Jeff Redinger

The Walter Band, which helped kick off Walter Redinger’s current show at MOCCA, is a matter of fathers and sons. There’s Walter (guitar, lead vocals) and his electrically energetic son Jeff (bass guitar, backup vocals), and veteran rocker Brodie Lodge (lead guitar, backing vocals) and his exuberantly talented son Durrie (drums). The night Walter Redinger opened, Amigo Motel talked with Jeff Redinger about music, art, being an artist’s son, and the future. Jeff was dressed, head to toe, in regulation punk black, with some faintly sinister silver accessories: a gleaming crown of thorns around his neck, for example. Jeff’s band, called Redinger, performs frequently around London.

Amigo Motel: How did you get hooked up with the Walter Band?

Jeff Redinger: Four or five members came into the band. I don’t know if there were some issues, but along the way they lost their bass player, so they asked if I’d come in and play bass, so I said, sure. I pick up on instruments fairly well, and bass is basically a guitar less two strings. I have more of a guitar-player’s sense when I’m playing the bass, but, you know, I’m very in tune with rhythm, so I just fit right. The more I played the more I felt comfortable with everybody.
Bass is an interesting instrument, it opened up a lot of avenues for me, because as a musician, for myself, being a guitar player, you kind of put the bass in the background. Everybody kind of forgets about the bass player, and how important and key that role is, so important to a band. Playing for my dad actually helped me out in my musical career as well, just in the fact that as a bass player I realized how much I controlled the sound or the tempo or, you know, how it made the song a little more jumpy, with more character to it. So it was really good for me to join the band. Basically, that’s how I got into it and went with it.

AM: But you didn’t come out of music. I mean, you’re a graphic artist.

JR: It’s a funny story. When you live with an artist, and you live in a small town--well, I’ve always felt different from my peers. In the city, when people find out you live with an artist, it’s kind of great. But when you’re actually in it, it’s different. I‘ve lived through the financial hardship of it. I’ve kept a lot of my peers and friends away from it. I’ve hid it, protected it, just because I didn’t want to have to explain why we live this way. Why there’s paint on our kitchen furniture. And why the table’s got marker all over it. I’ve always known our place to be a functioning studio, and it’s been difficult for me. Everything’s a risk.
The reason why I went into graphic design is, yeah, I have talent as a visual artist. But because I witnessed my dad’s career, and how risky it can be, I always wanted to stay away from the art world. But I always knew I had talent in it, and I wanted to do it a kind of way I would get a paycheque every few weeks. So I thought, OK, there’s graphic design and advertising. I think I took a course in high school once, and the task was to design your own magazine. I really took to it, and I thought it was really cool. So I thought to myself, here’s a way to be an artist and not starve, right?
So I went though high school. I was an honours student. So I thought about going into maths or science, or biology. I really took to the scholastic part of school, but it was always art--some kind of spiritual thing that pulls you back to where you’re supposed to go. You find your way in the course of life, even if you try to rebel against it, or you don’t want to be a part of it because you fear it. I think my higher power, or whatever you want to call it, just kept on bringing me back to art. So I went to school in Toronto, at the Ontario College of Art, and took advertising and design. I did fairly well, graduating at the top of the class.
I had a few creative directors check over my portfolio and, you know, they wanted me to come in for an interview. But I never quite cracked it, and it really frustrated me. I had a lot of depression. I was always meeting barriers. I thought I was never good enough. I was in a relationship with this one lady who worked downtown in Toronto, and she was more of the engineer type, very type-A personality, where I come from a very liberal, free-spirited environment. And I felt that I could never live up to those expectations that she made for me.
So all this frustration was happening, and I was trying to run away from what was natural and what was me. And money was tight in Toronto, and I couldn’t pay for rent, and it just got worse, so I had to finally go back home with my tail between my legs.
I had to start from the first square. I had a lot of depression that I was battling, I had a serious problem with alcohol abuse, and life started to spiral down even more, and finally I met rock bottom. During that time I was playing music while I was going down the spiral. Lots of depression and past things happened to me that really spurred a lot of my creativity in my music. Everybody likes a sad song, you know? And I had a lot of them. So I wrote about six albums in two years from the time that I was at home, and I finally decided to give up and stop fighting who I really was, and said, all right, this is possibly my destiny--music, art in general. This is what I have in me, and I should give in and do it. After I did that, I felt a lot more free, and things began happening for me. I developed a supporting unit behind me in my music, a bass player and a drummer. Now I have my own band, I go under my own name, Jeff Redinger, solo artist with accompanying musicians, and that’s really working out for me. It’s been a weird ride for me. I am still lost, you might say, but I’m not worried about it, and that helps me get through the day.

AM: What kind of music do you listen to?

JR: I like a lot of blues, blues-rock, bass-type music. A lot of sixties rock, early seventies, that type of deal. I can always remember when I was a kid my father always had the blues playing or there was always jazz on. Or classical--CBC was always on in the house. When you’re a kid, you don’t really understand why it’s on, you don’t really like it. When you’re three or four you say, let’s listen to something different. But I think that had a large effect on me, and it really helped me out.

AM: What about contemporary groups?

JR: Like commercial bands? There are some, but I always tend to go back to the roots of music, like Led Zeppelin, like Muddy Waters, or John Lee Hooker, or Bob Dylan, Neil Young. I stick with the classics, I don’t know why, but I’m very particular with my music. With today’s music, it’s got to be something really good to grab me. Maybe something like The White Stripes. I really appreciate their musical style. Jack White [lead vocalist and guitarist with The White Stripes] is a really great musician. But, I don’t know, I really stick with the older stuff.

AM: What kind of stuff do you like playing in the Walter Band?

JR: I like playing all sorts of music. We do country. We’ve gotten into blues, we’ve incorporated a lot of abstract, experimental sound. We’ve harnessed it as much as we possibly can, but it’s fun because I’m like my dad, I like to be free and just try anything, go with the flow, wing stuff off in the moment. I do that a lot when I’m on stage, too, I’ll surprise the guys, switch the set list around, maybe even try a news blues song, something right in the moment, and see what happens. It gets people loose, and gets creative juices flowing.

AM: Where do you want your music to take you?

JR: I really don’t know. I’m really uncertain, but I’ve come to terms with that. I have a lot of faith these days, and that’s really been helping me out a lot.
Do I want to leave London? Possibly, if I wound up staying there, then I will be ready to take it when it happens. I’m not forcing things to happen, because a lot of the depression I had stems from that. I was always trying to get somewhere else, and not face reality where I was, and just let things be.

AM: What is your faith about?

JR: My faith is in Christianity. I believe in God and Jesus Christ, and Romans 8:28 really sticks in my mind all the time. [“We know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.”] The serenity of prayer is always there for me. Little things make sense, and I get the things I need when I need them the most.
Christianity came to me when I hit rock bottom. I realized that I had done a lot of--I don’t know if you’d want to call them bad things, but things that weren’t advancing me in my life. When you’re in your weakest moment, you cry out for some type of help from whatever higher powers, whether a rock or a twig, or the tree outside. Mine just happened to be Christianity....I was always aware that there was a God, but I never tapped into it. But now I am. That’s what gets me going every day. I don’t call Redinger a Christian rock band or anything like that. I write what I know and what I’ve experienced, or stories from other people that I’ve heard or that have intrigued me.
My music is all over the place. Some times it’s serious, other times it’s a lot of joking around. But people are like that. They can be jokers, they can be serious persons, and be a fool sometimes. I’m just being me, right? An ordinary person.
As far as my sound is concerned, I’m all over the place there, too. I’m blues, I’m blues-rock, I’m straight rock, I’m punk, I’m hard rock, country--I’m all over the board. I don’t like doing one type of music, because you get stale. I like where everything’s going right now. People are very receptive to what I’m doing in the clubs these days. It’s a slow start, but it’s a good start. If I had to look back two years ago, I would never have thought I would get here.

Jeff Redinger's website: http://www.jeffredinger.com

Walter Redinger: Return to the Void: The Ghost Ship and other tales from the ether. Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art, 952 Queen Street West, Toronto. 3 February - 11 March 2007.