Diagnosis moves pianist to embrace life’s strangeness

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This article was published 23/10/2023 (734 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Members of Doug Edmond’s band knew something was up when the pianist told them at a gig in the summer of 2022 he could only play straight chords on some songs, instead of his usual more elaborate style.

Mitch Dorge, the drummer with the Crash Test Dummies and Edmond’s producer and bandmate for the past 20 years, had been telling him for years to play chords rather than flashy flourishes because the music would sound better, but Edmond wouldn’t have any of it.

He had played piano since he was a kid and was proud of his ability, but for some reason, despite practising every day for six decades, he no longer could manage some parts he could once play in his sleep.

When his “finger-picking” style failed to return, he went to his family doctor — someone he had seen plenty after a bicycle crash on Academy Road only a couple blocks from his home in September 2021 — and was referred to a neurologist.

His inability to perform the simplest tasks during a 90-minute battery of tests in January 2023 — tapping his index finger with his thumb repeatedly or tapping his foot on the floor — was all that was needed to find out why he’d suddenly lost some of his piano chops.

His finger and thumb would stick together from time to time. He was unable to tap his foot in a simple rhythm.

“The neurologist looked at me and he said, ‘You know, Doug, you have the beginnings of Parkinson’s disease,’” Edmond says, remembering he was so stunned by the diagnosis that he denied it at first.

“I don’t have Parkinson’s. There’s something else going on. I don’t even have the shakes.”

Edmond did some research — natural, since he was a superintendent in charge of research for the Winnipeg School Division until recently — and discovered that while he didn’t have tremors, a common Parkinson’s symptom, the disease had manifested in him differently, slowing the connection between his brain and his hands, the reason his piano skills had waned.

It was time to accept the diagnosis and get busy to slow its process.

“One of the big things you have to do is enhance your exercise program to stave off the next stage of Parkinson’s,” he says. “If you get depressed and vegetate, the Parkinson’s is going to take over your life. It’ll take over very quickly.

“I beefed up my exercise program at the Rady Centre. I do two fitness classes every morning and there’s no question in my mind that makes everything more copacetic.”

Edmond also got involved. Mirroring the way he’s approached his music career — he joined the Jazz Winnipeg board and became a juror for the Juno Awards, Western Canadian Music Awards and Factor, the foundation that funds artists’ recordings — in June he joined the board of Parkinson Canada and became part of the Parkinson Advisory Council, a group of patients that advises Parkinson Canada on research. He also signed up for a Manitoba-based Parkinson’s study.

“Wherever I am, I feel the assessments that they’re doing on me, that they’re seeing any difference between that and how I was first diagnosed. If anything, I’m better off. I feel better,” he says. “The beauty of joining the Parkinson’s board is I feel really good being able to give back, just like I do with my music. Be grateful for life, in general.”

That gratefulness shows in his music and a new album, Life Is Strange, which will be released to streaming services Friday. The cover shows a person rendered as a mosaic of small pieces of wood.

“Everyone that’s close to me, when they see the title is Life Is Strange with this kind of guy on there, they think this is Doug totally focusing on having Parkinson’s,” he says.

“Yes, it does sort of incorporate the rise of Parkinson’s, but in many respects, it’s about the sadness that’s coming every day in our lives as we look around. The look on people’s faces when you’re taking a bus. What’s happening in downtown Winnipeg.”

Road Trails Into the Sun, the first single from the album, expands upon feelings of gratitude.

“Put your hands on the wheel, drive the sadness away,” is how Edmond begins the track, which includes former Winnipegger Richard Moody on violin and viola along with bassist Alasdair Dunlop, Bill Spornitz on saxophone, guitarist Rubin Kantorovich and Dorge on drums.

Other tracks include city folk trio Sweet Alibi and Renee Delaurier-Jones providing harmony vocals.

The track may focus on the post-breakup blues, but it also matches Edmond’s state of mind.

He refuses to let Parkinson’s negative prognosis — the condition has no cure — get in the way of living an optimistic life.

A musician’s life goes on, and he’ll debut Life is Strange Nov. 8 at Smith Restaurant at Inn at the Forks. He’ll play more simple chords than he used to, to the approval of Dorge and the band, but the drug levodopa and the extra exercise has brought some of his old piano skills back.

“I feel like you’re on a highway that’s barren, like say, New Mexico, and I’ve driven on that highway,” he says of Road Trails into the Sun. “Another bright day is a beginning. It’s a breakup song, but at the same time it’s kind of positive.

“The sun still comes up the next day.”

Alan.Small@winnipegfreepress.com

X: @AlanDSmall