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It was the summer of 1976, in Vancouver, British Columbia. . .
Ferguson (Johnny Steel) Neville spent six years playing trombone with the Beefeaters Marching Band and two years in a jazz band before he discovered harmonica and an overwhelming desire to beat on things. He had accompanied a banjo player from Colorado for three years until one day, while visiting his friend Walker, he met Dan, and sat down to play with him. Fergie's musical interests and talents included scary blues harp, all sorts of percussion and the mountain dulcimer, which he would use to craft his own high flying songs.
Once they had met and played together Flying Mountain was born.
This gave them a chance to develop their repertoire, attract an audience and write songs that expressed the effervescent spirit that the group embodied. These songs ranged from ballads and story songs to upbeat dance numbers. Appearing at the Classical Joint and other Vancouver venues during the Fall of 1976. they would eventually begin to attract attention from local print media.
Flying Mountain began to draw support from a widening circle of fans who loved to listen and dance to their wild, melodious sounds. Word spread rapidly about the band. One compelling thing about the group was that all four were vocalists and composers. Whatever their differences of style or opinion, they supported each other as creative musicians. The tension between their musical backgrounds was what made the mountain fly. Rawn recorded this in his notebook :
Soon groups of people began arriving to hear them play, coming in from the mountain valleys of the interior and from the islands of the coast. The country folk knew this was music made for them, their very own kind of music. And they sent letters and requests affirming this. In the words of one fan, who encountered the four during their first foray to Whistler, BC: “. . .sitting in the corner of the room, under a speaker column, was a group of people who were amused, entertained, and generally made happy. . .in this group were an ex-country boy, now an outdoor education instructor and ski fanatic, a frustrated bearded old ex-folk singer from the sixties, now an English teacher, and two seventeen year old students up for a ski week. The students were not sure at first. They had never heard music like this before. Where were the electric guitars? The banks of mega-watt amplifiers? No light show? No makeup? Not even a drum kit!? But enthusiasm is infectious. Before long, mutters of “Go, Fergie, go!!” could be heard, toes were tapping, hands were clapping, even beer bottles were being clinked in time. The ski hill resounded with scraps of Flying Mountain songs the next day. And nothing would do the next night but that this same group should return to the Keg. Word was out. The place was packed!” This enthusiasm was not one-sided. As they grew into their role as troubadors the four musicians knew very well why they were on stage. Fergie puts it this way: “The stage becomes the dinner table. We are constantly fed the multi-faceted emotions of the audience enveloping us. And we feed in turn to the audience our emotions, which have been stirred by their reactions to our individual music making. When and where this all starts is questionable. I feel that it is brought to the celebration of people by everyone, that each person contributes their energies, which is all it takes to get me muddled up here on this pulpy product called paper. Imagine, every night that we play, the exchanges taking place through our bodies and microphones and instruments and atmospheres and. . .What a Gas! Really!! What an incredibly cosmic gas! Where does it take us? What do we learn from the exchange? Mainly we learn to endure changes. We learn that fundamentally you love everyone and everyone loves you, and that it takes any kind of gathering to really bring that to light.” With its sense of direction firmly set, the Flying Mountain carried on, and began looking at wider touring. Reviewers understood the spirit at work and had these sorts of things to say: “They are a celebration of British Columbia. They are what they are because they live here.” “They have a flair for involving audiences in the music they make.” “Their songs are powerfully moving statements.” “They play music that is eerily ancient but as new as the latest improvisational jazz.” “They have mastered a multiplicity of folk music styles.” “They delighted the audience with music that was as eclectic as it was entertaining.” “A mixture of informal celebration and polished musicianship.” while even the most blasé Calgary reporter could see the effect of the music they were playing: “MOUNTAINS UNMOVED, BUT AUDIENCE FLYING.”
By this time, they just knew they wanted to continue playing together, creating their own unique music. Their slogan became Musicafrolicus! which, as Fergi was fond of explaining, is "Music is for all of us," said while licking peanut butter off your front teeth. Marching behind that playful banner they headed off to find new audiences across British Columbia.
Flying Mountain soon became a regular feature in the small community halls up and down Vancouver Island and on the islands of the Strait of Georgia, peforming for concerts and dances at Cedar, Errington, Victoria, Courtenay, on Saltspring, Galiano, Gabriola, Hornby, Denman and Lasqueti Island and as far north as Quadra and Cortes.
February 14 Gorge Hall, Cortes Island March 16 David Thompson University, Nelson March 17 Visual Arts Fair, Nakusp March 18 Legion Hall, Kaslo March 21 Selkirk College, Castlegar March 22 Grey Creek Hall, Grey Creek March 23 David Thompson University, Nelson March 24 Vallican Whole, Vallican March 25 Silverton Community Hall April 17 Vancouver East Cultural Centre June 30 Malaspina University, Nanaimo July 1 University of Victoria July 2 Port Townsend July 14 Langham Centre, Kaslo July 15 Vallican Whole,Vallican July 16 Silverton Hall, Silverton July 21 Grey Creek Community Hall July 22 & 23 The Jam Factory, Nelson July 31 Mid-Summer Country Fair, Nanaimo August 2 Bow River Folk Arts Faire, Calgary Aug 4-6 Sancious Coffeehouse, Calgary Aug 19-20 Classical Joint Coffeehouse, Vancouver August 26 Cherryville Community Hall, Cherryville August 27 Pumblewood Music Festival, Nakusp September 2 Legion, Nakusp September 3-4 Langham Hall, Kaslo September 15 Capilano College, North Vancouver September 16 Outdoor Concert, Nanaimo September 17 Errington Hall, Errington November 18 Vancouver Indian Centre December 9 City Space, Vancouver December 14-23 VOICES OF A WINTER'S NIGHT, Koerner Hall, Vancouver December 17 VOICES OF A WINTER'S NIGHT, Courtenay Civic Theatre December 20-21 VOICES OF A WINTER'S NIGHT, The Belfry, Victoria Voices of a Winter's Night was a theatrical collaboration with the Brass Tacks Vocal Ensemble which grew out of a shared interest in combining story telling and music. April Curtis, the director, was wonderfully tolerant and supportive working with the artists. Here is what the show was about:
As the new year approached, Flying Mountain was looking forward to another year of touring. January 6 Mission December 30 The Classical Joint Coffeehouse, Vancouver January 10-12 The Keg, Whistler January 13 Surrey Arts Centre, January 14 Classical Joint Coffee House, Vancouver January 21 Townhouse, Powell River January 22 Lund Hall, Lund January 24 - 26 The Keg, Whistler January 28 Saltspring Island January 29 Sooke January 30 Belfry Theatre, Victoria February 17 & 18 Classical Joint Coffeehouse, Vancouver Spring ran on into Summer with tours on the coast and in the Kootenays and their first major festival bookings, in Vancouver, Blackfalds (Alberta) and the Bow River Faire in Calgary.
March 17 Nakusp Legion, Nakusp March 18 Langham Cultural Centre, Kaslo March 22 Grey Creek Hall, Grey Creek March 23 David Thompson University, Nelson March 25 Boson Hall, New Denver April 2 Vancouver East Cultural Centre April 7 & 8 Classical Joint Coffeehouse April 14 Roberts Creek Hall, Roberts Creek April 15 Townhouse, Powell River April 16 Lund Hall, Lund April 21 was the official release date for the new recording. Flying Mountain celebrated with fans at a “Record Breaker” event held at the Ukrainian Hall in Kitsilano, in Vancouver. The next week was spent filling the pre-orders which had accumulated over the past half year. They had received over 300 orders, so the release was almost half paid off even before it was pressed. April 22 Maple Bay (Clearwater Defense Fund Raiser) April 28 Co-op Coop Radio Show (CFRO) April 29 North Shore Neighbourhood House, North Vancouver May 5 Classical Joint Coffeehouse, Vancouver May 6 Courtenay Civic Theatre, Courtenay (CBC Radio Recording for Touch the Earth) May 7 Hornby Island Community Hall May 13 Bowen Island Community Hall May 18 OAP Hall, Victoria It was at this event at the OAP hall that Dan celebrated our hosts Graham and Martin's joint birthdays by pie-ing both of them, thus beginning a long and honoured tradition in local folk music circles. May 20 May Day Festival, Saltspring Island May 21 Fireman's Picnic, Lasqueti Island June 2 Russian Community Centre, Vancouver June 3 Malibu Princess Cruise, Vancouver Harbour June 4 Lantzville Fair, Lantzville June 9 Queen Elizabeth Playhouse, Vancouver with Bargain at Half the Price June 10 Surrey Arts Centre, Surrey By this time they had another concept piece they wanted to try; this time it was a musical review about the Summer Solstice, in collaboration with the Brass Tacks Vocal Ensemble. With funding from the Touring Office of the Canada Council and help from director Jeremy Long, the two groups assembled the stories and musical pieces for Celebrations of the Sun.
Although the tour was a big undertaking and a bit of a strain for some of the members of the Brass Tacks Vocal Ensemble who brought their children on the bus, the show paid all its expenses and made a bit for the participants. Ferg's mom, Sheila was the show's guardian angel, keeping all of the tour and promotional details on track.
July 7 Soft Rock Cafe, Vancouver July 13 Hornby Island Hall, Hornby Island July 14 Courtenay July 15 Errington Hall, Errington July 20 OAP Hall, Victoria July 22 Beaver Point Hall, Saltspring Island July 23 Cobble Hill, Duncan July 23 Galiano Island Hall The print media began to take notice:
It was in 1978 that Flying Mountain found a manager who would stick with them through thick and thin. Nora Specht was happy to use her national connections to get Flying Mountain into the folk festivals. With her help they began reaching audiences throughout Western Canada. Flying Mountain would travel north to Faro in the Yukon to perform for the annual folk festival:
Dan wrote:
Touring far and wide had its moments. On one northern tour, with stops in Whitehorse and Skagway, the members of Flying Mountain were left stranded when the ore train to Skagway left earlier in the morning than usual. With no highway open to the coast, they had only one other way to reach the Alaska panhandle town: we would fly there. Dan describes what happened next: “With all our gear we high-tailed it out to the airport runway in Whitehorse and loaded our instruments aboard a twin-engine Otter, then climbed in along with our intrepid aeronaut. An hour later we were bouncing around between vertical walls of stone, being pummeled by headwinds. Worse than the sudden drops in altitude was the view ahead: unbroken fog. The pilot backtracked to try a second pass. Again, no visibility for landing. Shaken but really glad he had had the good judgement to turn back, we returned to Whitehorse for the night. We did make it to Skagway on the train the following day for an impromptu acoustic performance in the town's saloon, but our concert date there never was realized.”
But stronger than any other memories, the band members still recall times spent with the many friends on whose floors they slept, times spent splashing in rivers and hot springs, then travelling home with fruit from the Okanagan, and mementos from the people in the small communities who provided the real support for their touring. August 1978 was a watershed, in more ways than one. Flying Mountain was the final featured act on the Main Stage at the First Vancouver Folk Festival, held in Stanley Park. The west coast lived up to expectations, unleashing torrential rains during the first evening of the weekend of August 11-12-13, rain that sent most people on the Friday night packing. Those who stayed were treated to a celebration of water when the members of Flying Mountain took the stage, ignoring cloudbursts and imminent electrocution, to present a full set of music to more than 400 happy, mud-splattered dancers. Things dried out over the following two days, to help the festival organizers establish a tradition which is still going strong, thirty years later.
Which just goes to show there is hope for the younger generation.
August also saw Flying Mountain appearing in: August 4 Grouse Mountain, Vancouver August 16 & 17 Commodore Ballroom, Vancouver August 18 Vernon August 19 Kootenay Summer Arts Festival, Nelson August 26 Clearwater “The Clearwater event was significant to the band because it was held to focus opposition to plans for a uranium mine in the North Thompson River watershed. The attention this event focused on the issues helped block the mine and also resulted in a new song that was later recorded on the band's second album Mountain's Dream. Sometimes you just feel like you are in the right place at the right time.” September 1 Bow River Fair, Calgary September 8 – 10 Farrago Festival, Faro, Yukon “Our first visit to the North was amazing. We made some great friends on that trip, we met Leon Bibb, saw the northern lights and encountered phenomenal hospitality. I remember we were met at the little airport by the couple who ran the festival. The huge man wearing the T-Shirt that read “I love Moose Meat” walked up to greet us, hugging his petite wife, whose shirt said, “Hi, I'm Moose Meat.” - Dan September 15 Pumpkin Hoot, Clearwater September 20 CKVU Television, Vancouver “Our first experience with live television should have made us see how allergic that medium is to real spontaneity. Packed into that tiny box, we barely fit!” September 22 Russian Community Centre, Vancouver September 23 Galiano Community Hall, Galiano Island September 30 Wedding, Roberts Creek Flying Mountain took a break and went into Simon Garber's fully professional Golden Age Sonic Lab to begin recording their second collection of music, Mountain's Dream. After a month off, the band began touring again Final tracks and mixing took up part of November, but by then they were also touring locally: November 3 Classical Joint Coffeehouse, Vancouver November 7 CKVU Variety Special, Vancouver November 10 Beaver Point Hall, Saltspring Island November 11 Hornby Island Community Hall November 12 Denman Island Community Hall November 16 OAP Hall, Victoria November 18 Errington Hall, Errington November 24 Whitehorse, Yukon November 25 – 27 Faro, Yukon November 29 Yellowknife, Northwest Territories One of the highlights of being in Yellowknife in the winter, in addition to minus 30 temperatures, was the ravens. After seeing a pair of the birds work together to lift a lid off a garbage can Dan popped into a store to defrost his extremities. The lady there picked up on his puzzlement immediately: “The ravens?” she asked him. Yes, he said, what's with those ravens? She explained they had been taken away by Alfred Hitchcock and his crew and trained for months for his movie The Birds. Once he brought them back up north, there was no hope of keeping a lid on a garbage can any more. December 8 Russian Community Centre, Vancouver December 9 Cedar Hall, Cedar December 15 Townhouse, Powell River December 16 Vananda Hall, Texada Island Although the band continued playing appearing at the Vancouver and Winnipeg folk festivals during 1979, Dan was preparing a solo recording, Solitudes which was released in the Spring, and he left the band to tour in support of the new recording later that year. Flying Mountain was also involved in production of a television pilot for a children's series by Leon Bibb. It was here, in the park near Leon's Kitsilano home that the members of Flying Mountain learned about what matters to media. A parade through the park to the house, playing their instruments was being shot as the introductory segment for the show, but the electrical equipment broke down repeatedly and the cameras had to stop due to equipment failure. By the time the machines were up and running, the band was tired, out of synch with the music track, and managed a half-hearted walk through. When they asked whether it was time for the real thing, they were told that the camera people had what they needed, it was “in the can” and that that last take would be used. One final encounter with Graeme Weymark, financial manager for the Irish Rovers, and a business associate of Randy Bachman, told the tale. If they were able to reduce their spontaneous combustion onstage to a careful, repeatable act, he assured them, he would be able to find them television exposure, maybe even their own series. This is what it would take to put the band into the big time. But they all knew this would never happen. Flying Mountain continued on for another two years, initially with the addition of Bill Terry on fiddle. The new configuration performed locally and appeared in Canmore, Alberta and the Yukon and Alaska. By the time plans for a European tour coalesced in 1981, Bill left the band, and was replaced by Fergie's brother, Drew Neville, on keyboards. Drew had previously performed with Doug and the Sluggs and other local groups. The European tour, which originally included 21 dates, was booked by Wolfgang Kanner of the Ingleheim Folk Festival in Luxembourg. Partway through the tour, Satoru Suttles flew home, and he later left the group. The final word on what kept the mountain flying, from an article by Tom Harrison in the Vancouver Province, comes from Ferg: “The music business is not our business. The music is.” |
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Rawn Mongovius
At first performing as Dan Rubin and the Flying Mountain, the band began assembling a unique repertoire of original and traditional songs and instrumentals. Their music was acoustic and folksy but the compelling rhythms made them a dance band for their times, from the very start. They soon found a home base at Sofia's Folkdance Restaurant, where they were hired on first hearing as the house band.
When the image of the Flying Mountain first appeared, scrawled on a napkin by Fergie in a roadside diner, it was instantly clear that the image of a mountain with wings would be the perfect emblem for this unlikely group, combining a rocker, a classical violinist, a trombone player and a bluegrass bass player who all shared a deep love for music that moved. 
The Flying Mountain on tour, 1977:
March 10 Fraser Valley College, Abbotsford 
Rehearsals were crammed into the month of June along with regular engagements, then the cast headed out on the tour, the Morris Minor convertible running ahead to do advance work, and the big yellow Brass Tacks bus following along behind. This tour took them through the Southern Interior with stops in Logan Lake, Kaslo, New Denver, Vallican, Christina Lake, Nelson, Invermere and then home to Vancouver for a final triumphal show at the Vancouver East Cultural Centre. 
June 30 / July 1 Classical Joint Coffeehouse, Vancouver
Another memorable moment was when the van's radiator burst just as they were passing through Greenville in the Sourthern Interior, on their way back from the Kootenays. Luckily there was a handy garage in the town and a knowledgeable repairman, and they were soon on their way.
There were many highlights during this festival, including a traditional fiddle tune session during which Dan shared the stage with the eminent folk singer and musicologist Mike Seeger, who complimented him on one of his original instrumentals, saying “You see, people are still writing good traditional tunes.”