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Last year Deception underwent a major line-up change. Our bass player Steve Fultz, left us, as did our drummer, Gary Huntbatch. Both players had been with Deception since the band began in the mid 90s. Only Art and I were left, and Art undertook the task of finding new players to fill the empty spots.

The drumming position was filled by Art’s longtime friend Randy, who Art used to play with in the 70s. The bass slot was filled by Charles, who had in the past subbed for Steve in an emergency. Then earlier in the the month, Art had the opportunity to audition a very experienced keyboard player. If all goes according to plan, Deception will be a 5 piece blues band that includes the sounds of a Hammond organ.

For our Mother’s Day jam, my friend Ray Myers came out from town, and he let another sax player know about it as well. So between Ray, Freddy, and myself, Deception had one hell of a horn section!

Here are some shots from the event. It was a lot of fun, and a really good chance for us to work the kinks out before playing our first live show with our new line-up.

Photos by: M. Margison & H. Kahlke

At the centre of the 4 city blocks that the Berrybeat Festival takes place in, sits the entertainment stage. For 2 days you’ll see and hear acts as varied as: country, opera, funk, gospel, Flamenco guitar, pop, and of course blues.

We very much appreciate & want to thank the Abbotsford Downtown Business Association for inviting us back again this year. It’s always a pleasure to play for the residents, and the visitors to the city in which we live. Judging by the crowd’s reaction, they liked what they heard.

Thanks to everyone who was there, and applauded wildly & cheered between songs. (Yes, we heard you. ) Putting together a set of music for a group as diverse as those attending a street festival is always a challenge. We’re glad that you liked what we had to offer.

A special thanks also to the combined sound crew from Tom Lee Music and A&D Music. These great folks make our job so much easier. All we have to do is show up and play. Their job is to make us sound great. Thanks to all of you. You were fantastic!

Here are some photos that were taken during our show on Sunday, July 5. The weather was quite hot, and there was some humidity. The audience was mostly sitting in the shade under the tents, or standing in the shade of the buildings to escape the worst of the heat. Luckily the performance stage has a good-sized canopy over it, so we were sheltered from the sun.

    Photo by M. Margison ©2009

Here is Deception’s founder and leader, Art Panchishin. Art has been well known in the musical community around these parts for many years. His blues playing is second-to-none.

    Photo by M. Margison ©2009

Gary Huntbatch has a most impressive resume when it comes to drumming. It goes back to his days as a young man in England, when the band he was in had its own TV show.

    Photo by M. Margison ©2009

Steve Fultz has been playing bass with Deception since the band started in the mid 1990s. He, like Art, has been a constant in the musical community in Abbotsford for many years.

    Photo by M. Margison ©2009

Saxophonist Helen Kahlke, while maybe the newest member of the band, certainly isn’t a wall flower. She has many years of pro playing experience under her belt both here on the West Coast, and in the Maritimes where she lived for 8½ years.

    Photo by M. Margison ©2009

    Photo by M. Margison ©2009

This is a nice shot of Helen’s most commonly used horn: her Selmer Mark VI, tenor sax.

    Photo by M. Margison ©2009

This was the view the sound crew had from their vantage point.

    Photo by M. Margison ©2009

We had 2 drummers, 2 guitar players, and 1 saxophonist all come out and share their blues talents with us. It was a great afternoon that ended much too soon.

    Photos by M. Margison © 2009

There really are many talented musicians “out there”. Blues jams are often one of the only opportunities where they get to either play a different style of music, or get to play with others at all. That’s why supporting live music is so important.

If we don’t go out and support the places that offer live music, eventually those places will offer nothing but, god forbid, karaoke. And that would be a freakin’ shame!

Here are some pictures of our show on Saturday night.

    Photos by M. Margison ©2009

We had heard that the Saturday nights had been quite slow over the last few months, but the joint seemed to be hoppin’ on the night we played. It helped that a friend of Art’s decided to bring a table of 20 out to celebrate his birthday in true blues fashion.

Summertime is always a hard time to fill a club. BBQs, family vacations, perfect deck weather: these are all very good reasons why people don’t go out to the local watering hole. Any band that has been working for a while knows how tough it is to draw at this time of year.

So here’s to fall…Cheers…

On June 12 (the night of Game 7 of the Stanley Cup Final) we played to what eventually became a full house at the Gourmet Gallery. Although the evening started off with lots of empty seats, by the time the game was over, the staff at the Gourmet Gallery were kept busy as patrons filled the place to close to capacity. This was our last show of the season at the Gallery. We look forward to playing back there again in fall.

This last week we’ve fit in an extra rehearsal in order to make sure that we have a chance to go through the 4 sets we are going to need for this coming weekend’s shows at the Church Of The Bues in Dewdney. We will be playing at the old Historic Dewdney Pub on Saturday from 8:30 PM to 12:30 AM. Then on Sunday we’ll be back hosting the blues jam from 3:00 to 7:00 PM.

The blues jam has become a Sunday afternoon institution at the Church Of The Bues, with some very talented local players coming out regularly. Personally, I have really enjoyed getting a chance to play with Gerald Charlie, Corey Lavigne & Dave Conroy. Hopefully they will come out again, and will be joined by other talented performers as well.

Hopefully you’ll be able to join us out at the Church Of The Bues, AKA the Historic Dewdney Pub, on either Saturday, the 27th, or for the jam on the 28th.

As musicians playing this type of venue, we fully expect that people will carry on conversations during the show. When we look up and see people leaning towards the band, making eye contact with individual band members that they don’t know, singing along with the music, or in some other way expressing their engagement with our performance, that gives us a strong sense that our music is in some way resonating with the audience. There is of course no greater reward for a band than this.

We have one more show at the Gourmet Gallery before the summer break. We play there next on Friday, June 12.

If you like blues, and you haven’t yet seen Deception, come on out and give us a listen. We have a unique sound, that appeals to more than just blues fans.

While we do a number of traditional blues songs, much of our music is far more complex than just simple 12 bar, 3 chord blues progressions. Check us out, and see what you think!

A few months ago I mentioned that we really need to have a demo CD for festival entries. The one that we have been using is very old, and was recorded before I joined the band, so the sound of sax is missing. Not to blow my own horn (groan) but, the sax fundamentally changed the sound of Deception, so the demo really isn’t representative of the band’s sound anymore.

Since our playing schedule got changed, we suddenly found we had 2 months instead of only 1 between shows. It was decided that now was the perfect time to do our recording.

Gary has a home recording setup that he uses with his musician friend, and children’s entertainer, Mr. I. Gary (Gary Q when he and Mr. I work together) and Yurgen (Mr. I’s real name), do all their recordings in Gary’s studio, so we thought we would see if Deception could do its recording there as well.  

Well it has turned out to be much more work than anticipated, and this demo has taken on a life of its own. We decided that we would record not just 3 or 5 songs, but 20! What the f%*#! were we thinking? Anyways, that’s what we’ve been doing for the past 8 weeks.

As a band we’ve hardly seen each other at all, but we’ve played together a lot via recorded tracks. Last week we had our first rehearsal in nearly 6 weeks. Tonight and Wednesday we’ll get together again, to play through our set list for our show this coming Friday.

Kimberley has rearranged the stage area where the band plays, which now gives us quite a bit more room.

    Photo by M. Margison

Here’s a nice shot of Gary. It’s impossible to get a photo of him playing that doesn’t have something, or someone, blocking part of his face. 

    Photo by M. Margison

Speaking of faces… It’s nearly impossible to get a picture of a sax player when they’re playing, that doesn’t look a bit “off” in some way. All those things we learned while studying seem to get forgotten when we perform. In the end, it’s all about our individual sound, and how we achieve it. 

    Photo by M. Margison

The new song we introduced, Everybody’s Got A Mountain To Climb, was extremely well received. This really was the perfect place to play it for an audience for the first time.

As usual we had a great deal of fun playing at the Gourmet Gallery. We’re really looking forward to being back on April 24. Hopefully we’ll see you there!

Tonight we have our usual Wednesday pm rehearsal. We’re just going to do our last run-through of a new song we’ll be introducing on Friday. We’ve tried something different with our arrangement of the Allman Brother’s
Everybody’s Got A Mountain To Climb: the sax intros as well as ends the song.

This is a quite a departure for our band, so we’ll see how it works out live. In rehearsals it’s been good, and the Gourmet Gallery is the perfect, intimate venue to try something different like that for the first time.