Noah Franche-Nolan brought his trio to Alberta and to Saskatoon
To Alberta and Saskatchewan, joined in BC by Dan Pitt for playing and recording, and Raagaverse
From November 7 to 9, 2024, pianist Noah Franche-Nolan brought his trio of Jodi Proznick on bass and Nick Bracewell on drums to Alberta and Saskatchewan.
The trio played Calgary's BuckingJam Palace, Lethbridge's Sterndale Bennett Theatre, and Saskatoon's The Bassment; their album Within the Stream came out on Cellar Music (whom I work for) in 2023. The three musicians are also known as the band of Raagaverse, together with vocalist and bandleader Shruti Ramani. Raagaverse just capped off a year of releasing a debut album and playing many performances, including one at the Annex Theatre downtown on Sunday, November 17.
Noah's close collaborator Dan Pitt, a guitarist, performed with him in Vancouver from October 31 through the first week of November. Dan previously appeared on Noah's ambient music, which came out on the Infidels Jazz label (whom I also work for).
Noah has joined other musicians from pianist-scholar Ethan Iverson to Rhythm Changes' own Chris Fraser in writing on Substack; there, among his other first few pieces, is an interview with Dan Pitt and an exposition of many projects he currently juggles.
Noah Franche-Nolan
He also published an interview with Harmeet Kaur Virdee this week. I caught up with Noah via my own interview on Monday, November 18 to hear about the tour and how he views it in the context of his career; his trio will record another album for Cellar early in the new year.
This interview is a non-verbatim transcript and edited for clarity.
NOAH FRANCHE-NOLAN: How's it going?
WILL CHERNOFF: Good! How are you? Did you also do some recording today?
NFN: No, no... Shruti was recording. I think she was just adding some things onto a track that didn't make the record. So she was in the studio, but the other parts have already been recorded.
WC: Okay, I wondered if that was a crazy day, a crazy afternoon for you. But last night, right? How was last night, how'd it go?
NFN: Yeah, it was really fun. It was a little bit quiet because the Grey Cup was happening, and then also a Canucks game was happening, and apparently there was a hailstorm while we were doing soundcheck. Anyways... but it was really fun.
We, Raagaverse, hadn't played together since... I think our last show was on Salt Spring this past summer. That may have been our last full Raagaverse show. So it was really nice, and we were playing some new material, so that was really awesome. Yeah.
WC: Definitely a large topic that we could explore in its own, deserved right, another time unto itself, but I'm glad it went well and that you had a good time.
NFN: Yeah.
WC: There's another sort of topic that is also part of the string of things you've done lately, and I missed it all, which was the Dan Pitt stuff. Now, he's coming back this week that we're talking, with his own group as part of his own tour. But you also played three dates that I'm aware of with him – Frankie's, Roedde House, and Brentwood – and then did you also record a duo project with him?
NFN: That's it. Yeah, we did two days of recording: one day just in my apartment, and then the other day at Brentwood. And then we also recorded our live performance at Brentwood. So, we'll see. That's six hours of material to work with. Of course, most of that is not going to be on the record, but there's a chance that we might have more than one record come out of that time that we worked together over this stuff. So yeah, that's pretty awesome.
WC: Didn't Dan also play on your more ambient music that came out on The Infidels?
NFN: That's it, and so this project is a continuation of that. So the stuff that I'm doing with Dan, whenever this record comes out, it's completely different than the rest of the stuff that I do [...] I've got the whole Substack thing that I'm writing now, and I might write a Substack about the patch that I built in Ableton.
Because basically with Dan, our show at Frankie's was a jazz quartet with Bernie Arai and James Meger. And then Roedde House was a mixture of songs plus this more electroacoustic stuff that we're doing, and Brentwood was just working on the stuff that we recorded. And the material for that recording is, really, I'm on piano. But I'm also working with this entire patch that I built in Ableton that essentially, it just processes Dan's sound in all of these interesting ways. I dug pretty deep into developing these different ways to process and create instruments off of live-sampling his guitar playing as well as my piano playing. Although, I think on the record, most of the stuff I'm doing is live sampling his playing. And then when I'm playing, I'm just playing. But in our live performance at Brentwood, I did a lot of live sampling of my own playing as well. So that's a fun project, yeah.
WC: It's so cool that he's here twice this month, that he's got his own project, but he also came out just to do that specific thing with you. That's very cool. It doesn't happen very often.
NFN: I know, yeah, no, I'm pretty lucky that he was into coming out here and doing that, for sure.
WC: Speaking of going places, I definitely want to ask you about your tour, which I will in just a second. But because you already mentioned it, I also wanted, as a person who is involved in sending thousands of emails per week, [to ask] about Substack and about your decision to start publishing there. I was overjoyed to see that another person published an interview of a Canadian jazz musician on their own platform that they control, which you did when you interviewed Dan Pitt alongside your Substack. Can we nerd out about this sort of thing just because it hits close to home for me? When did you decide to start doing this, how's it been for you, anything about it.
NFN: Yeah, so let's see. The decision to do this whole Substack thing is really based off of this idea that... Okay. There's a few things.
First of all, the question of social media and online presence, and doing it in a way that feels right to you, is something that's certainly on my mind. I'm not the biggest fan of social media. Social media is used to connect with your audience as an artist, right? That's part of what you're doing with social media. And so I thought about, what are some sincere ways that I can connect with my audience members? And I thought, you know what, writing about what I'm doing is actually something that works for me. So that was the main reason. That was one of the inspirations in regards to starting Substack.
And I was inspired by other people who use Substack to write about their artistic work, particularly in the community of people who are creating experimental patches in Ableton, I love following people who are sharing their process in Ableton over Substack.
But then this, I decided to do an interview with Dan partially to just promote the work that I was doing with Dan. And then I realized, oh, this is actually a really cool idea. So I'm actually... The next post that I'm going to do, I've got an interview with Harmeet Kaur Virdee. I interviewed her partially because she helped me organize my tour, but also because she's awesome.
And yeah, part of my intention behind what I intend to make a regular interview section in my Substack post... the intention is to shine a light on all of the various ways that music can show up in our lives, essentially. I'm not just wanting to interview people about their artistic work. So for example. Harmeet isn't just a great bass player and composer, but is also, I think, one of the greatest community organizers in the greater Vancouver area. And so I want to... That's some of what we touch on in that interview. And then I hope to interview some students of mine, and I just want to share the sense of all of the ways that music essentially contributes to the wellness in our life. Music is a positive thing in our lives, and there are so many ways that it shows up in our lives. So that's the intention behind the interviews, really. Yeah.
WC: I love it. I'm happy to hear that. I'm excited to see what you talked about with Harmeet. Interviewing Harmeet absolutely turned around one of my days when I did it on the Rhythm Changes Podcast. I was having a crappy day, and then she came in and brightened up my day, so that's an episode I remember very fondly.
NFN: Yeah, for sure. Yeah, no, she's awesome. Yeah.
WC: Yes. Now you did mention in there that Harmeet helped you plan your tour, so when did it start coming together? You did three dates that were the flagship dates of this tour. You went to Calgary, Lethbridge, and Saskatoon, November 7th, 8th, and 9th, So it's very recent. So since that just happened at the beginning of November, when and how did it start coming together?
NFN: Well, those venues book a year and a half in advance. Yeah, so whatever that is, it was a year and a half ago that I probably started working on booking the tour. I guess pretty soon after the record came out, honestly. So yeah, that's when it started. I asked her me to help me out later on, probably five months before the tour started, or I dunno, during the summer probably is when I got her to help me out. Just with the fine details, because I'm a pretty organized person, but I don't trust myself with numbers. I definitely mess up with numbers. It's good to have a second person to just help you out, double check, and also be on call if anything goes wrong during the tour. Yeah, anyways, but that's when it started. Yeah.
WC: Interesting. So there's a long anticipation period, but yet, there's not a huge gap. It's not the same as if, say, there's a band with three other people – or two other people, if it's still your trio – who you aren't already playing with all the time. But your trio is basically, it's the Raagaverse rhythm section, and so you're already an ongoing part of your lives. And if it takes 18 months to get you out on the road as the Noah Franche-Nolan Trio, really, nobody cares, probably, right? Because you're already spending a lot of time together, collaborating on Raagaverse, you're like, okay, whatever, sounds good.
NFN: That's it. Yeah, no, and Nick and I have that band Dream House now. So yeah, between those three bands some configuration of us four... And Shruti and I, we did a lot of duo gigs over the summer. So there's always a configuration of us playing together in some ways, which is awesome.
WC: So you had been in BuckingJam before with Raagaverse, or was it your first time playing there?
NFN: No, no, yeah Raagaverse hasn't played at BuckingJam. When we were in Calgary, we played for the the Calgary Winter Jazz Festival, and we played at a bar, and I'm forgetting the name of the bar.
WC: Is it the Ironwood Stage and Grill?
NFN: It was not. I played there with Harry Vetro. But this was the the King Eddy.
WC: Okay.
NFN: The King Eddy. That's it. It's a really nice space. They've got a nice piano there too. But no, this was my first time playing at BuckingJam, and it was awesome. It was really special. The closest, the most similar experience I can think of is playing at Roedde House, because they're both heritage homes. But Buckingham is a much larger space: it can host, I believe, up to 54 people, whereas the maximum capacity for Roedde House is 34, something like that. But it's an awesome space, and Lisa and Tom [Buck, the home owners and concert presenters at BuckingJam Palace] are really incredible hosts and generous and yeah it was a blast.
WC: Yeah. And then you move on to this theatre in Lethbridge, and I'm very curious about it. Because I don't know who that is, and who the key people are who make jazz possible in Lethbridge. So what was it like going and playing there?
NFN: Yeah, Lethbridge... there was also the possibility of playing at the Yardbird Suite in Edmonton, but the dates didn't really line up. And so I started searching for another place and, funny enough, I have a student in Lethbridge. He just studies with me privately, but through Zoom, of course. But his father is a volunteer for the Lethbridge Jazz and Blues Society. They also have another name: Mosaic is the name of the organization.
I was mostly coordinating with Mike and James from the Lethbridge Jazz Society, and they were again really kind and generous with their time. They really took care of us well. They set up the theatre: it's the Sterndale Bennett Theatre, which is right [in] downtown Lethbridge. They put us up in a really beautiful Sandman hotel. And yeah, no, it was just a really nice experience. A lot of students from the University of Lethbridge came out, because they have a music program, and we got to talk to a lot of them after the show. I think there were a lot of high school students who came out. We had about 70-something folks come out to our show. It was a great experience, it was really awesome.
WC: And then of course you go to the Bassment in Saskatoon, the big stop there that jazz and folk people play at. So how was that, had you played in Saskatoon [before], what was it like?
NFN: Yeah, I had played in Saskatoon at the Bassment before with Harry Vetro's band, many... I dunno, five years ago or something like that. The Bassment is so nice, it's really special. Their piano is... every piano that I played was. amazing, but yeah, the piano at at the Bassment, it's just so smooth. You're going to get a beautiful sound no matter what out of that instrument, it's incredible. And the sound was just so nice, soundcheck was super easy. Lovely space.
It's fun, because they've got a wall similar to the Yardbird Suite where in the back of the... in the green room at the Yardbird Suite, they ask you to sign the wall; and at the Bassment, there's a corner in the venue where the artists go and they sign the wall, and they also asked you to sign the poster that they made. And they actually gave me a poster, which I've got taped on my wall, right in front of me here, just to remind me that the tour went well [laughs] and that I should do this again. But no, I really loved playing over there. It was great.
WC: I'm so happy to hear that it all went really well. I was wondering if we could get into some of the more nuts-and-bolts nerdy artists’ stuff. It might be useful to other people who are taking on the same endeavour.
So we can start with the booking of it, which perhaps you did, or perhaps you and Harmeet collaborated on. But if you think back that long time ago, not necessarily down to specifically word-for-word, but what did you tell them? How did you have to present yourself to these venues to get them booked and get them done?
NFN: It's a good question. I reached out to them on my own. Well, I already had a personal connection with all of these venues already, right? With The Bassment, I had already played there. With Lethbridge, my student's father put me in touch with with the Lethbridge Jazz Society. And with BuckingJam, Lisa who runs BuckingJam works closely with Jodi. Yeah. And so there was already a strong personal connection with those three venues, which I... if I were to say, really, I think that's one of the most important things with booking. Just with working in the music community, it is about relationships. That's a huge part of it.
But in my email, I was certainly working off of the momentum of my record, right? So my record had come out, and I shared a little bio. I said that it would be an honour to be considered to play in their venue. And yeah, I think at that point, my record had already started having some success with streaming, so I believe I mentioned that in my email. It was basically just: “Hello. Your venue is really awesome, or I've heard that your venue is really awesome. And here's my music, here's what's been happening with it. This is who's playing, these people. And it would be a true honour to just be considered, for you to consider booking me.” Yeah, that's that's how I went about it with the emails.
WC: Yeah. That sounds good. One other little thing to hit on that subject. So you start out with, okay, I know I want to play at least three cities, or I know I want to play at least in Alberta and another province. Or do you get one show first, and then you're just like, okay, I’ve got to find another show. You already mentioned that there was a date consideration where maybe you could have played somewhere, but it didn't work out. How does it end up being these venues?
How does it end up being this amount of stuff? Because I imagine that's a big block for some people who want to do this: just the idea of simultaneously planning out playing in three, or five, or seven or ten cities is a lot.
NFN: Yeah, I was lucky enough to have been exposed to, I guess you'd call it, the Western Canada jazz venue touring map through really [going] across Canada with Harry's band. So when I played with Harry, we toured Western Canada. We did Frankie's. We didn't do Hermann's, but that's certainly on the table. That's a great venue to do in British Columbia. There's Vernon, which actually, my trio is we're playing in Vernon on January 26th. And then you've got Medicine Hat, that's another possibility. You've got Canmore and then Calgary. Calgary has a few options, right? You can either play through JazzYYC or BuckingJam [...] I was aware of a sort of a plan due to having toured with Harry. I knew that this plan could work. I had done it before. And then knowing Jodi, that's kind of her route. So you see that there's this map, you can follow a path.
And then it's just about finding the dates that work, really. I knew that I wanted to do it on a long weekend so that Nick and Jodi and I would not lose too much work or have to sub out of too much work, right? So we did it on the long weekend for Remembrance Day, and I just tried to line it up, you know. I just worked with what was happening and lined up the dates. You're looking at a tight group of four days.
I mean, we had early mornings, right? We flew out of Vancouver on Thursday morning and we get to Calgary, pick up the rental car, drive to BuckingJam, soundcheck, play the gig. Leave the next morning, go to Lethbridge, soundcheck, play the gig. Get up quite early to drive from Lethbridge to Saskatoon, go and do the soundcheck there, play the gig. And then we got back, we had a 6 AM flight on Sunday morning out of Saskatoon. And I got back in time to actually work my normal Sunday morning service at Brentwood, and run a jam session at the VSO [School of Music] for the students. It's all about doing it tight. It of course, it requires energy, but that's how I went about it.
WC: Wow. The Sunday morning, that's awesome. That's an intense schedule. And I didn't realize that you did the drive to Saskatoon too, instead of a flight there. My goodness.
NFN: Yeah, no, we just flew to Calgary and then drove, and then flew back to Vancouver.
WC: Well, I definitely know that if you want a Music BC Artist Travel Grant, you need to have a tour of at least seven shows, so I know you don't have that. Now, you could have wrapped this into some Canada Council thing, but I imagine this was your own endeavour.
NFN: Yeah, I had applied for grants. I had applied for Canada Council grants and was not successful. But you know, that's what it is, that's just the grant world.
For total transparency, it ended up costing 700 dollars. Which was actually better than I thought it would be; I tallied up everything when I got back home, and due to really good CD sales, I lost less money than I thought I would. But that's the truth about touring without a grant, right? It's a business investment.
That's what it is: you're investing in connecting with people outside of your city with the hopes that that will bring you more work. And hopefully either get you a grant the next time you tour, because you can prove that you can successfully book your own tour, or it just gets you more work. I certainly made some connections out in those cities, and I think more work will come, and I think that work will be more sustainable.
And then, of course you gather more listeners: they follow you on Spotify and Instagram, and maybe a few will buy your record on Bandcamp, but Bandcamp is quite niche. No it's an investment. But all in all, having completed the tour, I'd say that it was a really successful tour and it was certainly worth the investment. I definitely see a trajectory where I don't think that it will be in the red sometime in the future.
WC: That's very cool. You figured out what the loss position of the tour was, and it's not a massive number; and you also know that it's part of a longer story, and that's how it all makes sense to you. I love it. Thanks for sharing that.
NFN: Yeah.
WC: Yeah. Is there anything else before we wrap here that you would want to talk about the tour, let people know, point towards [...] is there anything else on your mind currently?
NFN: I think one of the most special things about touring, and especially touring my music with my band – my band that is made up of some of my best friends that I love very much – what was I think really special was the opportunity to connect on a personal level with so many new people. I really made an effort to talk to the audience during the show and after the show. I really saw the tour as an opportunity to... you truly share something with others. I share a bit of myself and also share... I tried to just share some empathy and some love, through the music and through our presence on the stage.
Also, after the concert, just being open to talking to people. I'd say that was a really positive experience, and I feel personally fulfilled by all of that sort of connection that happened. It was very meaningful and nice. I'd say that was really special. And certainly, I have to give a big thanks to the hosts of all of our concerts for facilitating a really welcoming and warm environment for our concert.
WC: I love it. You're as thoughtful as always. You shared honestly what was going on about a whole bunch of things, because you've been up to so much over the last 30 days – and over the last year and a half, as you said, because that's how far it goes back. Thank you for telling me about it.
NFN: Yeah. Thank you. Thanks for having me.
