Stir Q&A: C.R. Avery’s debut feature film is a bohemian love letter to East Van
The multidisciplinary artist releases Victory on East Hastings, accompanies premiere screening live with C.R. Avery Orchestra
C.R. Avery.
The Rio Theatre presents C.R. Avery’s Victory on East Hastings with live score on January 25 at 7:30 pm at the Rio Theatre. (The January 11 and 18 shows have been cancelled.)
MUSICIAN, POET, AND painter C.R. AVERY has a new title to add to his bio: filmmaker. With close to 20 albums and six rap operas to his name, the performance artist—who’s a draw at music and writers’ festivals, poetry slams, piano bars, and concert venues across North America and Europe—has been described as a “creative avalanche” by spoken-word artist Shane Koyczan and “ a cultural magpie who's impossible to pigeon hole” by Scotland’s Net Rhythm Magazine. Tom Waits had this praise: “blowin’ my mind”.
The harmonica-playing troubadour has just released Victory on East Hastings, his debut feature film.
The synopsis goes like this: “Galway 1983 sets the scene at the premiere of The Long Dark Night, a modern fairy-tale ballet to a packed house of rowdy Irish locals. In the Second Act a riot erupts when authorities try to stop the controversial performance. In the violent clash that follows two theatre ushers are killed and the ballet is banned in all of Europe. Fast forward to East Van present day, and we find a risqué low brow dance troupe known for their political spin on rock n’ roll, not-fit-for-radio hip-hop burlesque routines, with big chorus line numbers woven into dirty-word blues.
“This ragtag of misfits anonymously receive a package with choreography, music, notes, and photographs of The Long Dark Night to their East Side dance studio. They decide to mount this once banned in Galway ballet, as its uprising of the town people’s story parallels with their own. And as they do, the ghost of the two killed theatre ushers appear to help lead them to Victory!”
For its world premiere at the Rio Theatre this month, the C.R. Avery Orchestra performs the score live. Joining Avery are Shannon Scott, keys/vocals; Ross Fairbairn, bass/percussion/vocals; Elyse Jacobson and Molly MacKinnon, violin; Tony Kastelic, viola; and Doug Gorkoff, cello. (Although the show was to run every Tuesday in January, the team at the Rio just made the difficult decision to cancel the January 11 and 18 shows due to the current COVID climate.)
Stir caught up with Avery to hear more about his life amid the pandemic, his love of East Vancouver, and Victory on East Hastings.
Before we get to your new project, how are you? How have you been coping with the pandemic?
In lockdown I rehearsed my trio twice a week, first on my front porch, then eventually inside. I made another film called The Bar Without a Neon Sign. (Picture locked, just a bit of mixing and mastering left to be done. The soundtrack to the film will be released when the film is released in April on Netflix Canada.)
We toured this last past year all over B.C. from Terrace to Tofino, Alberta, Yukon, Ontario, and more shows in the city than I’ve done in 10 years. Playing everything from backyards, to rock & roll clubs and theatres at half capacity. No bombs overhead, no gun or cop in my face; like any other occupation, you just keep working.
Comedians talk most about “working their set” into perfection. By touring their act, it starts to take shape and gets to be a deadly weapon of raw beauty not to be stepped to by half-steppers. You gotta work to get it to the top of the mountain, there’s always excuses to be made. But when the storm clears, who’s standing and ready to deliver?
Sure, money’s been tight, but sugar is still sweet.
I noticed on your Instagram account this snippet from a post: "art is the enemy of boredom & life of no meaning or beauty”. Tell us more.
Ali was a boxer living in half crazy America; Charlie Chaplin a filmmaker in the same crazy country but at another one of its crossroads. Where would we be if the crawled in a hole like little scared sheep and kept quiet and didn’t scream and shout ?
I was listening to Dylan’s new album when I made that post on social media:
“False Prophet”:
“Another day that don't end
Another ship goin' out
Another day of anger,
bitterness, and doubt.
I know how it happened
I saw it begin
I opened my heart to the world
and the world came in.
Hello Mary Lou
Hello Miss Pearl
My fleet-footed guides
from the underworld
No stars in the sky shine brighter than you
You girls mean business, and I do too.
Well I'm the enemy of treason
Enemy of strife
I'm the enemy of the unlived meaningless life
I ain't no false prophet
I just know what I know
I go where only the lonely can go.”
C.R. Avery Orchestra.
We’d love to hear more about your love of East Van. What drew you to this neighbourhood when you first moved here in 1998 from Ontario and what has kept you there?
This would be a novel. Please listen to two songs: “Kind Man of Alexander” and “Either the Wallpaper Goes or I Do”. They’re both on Spotify. Both are in the film: one a ballet, the other a prayer in an alley.
Or if you really want to get to the bottom of this, please skim through my books 38 Bar Blues on Write Bloody publishing or Some Birds Walk for the Hell of It on Anvil Press.
Congratulations on Victory on East Hastings. What’s the “why” behind this film?
Same reason Beyoncé made “Lemonade”, same reason Wu Tang sold ‘the one & only copy’ of their new album like a Jean-Michel Basquiat painting, why TikTok is breaking new artists like Columbia Records once did, why Chaplin went from silent to talkies.
Listen, music is free now, I use to make $500 off the stage in CD sales. If I wanted to remain a working artist I had to get to work and up my game, or I’d soon be obsolete.
Another way to think of it is like this: Boba Fett originally was gonna be a special task force of more bad ass than storm troopers type thing for the Darth Vader Empire, like a small special force army. But after the first suit was made, Lucas realized he couldn’t afford this, so instead he made him a lone bounty hunter. Same way that RUN DMC took a cheap sneaker and changed the fashion of the world forever by simply keeping them pristine clean, pulling out the laces & ‘poppin’ the sneaker’s collar’. I could keep going with examples all day & night; these are the torches to look to when you hit the wall, and the way around it at first is hidden.
Rule one: nothing stays the same. Rule two: make something out of nothing; the limitation of not having the funds to continue will make you be more inventive with what you got.
Plus, I’ve always got lost and disappeared into great movies the same way I got lost and disappeared into a great song….I made a fuckin feature film! That was an adventure and the biggest thing yet I’ve ever took on.
Then I turned the premiere screening of it into a rock n roll operetta, because I just couldn’t bear the thought of being bored to death doing a QnA while touring it around for the rest of 2022. In turning it into a more handsome Hamilton on craic, I feel like the film comes alive even more; it’s not on the shelf, it’s still got a job to do, it’s a member of the wrecking crew that’s fuckin up the Rio Theatre every Tuesday in January.
Oh, and the Rio is a 400-seat theatre, and only half gets sold. It’s safer than a grocery store and my fruit is fresher and has more juice.
For more information, see the Rio Theatre.
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