Humble life and times of Bob Wiseman

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This article was published 20/10/2023 (1042 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Visiting the world of Bob Wiseman is quite the trip.

The former Winnipegger and Blue Rodeo co-founder isn’t a garden-variety rock ‘n’ roller, and those attending his appearance Oct. 23 at Tarbut: Festival of Jewish Culture better strap themselves in for a musical and intellectual ride.

“Anyone who’s in their 40s or 50s or 60s or 70s shares some of these insights about the kind of incredible zigzags their life would have taken them (on),” says Wiseman, 61, whose journey has taken him from Joseph Wolinsky Collegiate to a music professorship at Western University in London, Ont., and a position in the English department at Toronto’s Seneca College.

“Whether it would have taken them into positions that are valuable or miserable, it’s really unpredictable when we rewind the tape to when we’re 10 years old.”

Everyone has “plot points,” in their lives, he says, not just famous people such as Robert Oppenheimer or Johnny Cash who’ve had biopics made from their careers.

“Someone died, and then someone makes a choice what to do because of that,” Wiseman cites as an example. “I’ve seen over and over in my life, many, many people much more talented than myself not get a break at all or die in the gutter because they can’t deal with things or can’t seize the moment.”

He has had several notable plot points in his life, such as being inducted into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame along with Blue Rodeo and, more recently, his 2020 book Music Lessons.

Wiseman’s origin story, to borrow another movie-business phrase, gave him the impetus to realize his early rock ‘n’ roll dreams.

It began with a piano, a friend and a critique from one of Winnipeg’s most colourful characters, the late Mitch Podolak, whom Wiseman describes as the “godfather of the Winnipeg Folk Festival.”

”A friend of mine, a woman named Beryl Cohen, who died in recent years, she heard me playing and was familiar with the festival. She insisted I take a cassette to Mitch of myself playing the piano.”

Wiseman dropped one off and came back to the folk fest’s office later in the day to meet with the impresario. Podolak sat him down in his office, and Wiseman’s life has never been the same.

“He said, ‘You don’t play the piano very good,’ and I thought, ‘Oh, this is weird. I screwed up,’” Wiseman recalls. “And he goes, “You f—-ing play the piano!”

Podolak put Wiseman in a folk-fest workshop with Lauri Conger of the Toronto pop band Parachute Club, and she told him what every young musician would love to hear: he could do what she was doing.

“I just became a little intoxicated with realizing, ‘Oh, I can do this. You think I could do what you’re doing, touring Europe?’” he says.

That led to Wiseman moving to Toronto for music school, but by 1984 he had taken a job in social services to pay his student loans.

When his brother told a couple of his pals, future Blue Rodeo singer-guitarists Jim Cuddy and Greg Keelor, that Wiseman had a place to crash — “kind of like older-brother rules,” he says with a chuckle — Canadian musical history was born.

Wiseman left the band by 1992 to guide many others into the music business, including Ron Sexsmith, Serena Ryder and members of the comedy group Kids in the Hall. He also had his solo career and began writing music for film and television.

“There was just more dignity to try doing it on my own and try to grow my capacity to produce and arrange for TV and film,” he says.

“It was amazing to figure that out by the seat of my pants and fail a few times and figure out from my mistakes to get better at it.”

This freestyle approach to music has crept into Wiseman’s scholarly life. Wiseman is in his final year of a PhD with the International Institute for Critical Studies in Improvisation.

While Wiseman will perform some songs with Jess Reimer, another artist he’s guided, during his Tarbut festival appearance Monday, his life has grown beyond the 88 keys of a piano.

Academic credentials, not hit records, are where he’s at in 2023, and that includes Music Lessons, which is adapted from years of blogging at bobwiseman.ca, a fascinating stop on the web.

“They don’t care about how many Juno Awards I have. They’re only concerned whether you’re published,” Wiseman says of the post-secondary world. “It makes me more, like in the Mafia, when you’re a made man. It would make me more of a made person for the academic world.”

alan.small@winnipegfreepress.com

X: @AlanDSmall