KENORA -- Latin blues band Big Boogaloo falls silent and a smooth solo rises from a standup bass leaning against the back of the stage.
The instrument is acoustic; classy. It’s well-traveled and weathered, just like the man who played it in the studio recording.
But as the video camera's lens contracts, Rob Lindstrom is gone.
The 60-year-old backbone of Big Boogaloo died of a heart attack on July 4, 2014. The band has been undergoing lineup changes and creative redirection since Lindstrom’s passing, as if life after “Lippy” needs to mean something new.
It was Lindstrom and his wife Audrey who insisted the band take their cover of Tom Waits’ Jockey Full of Bourbon into the studio. This week’s video release for the song drains the last drops from the bottom of the bottle that was that time.
“I think the biggest thing by doing the video is to show how much of an influence he was on each of us individually, in a different way,” says guitarist Darcy Ura.
“Everyone got to, I guess, say ‘farewell’ in our own way.”
Ura played electric guitar on the record but his former student Cole Zabloski shoulders it in the video while Ura sits behind a Latin acoustic. Its imagery is Big Boogaloo’s reality -- the passage of time and doing right by a broader community.
Jockey Full of Bourbon is the first page in that new chapter. Ura’s teaching colleague George Brunton and young videographer Nick Camire shot and edited the video. With more flexible membership and different kinds of artists coming on board, Ura foresees Big Boogaloo’s future as a multimedia creative movement rather than a band.
“We’re trying to get this collective established so we’re starting to get people who are interested, seeing where we can find some simpatico and going from there. This is our first foray into that,” Ura says.
