A Review by Patrick Jamieson, Victoria

I owe Dave Gallant this CD review of his first collection of songs. After all I was there when he wrote quite a number of them 55 years ago or so. In fact the title track was my suggestion.

We were friends in the late 1960s in Chilliwhack where he was getting out of the army and I was home couch-surfing with my family of origin for the umpteenth time. It was the Sixties and none of us knew what we wanted to be when we grew up.
At my parents insistence I had an evening job forking broccoli onto an assembly line at York Farms. When I got off shift, I would track down my buddy Dave and he would inevitably have yet another great song for me to give a listen to. When he played this particular one I said: “What is it called?” He said he hadn’t gotten around to that part yet so I said call it ‘Just About There,’ which seemed apt and described where we were both at; and most of our generation.

2.

I remember Dave first playing the Lightfootesque ‘Reflections of BC’ up at Pinewoods Lodge in Manning Park, between Hope and Princeton on Highway 5 in the canyonesque scenery of the BC Interior. He said at the time it was the first song he wrote when he discovered the natural glories of BC. A suitable bookend song to mention might be the ‘Wedding Song’ he wrote for my wedding in 1977 because he said it was all he could afford. He played it at the wedding reception in my father-in-law’s Shaunessy Heights palatial mansion in Vancouver. A funny place for hippies to hang out, a banker’s home.

The ‘Wedding Song’ is a touching ballad, more about my friendship with him and certain other people when first we met. Dave was getting out of the military engineers. We both happened to be hired in a Sardis hop yard when we got to talking about what was happening with the world and in our lives. Fast friends from that moment.
Psychologically, it is his most complex tune, lyrically at least. He and I and my girlfriend at the time spent a lot of time together. I got him reading JD Salinger, and gave him James Joyce, Tielhard de Chardin and Thomas Merton books to read; and all the ensuing conversation that goes with all that.

3.

We were both in love with the same woman and she inspired many of his songs. It was a glorious period of self discovery but particularly for Dave, I only realized this much later, looking back. It was a summer or two of the start of self-realization, for all of us. We are all still close friends to this day.

When it soon ended, he was married to someone else and living in a remote part of the province. Dave was the one who properly introduced me to the complete back catalogue of Bob Dylan’s songs to that time. We would sit out at Cultus Lake and he would say, here’s another Dylan tune.

Prophetic of what Doctor Bob would achieve, including a Nobel prize for literature. Dave and I met at the threshold of Dylan’s musical conjunction; he the tunes, me the lyrics.

Like Dylan, Dave roams across many genres. The album is punctuated by country tunes, songs of rebellion, and confessional numbers. They move across the decades, illustrating styles that have come in an out of season over 55 years.

Produced by Norman McPherson, it sells for $15, available from ICN.