Ellen, Kit & Quammie on a rainy day outside Clinton's.
Photo by Michelle Josef.
The potency of an
artist’s gift can be assessed by the radiance that it transmits through time
and space and by the character of the residue that endures on record. In the
wake of her sudden departure, from cancer, this past June, Ellen McIlwaine’s
music continues to pulse with a unique primacy. In performance, she was robust,
playful and meditative. The insights carried by her lyrics would cascade into
the heart of the audience on a current of wildly virtuosic guitar playing.
Her talent was of
such a magnitude that the disconnect between her artistic status and her
essential life circumstances seems remarkable. Her last twenty years were spent
as a Canadian citizen in Calgary, driving a school bus. She adored the job, and
the children, and it mitigated any existential stress by providing her with
latitude, income and inspiration enough to maintain a semi-retired lifestyle,
while allowing her to take on local gigs and recording opportunities.
Her
antipathy towards flying left her professionally isolated, but she rallied the
will to attend and perform at the Toronto Blues Society’s Women In Blues Revue
at the end of 2019, after having been awarded their prestigious Blues With A
Feeling Award earlier that year.
In 1993, while
holding down a residency at Clinton’s Tavern in Toronto, Ellen made an album
for Stony Plain, Looking For
Trouble with drummer Michelle Josef (David Wilcox, Prairie Oyster), bassist
Kit Johnson (Murray McLauchlan, The McGarrigle Sisters) and percussionist Rudi
“Quammie” Williams (Truths & Rights, Martha & The Muffins). The record
is full of great tunes, and explorations into reggae and electronics (Holger- Good time for a re-issue?-ed.).
Their memories of time spent with Ellen emerged on social media soon after her
abrupt passing and have since broadened beyond eulogy to encapsulate the spirit
that she so readily shared with her Canadian collaborators.
Kit Johnson sent
out this message on Facebook:
“This post is
about Ellen McIlwaine, and what I think you might like to know about her last days.
I was reluctant to share this, but I may have been one of the last of our wide
musical community (perhaps even the last) to speak with her.
The second last
time I spoke with Ellen was in late May sometime and she was on top of the
world. She had found romance and a documentary of her extraordinary life was
well under way.
About 10 days ago
my phone rang. There was no name on my display but I recognized the number as
someone I knew so I answered. I did not recognize the weak voice on the other
end of the line as being Ellen until she identified herself. She told me she
was in hospital and then gave me the (unfortunately accurate) prognosis. She
also told me that the diagnosis had been very recent, a couple of weeks was all
the time she had had to live with the knowledge.
But then we talked
about friends, music, shared experiences and as we talked she began to laugh,
we both did, and her voice soon became the rich sound we all know. After about
20 minutes, we said goodbye happily, cheerily, and with the sense that we would
soon be talking and laughing again.
And here's what I
feel I had to share. Ellen was not afraid, she was not angry, she accepted
things as they were and spoke lovingly and happily about her life, her friends,
her career, her fellow musical collaborators, all that and more. She also
talked about her delight in the morning birds outside her window, for which the
staff had provided an identification chart.
Her happy, strong
farewell that day is what stays with me and gives me some solace, perhaps it
will do that for you too.”
Since then, he has
also reflected, “I never
had any sense of her spiritual leanings. She referenced Christianity in songs
sometimes but not in her own. In gospel songs such as “I Bid You Goodnight”,
with which she closed pretty much every night she sang "I love you but
Jesus loves you the best". But I didn't get the sense it was a 'message'
just some lyrics that meant a lot to her personally. Of course AA has a
spiritual element but again I didn't have the sense that it was the 'important
thing' about it. Speaking of which I think she would be happy to have someone
talk about AA and the pride she took in her temperance. Her car was certainly
emblazoned with AA slogans back in the 80’s. As long as I knew her, she was the
polite, mild person you spoke with right up until the moment she stepped
onstage, and then all that happened.”
Quammie Williams
also felt the need to commemorate her on Facebook:
“We were playing in Edmonton in the late 80’s and went to
Shogun, a Japanese restaurant north of Jasper around 112 St, one of the only
places to get sushi in Edmonton at that time. We sat at the sushi bar and an
appropriately stern-looking sushi chef took my order and Michelle's. Then he
got to Ellen and she spoke in her fluent Japanese, ordering what she wanted. He
wrote it down then walked a couple of paces and did one of the most amazing
double takes I've ever seen, her accent had been so good he didn't even notice
that it came from such an unlikely source. They had a long chat and some laughs
as she explained where and how she had grown up in Japan.”
In retrospect, Quammie recalls, “She was a very spiritual
person. We would talk about her journey backstage often. And it came from
within, not so much from organized doctrine. She once introduced me to Bonnie
Raitt and I listened to the two of them talk about all the personal power that
they had had to acquire in order to get control of their careers and their
music and they spoke on a very high and soulful level. It was wonderful and
kind of dizzying to hear them communicating so articulately about matters of
faith.”
In Toronto recently, Michelle Josef was able to recollect:
“After my gender change, Ellen just kept hiring me, at a time when I was being
treated like I was radioactive by the music business. She knew what it was like
to be different, because she was. Growing up in Japan, she was a foot taller
and thirty pounds heavier than any of her peers: big and pink with long red
hair in a world of short girls with pageboy haircuts.
Some people experience trauma and it makes them bitter and
hard. With Ellen it made her an understanding and compassionate person.
Accommodating, and kind. And she wasn’t treated that way always.
She got man-splained to a lot. She had this Marshall amp that
she’d snapped the LL’s off so it was a female amp, “Marsha”, and she had put
some lace over the grille. So soundmen would make an assumption, having no idea
of her command of what she did. And they’d tell her how to set up her amp.
It’s no secret that she was recovering from alcohol
addiction, which doesn’t mean you are cured. It means that you no longer cope
with the underlying traumas of your life with alcohol. She certainly struggled
with song-writing after she got sober. Her muse was no longer lubricated. The
songs would take a longer time to come to her. She spent a lot of time on the
road working on tunes. And she had a hurting heart. Anyone who comes to the
blues full-on, as she did, has to have a hurting heart. There definitely was an
intense essence of spirituality to her, the feeling of a higher power in her
playing and singing. She held a groove like a synchro-mesh on a fucking
Ferrari. And it would take the audience’s breath away.
I just can’t compare her to anybody.
She expressed a confluence of very diverse life and musical
experiences. She scat-sang in Japanese phonetics; she had a huge gospel
background that completely informed her singing. When she sang it was church.
Loved Son House. She told me she had quite a following in the gay and trans
community; drag queens loved her and she loved them back. She just loved anyone
who loved music.”
Ellen Mclwaine would have turned 76 on October first. Anyone
who encountered her, aside from a few sound technicians, found themselves permanently charged with her grace and positive energy and, as she sang, There Ain’t No Two Ways To It Now.
(Originally Published @ https://www.rootsmusic.ca/)
