Page 6...Dale Russell Interview Continued...
Steiss: Why did you say yes? What was it about that six week experience?
DALE: Well, it was like - when I moved from Portage la Prairie to Winnipeg my eyes were opened in a large way, and then when I went on the road in Canada my eyes were opened in a large way. But when I did this tour with The Guess Who, my eyes were opened in a larger way than I’d ever experienced before, and I saw not only a great market for the band, but playing in the United States and everything, I just felt like I was learning on every level. Life, travel, music, everything was a lot different than I thought it was going to be. So I knew that I had finally reached the sea and it was time to start swimming, and I’ve been here ever since, and seen a few members go through the band, come and go, until we finally - the keyboard chair came open and I said let’s get Leonard and we got Leonard, and Leonard brought Terry in, and the rest is what you know.
Steiss: I thought it was interesting, on the Prime Time Country show, when Bob Eubanks asked why it’s been fifteen years since you released a new album - Jim just turned to you, and you started talking about the composition of the band.
DALE: Yeah, well Jim and I - ever since I came out, he and I used to take these walks - we’d go out in whatever town we were in and just walk for an hour or so, and talk - talk about our dreams, what we wanted to do, and it’d always been Jim’s dream to re-form the band and bring it back to a point of glory, and re-establish its integrity, basically. We talked about all kinds of things - the way we’d like to see it go, and what kind of a band we’d like to see it be, like a band that could be all that it could be but at the same time be the goose that lays the golden egg so that the other members of the band could go ahead and pursue other creative things, and still always have the same membership with the band. And those were our dreams, and we looked and looked for different players - we had various guys come and go, until we finally felt that we had not only the membership, but we had the voice that we could hang our hat on, and that we had all the ingredients necessary to take the chance, because it’s an expensive procedure to take the chance. Even when we found Terry, we knew we had the voice - but there’s still growing pains that we all had to go through to put that chemistry together, and be able to rely on each other and trust each other, that we would all be here for the long run. A new guy coming into this band - it can be very intimidating, and it can also be very unsettling, because it’s been my experience that what you ultimately wind up facing, in a band like this, is yourself. You become the true testimony of your beliefs and your will to be successful. It takes a lot of time away, a lot of sacrifice when it comes to your loved ones, and it’s not for everybody. So, you come face-to-face with that, and you deal with these issues in different ways. Plus you’re looking at guys who’ve been here various lengths of time, and bear road scars of one kind or another - and it’s not an easy thing to commit to. Then ultimately you reach a level where you say okay, I’m here - we may as well take the shot, and that’s where this band did get to, as to the desire and the wherewithal to take the shot, and that’s what we’re attempting now.
