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April 15, 2009
Gino Vannelli isn't slowing down
By DARRYL STERDAN -- Sun Media
Gino Vannelli has gotta move.
Make that still gotta move -- decades after the Montreal singer first topped the charts, the 56-year-old Vannelli remains as creatively driven as ever.
"I'm someone who keeps looking for new things," explains Vannelli from his home near Portland, Ore. "Music is a very important language, and it's a language that can become stale very quickly. One can get bored after being in it for a while. So taking the mixer and shaking it up is always a good thing."
Vannelli has been shaking things up since the early '70s, when he and his famous head of curls burst onto the pop radar with hits such as People Gotta Move, I Just Wanna Stop, Black Cars, Hurts to Be in Love and Living Inside Myself.
But when his career reached a crossroads in the '90s, Vannelli faced a tough decision: His money or his artistic life.
"About 10 or 15 years ago, I was given the opportunity to become a revue artist, a shadow of myself," he says. "I was offered quite a bit of money to do it, but I couldn't. I knew in a year or two I would be less than a shadow. I knew that by walking away from it, the rewards would be greater. And they are greater."
Vannelli has spent the past several years and albums broadening his musical horizons into the realms of contemporary jazz, blues, Latin and classical. His latest European-only release, A Good Thing, is accompanied by a book of poetry. It was recorded in The Netherlands, where he now spends half the year.
"I keep a place in Holland now because I perform so much in Europe that it just became impractical to fly back and forth," he says. "But within six months of going there, the poetry started flowing out of me. After 40 or 50 poems, I thought it was time to put some to music. There was no grand design, other than turning over another new leaf."
While he tries to find a North American label willing to put out A Good Thing without alterations, he's also rehearsing his "West Coast band" for a string of North American dates -- including his first Canadian concerts in years.
"It's gonna feel like the very first time," he says, adding his show combines highlights from his past with his current musical preferences. "I will play the songs people know. There's no doubt about that. I think it's important for an artist to recognize his past. But if you just try to reflect it perfectly and be who you were 20 or 30 years ago, it's boring."
Past and present will also meet in his next CD, which will feature newly arranged, re-recorded versions of his classic hits, he says. "We're bettering the best-of -- taking all the songs people know and totally remaking them."
Bottom line: Vannelli just doesn't wanna stop.
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Patrick (aka pghmusiclover)
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