vocals and guitar. So you’re wondering what role the girls’ mother and Mike’s wife Valerie plays? Well, she loves to dabble in oil paintings at home, she’s the group’s most fanatical booster, she designed the logo you see on www.searson.org and she encouraged her daughters to get started in the business by driving them all over Renfrew County to music and step-dancing lessons and competitions when they were young. “Mother has been non-stop in her support for us,’’ Erin said. The CD Follow was produced by Jordan Zadorozny’s French Kiss Studio in Pembroke, which has been behind production numbers for such stars as Melissa Auf der Maur. The CD is strictly original music composed and recorded byband members. The CD has five instrumentals and seven songs, mostly relationship-based. On tour, Searson will mix in some traditional songs by other artists but themajority of their songs are their own. “The greatest satisfaction we get is playing our own music,’’ Mike said. “Originally, we did a fair amount of traditional stuff but for a longtime, we have been trying to experiment with our own music,’’ Erin said. “To play our own music is very rewarding.’’ It is that “kick-ass’’ sound Searson boasts that perhaps is a negative because radio stations in Ottawa and most other places don’t play their songs and as a result, they are a nugget waiting to be unleashed. “It’s not a mainstream sound we have,’’ Gardner reasoned. “It’s the arrangement of instruments we have.’’ The notion of pursuing a record label is something the group grapples with from time to time, discussing the pros and cons of such an idea. Heavyweight Canadian Celtic artists such as Cape Breton-based sensation Natalie MacMaster and the Glengarry Bhoys, of Cornwall, Ont., have record-label backing, while Leahy of Lakefield, Ont., another family group which has rendered a great influence on Searson, doesn’t. “We have no backing from a record company so we’ve been going after independent radio stations like those at university or college that playthe music of independent bands,’’ Gardner said. “It’s kind of hard to turn down a record label but we’d like to stay as independent as we can. It can be either pro or go home. We’re making a substantial living but we’re unknown. Most radio stations are not going to take an unknown band with no advertising or backing.’’ Said Erin: “A record label is a very difficult thing to get used to. A record label makes me scared. I think what we need is promotion and distribution. We don’t need a record label. We just have to get our name out there.’’ And that’s what Searson has been doing the last year while on tour, mostly in the U.S., trying to make a name for itself. “It’s difficult to get the recognition in Canada,’’ Gardner said. “We don’t tour the East or the West in Canada because of the travel expenses and the small population. In the U.S., the east coast cities are closer together and those people respond to us.’’ A year ago, the band made the agonizing decision to go on tour full-time and abandoning what they were doing. Mike quit working for his father Harry’s long-standing family logging business and his daughters and Gardner halted their university studies. Erin took English as a second language at the University of Ottawa for four years and during the same time period, juggled sign-language courses at Algonquin College. How she pulled off that double combo is anyone’s guess. he had been aiming at a career as an interpreter for the deaf but that’s on hold now while the band enters its second season on tour after a month’s respite in April when the sisters, Valerie and grandmother Mary went to Las Vegas for a four-day fling, termed by Erin “a girls thing.’’ Heather had been attending Queen’s in Kingston, Colleen was at Trent in Peterborough, while Gardner completed her studies at Brock in St. Catharines. “We made a good decision to put school on hold,’’ said Colleen, the youngest of the girls at 21. “To go full-time on tour was a big decision, something we talked about for two years,’’ Gardner said. “It was too difficult to combine touring and school so we decided to tour full-time. It was either do this full-time or stop the touring, graduate from school and get a job.’’ The idea of jumping into a van hauling a trailer isn’t the most exciting life but the band plans to do this full-time for two or more years at least. All five band members pitch in and arrange for tour bookings. “We love the writing and composing, definitely not the touring,’’ said Gardner, who competed against the Searson sisters in fiddling and step-dancing competitions when they were younger. “There’s not very much down time on the road. There’s a lot of moving. The trick is to stay organized. Being on the road, there are good times and bad times.’’ Said Colleen: “You’re on the road all the time. Your body is constantly hanging to a different schedule. On tour, it’s certainly opened up our eyes with all the work involved. What an effort it is physically and mentally.’’ The physical toll sometimes comes not just on stage but when they have to shove their stuck van and trailer out of the mud, a dilemna that faced them in Savannah earlier this spring following non-stop rain for hours. “Us girls tried to push the trailer out and we’re pretty strong but we still couldn’t manage,’’ Erin wrote in a diary posted on the band’s website. “A kind gentleman towed us out.’’ As befitting the life of a touring band, Searson left Georgia on a Monday at 7 a.m. and with the girls and Mike taking turns driving, the arrival time back in Hyndford was 6:30 the following morning. Such is life. “We primarily work in the U.S. because the money is better and there are more populated areas to play in,’’ Erin re-iterated. “Plus the U.S. crowds tend to buy more product which really helps with touring costs. We would love to play in Canada more, but it doesn't always work financially.’’ So until this life is not appealing anymore, the show goes on. “I want to take this as far as I can. Music has always been in the back of my head,’’ Heather said. “I love the music business and I’d love to play music the rest of my life,’’ Erin said. Danny Gallagher is a freelance writer based in Toronto.
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