Page 96 - Estwood Davidson: Travels with Beattie and Winston

ISSUE : Issue 54

Published by Ronald Caplan on 1990/6/1

There'd be crowds of 6 and 7 hundred; we'd go home with 15 or 20 bucks. And those guys were filling their pockets with mon? ey. See, that was another stupid thing that we did. Nothing was ever run right, in the business sense. Never. But you start to realize this thing more as you get older. 'Cause many a time there's people told me, "You fellows could have been millionaires, with the name that you had, and the following." We never cap? italized on it. It seems that we were playing for fun. It was no damn fun, I'll tell you that! A lot of hard work! U-DO CRAFT SUPPLIES LOCAL CRAFTS PAPER TOLE WICKER AND WOOD Products and Supplies Crafts and Supplies AND MUCH MUCH MORE! Drop in and. enjoy our Carge selection for tfour personal lise or Jor gijts. 1818 KING'S ROAD, SYDNEY B1P6G5 564-9877 (Did Beattie make musical decisions, or were they all Winston's?) Oh, no, no. Beattie'd make a lot, too. Or sometimes we'd be putting a group of tunes together. Beattie would say it didn't really sound as good as probably another one that we had played. So we'd frig it around so, you know--get it right. One would pretty well listen to the other, you know. And say I'd be making chords up. And if she found that I was probably making a * little mistake in it, she'd tell me. That's one thing old Beattie wouldn't have tolerated, boy, is bad chords! The trouble with dance playing, you become a journejnnan player. I think, you know, you slip over things that you shouldn't. And probably you become a Isad player, maybe. You know. You don't put, really, into the tunes, what you should. You'd be so damned tired, you couldn't, probably. 'Cause up and down the neck, holy jumping. 'Cause I worked the neck right from top to bottom. STORA Stora Forest Industries Umited CARING FOR TOMORROW'S RESOURCES, TODAY! STORA FOREST INDUSTRIES LIMITED has planted more than 83 million seedlings in the seven eastern , counties of Nova Scotia since beginning operations in Cape Breton in 1962. The Company has carried out forest improvement worl( with site preparation, planting, weeding and spacing of young stands of trees on more than 20,000 hectares. In Canada, we are recognized as a leader in forest management. A member of the STORA GROUP, Sweden, STORA FOREST INDUSTRIES LIIVIITED is proud to be part of the oldest company in the world. They were an easy group, too--you couldn't travel with a better group, as far as getting along. We never had prob? lems, you know, like, one being snapping at the other--nothing like that. That's something that never happened. Even when we'd be drinking. We drank together, played together, and always seemed to get along to? gether. I don't know. Beattie never drank or smoked in her--well, she smoked, yes. No matter what you'd suggest, Beat- tie'd go along with it. She wasn't the type to hem and haw or argue. It was very seldom--she'd never get what you'd call cross. So, therefore, the road was pretty smooth in that respect. So I never had really any trouble, like, rows or anything like that. '8 YEARS OF PROGRESS IN NOVA SCOTIA If we did, we'd have never stuck together for 26 years. No. I think we're the longest-playing group that ever played. (Well, there's certainly no group made a bigger impact on Cape Breton music, that I'm aware of.) No, I think that every place you go, you'll find that every? body '11 tell you the same thing. We kind of--I don't know--we turned it into something really enjoyable

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