I wish I had the time to sit down and tell you each individually about this man, but I can't. This e-mail will have to do.
But please, do yourself a favour. Go to C.R.'s website (http://www.cravery.com)*, move the sheets around on the piano and take a look at his 'albums' sheet. Take a listen to his solo performance of Tom Waits' song Big In Japan-- just C.R. his voice and his harp-- the performance that brought him to Waits' attention and eventually saw Waits asking C.R. to sit in and beatbox with his band on a British tour.
That Tom Waits is a huge fan of C.R. Avery comes as no surprise-- Avery embodies so many of the things that shaped Waits himself. Waits is profoundly influenced by the Beats, and C.R. Avery does something that could honestly, and proudly, be called Canadian Beat Poetry. There are a lot of people out there giving spoken word a bad name and C.R. Avery is not one of them.
Before we leave Tom Waits behind I want to say that Waits is probably my favourite 'popular' songwriter living today. What I do for a living started in his shadow and I look to him always for inspiration, for my original reasons. I have also been carrying a dream, for most of my life, that someday I would meet him, that the world would turn our paths enough for them to cross. Last October I met C.R. Avery and honestly, that dream was put to rest. Now that I've met C.R.-- and know not only does he exist but that he is Canadian-- I don't care anymore if I do meet Tom Waits. Which is saying a lot.
Do yourself another favour, or do yourself this one first: go to C.R.'s myspace page (http://www.myspace.com/cravery) and listen to Birdcage and tell me, please, if it gets any better.
The Undesirables are opening for C.R. at The Rivoli on Thursday, July 23rd, and let me ask you this: how long has it been since you've been truly blown away? Since you've been thrilled through your entire skeleton by a performance? Since you made a discovery which you try to tell your friends about, but it's no use, they had to be there, and luckily, you WERE. Has it been a while?
Forget everything I said up top, just come out to The Rivoli, at 334 Queen St. West, just west of Spadina, on Thursday, July 23rd, and catch C.R. Avery and the incredible band he's brought with him from Vancouver. He's that guy, I can promise you.
The other CR,
Corin
* I had trouble opening C.R.'s website this time. If you do too, just go to his MySpace and take a listen and a look.