The Common Ground Band

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A lot of the story of this band is also about the place I lived in at the time.  After I left Powerhouse and laid up my horn, I moved out of the area for a few years to do a bit of technical work for the government.  When that was over and I was ready to move back to the Hamilton area, I found a fabulous place to live just outside of town – a long, tin-covered, horse-barn with an apartment

on one end.  I moved in to an apartment in a barn full of horses.  By the second year, the owners had moved the horses out and converted the barn into an indoor storage area – a quiet barn in the middle of a field, an apple orchard down one side and open fields on the other three sides.  It was the perfect place to make some music and it didn’t take me long to take advantage of it.  Soon after I arrived, a visiting friend looked at the piles of horse dung all over the fields and the horse’s head looking into my front hallway and coined the term:  “Horseshit Hollow” – a name it retains, to this day.

Someone's party -- can't remember who's

The Firepit

Didn't anyone think to bring a guitar ??

In that same first year, I was visiting another friend and noticed her daughter’s unused electric piano under the basement stairs.  I wasn’t playing my horn anymore, had only a small nylon-string guitar to make music, so I asked if I could borrow it for a while.  I hadn’t played a piano since my childhood Conservatory lessons.  I took it home to Horseshit Hollow, started consuming the hours with my new ‘toy’ and within a few months, I’d linked up with some friends who had a small garage-band going and I joined the Common Ground Band as their keyboard player.  I admit, I wasn’t very good on the instrument yet, but I practiced hard, and soon practices were moved to my kitchen and my years on my new instrument began.  The band was mostly a hobby to the other members, as they all had time-consuming full-time jobs and by the time I left the place a number of years later, I had moved on to other things, another home, and other bands.  Still though, those days in the kitchen, in the ‘practice room’ that was built in the old horse stalls a few years later, and outside at the ‘never-ending bonfire’ were days that I’ll never forget.  A lot of music came out of Horseshit Hollow during those years.  A lot of musicians used the place to practice and work.  And the Common Ground Band was the ‘house band’ in the middle of all of it.

Don – June 13/08

The Common Ground Band, 1992

Clockwise, from top:  Norm (guitar, vocals), Woody (bass, vocals), Reno (drums), Terry (guitar, vocals) and yours truly at the bottom left on keyboards and vocals.

Kent, our first drummer -- set-up where most people would put their kitchen table.

Terry, on lead guitar

and Woody, on bass

Once the bands showed up at Horseshit Hollow, the kitchen was no longer a place just to eat.

Here, Terry and Norm (our other singer/guitarist) at band practise

Then came the annexing into the barn and building one of most versatile music practise rooms that I've ever used.

I've known this guy a long time -- he and I are always getting involved together in musical projects.  It was Phil's ideas that built the practise studio at Horseshit Hollow.  Here, he's filling in on bass for Woody at practise.

Norm, on guitar and lead vocals.

He put the 'blues feel' into the band.

Terry, our other guitarist / lead vocalist.  He was our 'rock' guy.

Reno, on drums

And, of course, yours truly ... along for the ride

Woody, our technical guru, vocalist and bass guitarist

And a pleasant ride it was too, those years at Horseshit Hollow -- both for me and many others as well.  A lot of music went through that place.