Andrew McClelland (AKA Li’l Andy) poured his soul into a 10 year long project to create the fictional world & music of Hezekiah Procter.
Montreal Rocks spoke to Andy about his origin story, using technology time forgot, what was needed to embody that character, what Montreal joints would Hezekiah enjoy and what is the modern snake oil.
Origin Story
Li’l Li’l Andy came from an “unmusical household.”
On the other side of their farm stood a li’l church the family would attend, most Sundays. Andy’s dad was the caretaker, and his mom was the organist.
Young Andy, who was around 3 or 4, could not understanding why he couldn’t sit beside his mom. She eventually agreed.
“One of my earliest memories is me sitting beside her in church while she plays the organ. I just kind of sat there and got in her way.”
Thus began Andy’s experience with music.
“I was always a big record collector. When my dad inherited from the farm an old gramophone, it came with all the records that his family would have bought. My brother, sister and I liked it because we would wind up the gramophone, with the arm on the side, and play these fiddle tunes like Turkey in the Straw, Hallelujah! I’m a Bum…all these old tunes that just seemed to come from another world.”
Andy then got into playing guitar at the age of 11.
His musical journey took a crossroads, when he got the Robert Johnson Box Set on cassette, at the age of 13, because of the picture on the cover.
“He just seemed to come from this entirely different world. This wasn’t the world that Jimi Hendrix, Led Zeppelin, or Pearl Jam were coming from. He appeared ghostly and a bit dangerous.”
Andy would find other artists like Jimmy Rogers, Hank Williams, whose music was “a portal to another time. It took me so outside the place I grew up, and the rest of the crappy music that was in the media environment at that time. You couldn’t help but be touched by it.”
Andy would use this music to time travel to another world. Maybe it was a simpler time, but one filled with pain and struggle, which bled into the music, no matter how rudimentary the recording was.
Andy found a parallel universe where Hezekiah Proctor could have existed if he was real.
Hezekiah Proctor
As Hezekiah began taking form, his music was beginning to take form…but it needed to be captured.
Andy went in search of old technology for years, but it was a tall order. To take an old recording and make it sound good, is much easier, then recording something to make it sound old.
To get the sound of that time, Ben Cassie (drums) suggested the Wire Recorder, from the 1930s, which is like a reel-to-reel tape machine, but uses steel wire instead.
One was finally found, after a year, in Quebec City from an old Cathedral who had used it to record their Latin sermons.
They were able to track the songs to both the wire recorder, and modern tape at their studio.
The idea was to release two versions, one old and one new.
“When we would listen to things back on the wire recorder, it just responded as a piece of technology to higher sounds, like tenor singing.”
Li’l Andy has more of a bass sound, so he had to adapt his whole singing style to fit the technology of that period.
“It had to become performance art, in the recording studio, where I would be signing, and we would stop the tape. Sam, the banjo player would say: Were you Hezekiah on that track?”
They found that when Andy’s voice fell to his normal register, it just didn’t sound as good, so he had to sing at the top of his range.
It was a way to get into character, just like an actor who practices method acting.
To be Hezekiah requires the costume, and forethought as to what he would say.
“It was a strange thing to undergo with friends in a studio where we were all playing other characters.”
They discovered that the guitar/banjo licks and fiddle styles didn’t work if they sounded too much like 50s Bluegrass.
They had to hold back and play a simpler strumming pattern, more reflective of that period.
Tintype Process
Even the pictures for the project went through a meticulous process to be period authentic using a Tintype Camera.
There are over 30 steps in the Tintype process!
While on tour in the Yukon, they met Paul Elter, a Tintype photographer.
Once the band got to his studio in costume, in front of the painted backdrop, Paul announced: “If we’re going at a good pace, we could get 4, maybe 5 exposures a day.”
The cover photo of the book was likely take #4 at 5PM, the tail end of the shoot.
If Hezekiah Were to Visit Montreal
It goes without saying that, if Hezekiah were visiting Montreal today, Andy would take him to the legendary Monday Hillbilly Night at the Wheel Club.
Even if I’m not a country guy…there is something special and incredibly enjoyable from that experience.
Andy would also take him to Barfly’s Sunday’s Bluegrass Jam. “That’s where I learned how to perform in public, sing into a microphone and drink beer.”
In fact, every musician who joined Li’l Andy’s band were initially met at Barfly.
Thursday at Grumpy’s for the Old Time Jam would be on the agenda as well as Casa de Popolo.
“Casa has definitely put Montreal on the map, particularly for experimental music. This project is experimental music and experimental recording.”
While many of these venues might struggle to pay the bills, it’s “someone’s labor of love, just like making the music itself.”
I’m sure Hezekiah would be proud that the music he loves is still relevant and brings together a community at various locations on a weekly basis.
Imagining Hezekiah
Hezekiah was born from reading liner notes from retrospective CDs like that of Old Hat Records or Bear Family Records.
Andy is also the host of a CKUT show called The Country Classics Hour.
“I always wanted to refresh my memory and have anecdotes to tell in between songs. I found that I could pour over absolutely any poorly written music biography or CD liner notes and my brain just retains that information, where it discards much more useful information.”
Hezekiah became this amalgamation of people like Charlie Poole, Clayton McMichen, or The Monroe Brothers.
If we imagined Hezekiah’s first memory, it would be the rural poverty that he grew up in.
“There is a tendency in what we can call the Alt-Country movement to romanticize that poverty and say that early country music was not commercial.”
Yet, as Andy explains, they didn’t have the luxury of dividing what was an artistic decision versus a commercial one. It was simply survival.
They were doing something crazy: forsaking a job in agriculture, a mine or factory, in the pursuit of making a living with music.
There was simply no concept of selling out when an opportunity arose. They just took that opportunity with both hands.
“Hezekiah’s life, as I image it, is very much like that. He grows up in a community that gets picked up in the gem mining boom that happened in North Carolina in the beginning of the 20th Century. His father makes poor financial decisions, loses all the family’s money. That’s how he gets a big chip on his shoulder and becomes a Marxist at the same time, seeing that the kind of people he comes from are really exploited.”
Hezekiah joins a traveling Medicine Show with Dr. William R Kerr of the Indian Remedy Company of Spartanburg South Carolina (a real person of history), selling snake oil. He claimed he had an herbal remedy from the Kickapoo tribe, but it was just something he concocted in his bathtub.
“It had enough laxative in it to give people a good bowel movement, and enough rubbing alcohol in it, to make people feel like they were having a good time.”
The same could be accomplished today with a burrito & a Margarita from Chipotle!
“It was actually a weird recording experiment that I thought had absolutely no commercial potential.”
Yet, that only added to the adventure, and it became a passion project.
When they started to imagine a live show, “there was really no other way. I had to be him. I had to do these songs…sing in his style, play in his style.”
But then what? To default to being Andy’s 21st Century self during stage banter would break the illusion.
“I realized I had to grip people with who he was. I had to mimic, without being hokey or cheesy, the kind of entertainment that would exist in Vaudeville or Medicine Shows.”
As Hezekiah would perform on stage, in between the songs, he would have to use humor to give the audience a rounded-out show. Being a spectator, was a big deal, a night out, so they expected more than just music.
“In the early days of Country Music, you were expected to be a comedian at the same time.”
Period Clothing
Andy is a fan of Sheesham, Lotus and ‘Son, the darlings of the Folk festivals of the last 15 years.
“They have studied banjo and old-time fiddle styles more than anyone I’ve ever seen…and I love them.”
Teilhard Frost the fiddler of the band has the most extensive collection of haberdashery and old-time clothing. He supplied the band with bags upon bags of clothes to contribute to the project, and the photoshoot.
Armed with his encyclopedic knowledge of every facet of the period, down to the way a pocket watch would be carried, he helped make this project even more authentic with an unmatched attention to detail.
Merch
Andy’s mom is amazing at knitting everything, even creating sock cozies for cellphones, something that would not be needed back in Hezekiah’s time.
Maybe fake remedies & elixirs would be cool to have, except that the Canadian Food Inspection Agency would frown upon such a concoction…especially if made in a bathtub.
You will however find the box set of vinyl and the book to take home.
First Instagram Post
Andy helped with the pronunciation and proper province for Quyon, Quebec.
“That’s where my grandmother was born. Gavans is an old Country bar on the main street of Quyon, which has a hilarious Irish theme. I’ve always loved places like that, that seem to exist outside of history and seemed to have weathered the onslaught of progress. I’ve never played there, but I would love to play in such an authentic Country bar.”
Li’l Andy also adds to the list: The Wheel Club and old-time diners like Chalet BBQ in NDG.
2022 Snake Oil
When asked what is the Snake Oil of 2022, Andy shared that “we do spend an awful lot of money to buy packets of data on this thing called the Internet, which is not a finite resource in itself. Some of the richest people in the world have profited from the fact that we’ve started to think of the Internet juice that runs into our homes in the same way as the physical natural gas or water that runs in…when it’s really nothing. It’s not even a cloud. It’s a shimmer.”
Some, if not most of it, might also give you bowel movements.
Conclusion
Li’l Andy painstakingly created an imaginary country music pioneer, complete with a background and history, in the form of a book.
The band recorded using long lost technology to give the project that authentic sounding sound, coupled with a modern version of the songs.
They spent countless hours posing for a handful of photographs using a technique that most don’t even know exists.
All this to create a project, with no financial motivation.
That’s the best part. When one creates without a need to make a return on investment, that passion bleeds through the final product.
The life and times of Hezekiah Proctor give us a glimpse into the not so distant past where a musician would have to survive by any means necessary…possibly even murder. At the very least, he probably caused an uncomfortable evening for any tasting the tonic he peddled.
But his music lives on, a mixtape of Andy’s countless mental liner notes of an era that speaks to his past, and present.
Our memories are not always the best judge when it comes to the good old days but taking a trip to revisit these is always one worth taking.
Connect with Li’l Andy
Website
Facebook
Instagram
YouTube
Spotify
Writer: Randal Wark is a Professional Speaker and MasterMind Facilitator with a passion for live music. You can follow him on Instagram, Twitter and YouTube. His Podcast RockStar Today helps musicians quit their day jobs with out-of-the-box advice from Ted Talk Speakers, Best Selling Authors and other interesting Entrepreneurs and Creatives. He created the Rock Star Today Music Business Jam Session for musicians. Randal is a collector of signed vinyl, cassettes and CDs.
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