02 Sep 05 - 11:22 PM (#1555219)
Subject: Chilliwack BC - Bluegrass Sept
From: GUEST,Outwit the Revenuers - this September- Sno
From WSJ "Leisure & Arts" Wednesday, August 31, 2005
They Outwitted the Revenuers
By Charles Rows
Page D10
Some of America's best bluegrass musicians will travel to Chilliwack, British Columbia, in early September and give what promises to be one of their worst performances. Their convergence as the Snohomish County Bluegrass Orchestra marks an annual, and painful, affair. Created in 1999, to avoid an onerous tax on working musicians traveling from the U.S. to Canada, the 22- to 25-piece orchestra continues to perform annually. It remains an act of musical dissonance, though no longer of dissidence. Over the years, its ad hoc members have included bands with colorful names common to the genre, such as Open Road, Sally Jones and the Sidewinders, Bluegrass Etc., and No Strings Attached.
I heard the bluegrass orchestra in 2000, when its membership included Lost Highway of California, Special Consensus of Illinois, Sam Hill of Oregon and the Ohop Valley Boys of Washington. Theirs was a good-natured caterwauling of stringed instruments, furiously strummed, and of bad harmony, in woeful contrast to the musical competency of each group, which had also performed individually during the three-day event. The groups sounded as if they had never played together, and apparently they hadn't.
The SCBO is the brainchild of Canadian Rod Hudson, formerly a mandolinist with the Dusty Acre Boys. He and his wife, Carole, began the bluegrass festival 18 years ago in Chilliwack, a city of about 70,000, located within the southern sweep of the Fraser River Valley, just north of the U.S. border. Mr. Hudson is now executive director of the arts council that sponsors the event. Touted as family entertainment, the festival includes such homespun offerings as corn-shucking contests and provides casual workshops with the professional musicians who appear on the rustic outdoor stage at Chilliwack's Heritage Park.
Bluegrass is based on the traditional music of the Southern Appalachians and was forged by the hard-driving style of the late Bill Monroe. While its popularity is international, its best-known practitioners are American. Fees imposed by Ottawa for visiting musicians to obtain work permits provided the inspiration for the SCBO. At the time of its creation, each band was required to pay $450 (Canadian, or roughly US$300 at the time); individual performers paid C$150. Mr. Hudson recalled that the band fee had been a comparatively modest C$150 during the festival's early years.
As promoter, Mr. Hudson assumed responsibility for paying the fees and providing a manifest of performers to customs officials at the border crossing. Exploring the regulatory thicket, he found that orchestras were allowed to enter Canada for free, presumably in recognition of the nonprofit status of classical ensembles. Orchestras were defined as comprising 14 or more members. (Most bluegrass bands have four to six musicians, generally performing on guitar, banjo, bass, fiddle and mandolin.)
"Then I had a brainstorm," he said, "and that was to register all the bands collectively as an orchestra. We had a lot of friends from Snohomish County [in Washington State]. So it was called the Snohomish County Bluegrass Orchestra."
Mr. Hudson became its front man and only permanent member. "I'd get up on stage and explain so nobody would feel bad about hearing a hokey group," he recalls. "We'd have 15 minutes on the program. We'd get up, play four songs, any traditional bluegrass number."
The orchestra played one gig a year, at Chilliwack, for the purpose of tax avoidance. "At one festival, a lady from Revenue, Canada's taxation department, came backstage, handed me her card," Mr. Hudson said. He had a sense of foreboding until the agent, a bluegrass fan, endorsed the orchestra's legality.
As word of the SCBO got around, Mr. Hudson was contacted by other promoters of musical events. "The Chilliwack Jazz Festival, for example, featured an All-Star Band for the same purpose," he said. That band apparently lingers as well; the Free Trade All-Stars were included on this year's lineup for the jazz festival. The necessity for the SCBO, and any counterparts it may have spawned, ended in 2002, when regulations were rewritten, this time to the benefit of performing artists visiting Canada.
(While there is some reciprocity in U.S. regulations for visiting musicians, provisions adopted by Canada exempting work permit fees in some instances have not been adopted by the U.S., said a Canadian employee of the American Federation of Musicians. Corina Robidoux, who handles artist immigration for the union in its Ontario office, added that the U.S. entry process is substantially more tedious than its neighbor's.)
The pertinent exemption is explained in a document provided by Canada's immigration agency: "Foreign artists and their essential supporting staff coming to Canada to perform do not need a permit if they are only performing in Canada for a limited period of time and will not be performing in a bar or restaurant." Nevertheless, the SBCO has continued to play on, a cheerful reminder of outwitting the tax man.
This year, the SCBO is expected to perform on Sunday, Sept. 4, with Roland White Band of Tennessee, Perfect Strangers of Arizona, Steep Canyon Rangers of North Carolina and Chris Stuart & Backcountry of Colorado. The bluegrass canon is based on the traditional verities of rural life as defined by courtship, hard work, and the family circle. It frequently deals with the inevitability of heartbreak, hard times and death. The SCBO is evidence of the home truth that finding a loophole in the revenue code is cause for joy, as is exploiting it to a happy end. Strike up the band.
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