Guy Donis: Transcript
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Guy Donis:
What is nice is that when I take another instrument, it's the first steps you take on the new instruments. You're making huge progress, so it's like, it's great. It's just like, oh, I'm getting better, really, while on the banjo, if I want to get a little, little bit better, it takes a lot of work. So it's like sometimes it's good to, if I decide to work on a piece on the mandolin and then I can, after a few minutes I can play just like, oh wow, that's cool! On the banjo if I want to learn something new, it's a challenge, but that's what makes it interesting too.
Leah Roseman:
Hi, you're listening to Conversations with Musicians with Leah Roseman. This podcast strives to inspire you through the personal stories of a diversity of musicians worldwide with in-depth conversations and great music that revealed the depth and breadth to a life and music. Guy Donis grew up in Belgium where he had fallen in love with the banjo and proceeded to dedicate his life to it. In this episode, he describes how he taught himself five string banjo, learned about bluegrass and expanded his musical horizons by collaborating with jazz and classical musicians. He immigrated to Canada many years ago and is well known in the Montreal music scene. He's toured Canada extensively with Notre Dame de Grass and other bands, and in this episode he talks about his newest project, the Montreal Bluegrass League, and a track from their latest album is included in this podcast. Some tracks from his two trio albums are also included earlier in this episode in which you can hear Guy's progressive jazz-influenced original music. Like all my episodes, you can watch this on my YouTube channel or listen to the podcast, and I've also linked the transcript to my website, leahroseman.com, where you can sign up for my weekly newsletter to get access to sneak peeks for upcoming guests. Please do share this episode with your friends and consider supporting this series by buying me a coffee. The link is in the description. Now, to the episode.
Hi, Guy, thanks so much for joining me here today.
Guy Donis:
My pleasure.
Leah Roseman:
It's so interesting to me that you're a bluegrass player when you're from Belgium.
Guy Donis:
Yeah, it's a weird thing. I admit that. Well, you never know why all of a sudden an instrument just catch your attention. I come from a musician family and I've tried several instruments in my youth, and one day I saw a banjo player and I was fascinated for some reason. You never know why. Exactly.
Leah Roseman:
What was the context? Was it a concert or at a cafe?
Guy Donis:
We were in a community cottage kind of, and so all people from all around Belgium or even Europe could come there and stay there for the night. There was maybe 10, 15 rooms and we were used to go there really often with my parents. It was part of an organization, and so one day somebody showed up there with a banjo and my father was playing guitar, so they tried to play together and I was fascinated. I don't know why. I mean, the spectacular thing is probably what got my attention first. That's what people remember of the banjo first. It's so many notes all of a sudden just pops out of that instrument.
Leah Roseman:
So I've had two other banjo players on this series, but they play claw hammer style, so quite different.
Guy Donis:
Yeah, totally different. I mean, many people ask me, oh, can you teach me claw hammer? And I say, well, no, I'm sorry I don't play. Very few banjo player play both styles. I know a few, but the technique is so different. It's even counterproductive, I think, if you try to play both because the movement is so different. When I play bluegrass, I want my thumb to be as free as possible and moving on all the strings as possible. When you play claw hammer, your thumb is stuck on the first string most of the time, and you want it to be there all the time. So you see it's just like, but some guys achieve it. I mean, they can do it, but personally I never tried it. I tried it once or twice and say, well, no, it's so opposite to my usual technique. I won't go deep into that.
Leah Roseman:
You're about to hear Guy's composition Tchestou from his album with the Guy Donis Trio with Marie-Soleil Bélanger on violin and Solon McDade on Double Bass. (music)
I know we're going to have some excerpts from some of your albums, but would you mind just doing a little demo or maybe showing a little bit?
Guy Donis:
Sure. Let me first put on my picks. So that's what you need when you play bluegrass. You're going to use three fingers, usually a plastic on your thumb and metal on the other two we play what is really typical of the bluegrass banjo is the rolling thing. That's why we play so many notes and we have this continuous flow going all the time. It's really like that. It's really that technique. So it was like if I speak about the different techniques, the first people that were playing the banjo in the bluegrass style were mainly using the fact that the banjo is open. It's open tuned, which mean I have a G chord without needing to use my left hand. So you can of course do something really easily just adding a few movement on your left hand.
I just hit one spot with my left hand. The rest is just open strings, and it's based basically on arpeggios, which mean I use mainly the notes that are in the chord. It just like G D and G again. Okay. And what is really special with that banjo is that you have that fifth string. Usually on the five string banjo, you have a little key here to tune the fifth string. Mine is a bit special. I have all my five keys on the top because the fifth string goes into the neck here and goes out here in the kind of tunnel. But so sometime people ask me, is it really a five string banjo? Yes, it is, but you just don't see the usual key here on the fifth string. So I have a shorter string here on my fifth string that is the other way around of what you would find normally on a string instrument, which means that you have, if I go to bottom four string third, second first, and my fifth string is my highest string, so my higher string is close to my lower strings, which sounds totally weird.
There is no logic in that. I always wonder why do somebody add that string? And I had first banjo in hand, I had no idea what to do with that string, lost in Belgium, wanting to learn the major. It was like, what am I going to do with that? But after a while, you realize how helpful it is for different reason. So my first string is tuning G, but in fact as it's shorter, it makes the same note as my first string, which allowed me to make a lot of close notes really easily here. So it's just like this proximity of these notes on different strings allowed me to make melodies really quickly without having to, if I had to do that on the guitar, I would have to move my hand all over the neck. Here I just take one position and I'm able to do a lot of things within the same positioning because of that proximity of the notes. So I come back to my first bluegrass style, so working mainly with the arpeggios. And so I'm using different rolls like forward roll, we call that
Thumb index, middle backward wall the other way around middle index thumb or alternate thumb index middle. And it's basically these three movements that you move over different strings that allow you to play like this style. And this style became famous in the late 1940s with a man named Earl Scruggs and he became famous - when you want instrumental music to become well known, there was one way that is great is if it's become movie music, if it's used in a movie or in a TV series. And I mean, he has one music that went famous because it was the music of movie named Bonnie and Clyde, and that was the famous for banjo player at least tune that named Foggy Mountain Breakdown. And it's really based on this arpeggios really based on that, another tune went famous because it was the music of a popular TV series, which was the Beverly Hillbillies and pretty famous in the fifties too.
So it's just like that's how the five string banjo between became really a leading instrument in the bluegrass music. It was like that Mr. Earl Scruggs that popularized that three finger styles. I mean, he was not the inventor of it, but that's the guy that really settled the technique. And really he was incredible because, so it was in the late forties and the way he was playing at that time, still listening to it now, which is like 80 years, well, yeah, like 70 years later, he's playing his top notch. He directly understood and directly played it at the best it could have been played. Why normally when you develop a technique for an instrument takes a while and the next guy takes it to another level, but his playing is still, if you listen to it now, is still at the same level as the top players now it's still as powerful, it's still as fast and still is clean, which is amazing. I mean, wow, that guy got it directly, which is really impressive. Later in the process of the instrument, people have developed different way to use the instrument just so instead of playing just arpeggios,
They managed to start to play scale
On the instrument. So that was called the melodic style because that allows you to imitate and to reproduce what was really popular, which was the fiddle tunes that a lot of people were playing in all time and bluegrass music. And with the arpeggio style, you could kind of play around the melody, but not having it precisely like a fiddle player or violin player or a mandolin player would play it. So that melodic style allow you to develop the playing to be more closer to the real melody of the tune instead of doing something around it with your arpeggios. And the third technique was to again, making, so the melodic style was using scales in a very special way, typical to the banjo, which is that I play my first note, it's a G scale here that fits the instrument because I'm in open G, so I start my scale on my thirst string and to play my next note, which is higher, I'm going to a lower strings. That's kind of a strange way that's typical to the banjo. So I'm playing my G here, I'm playing my A, my G on my third string, I'm playing my A on my fourth string. Then I'm going to my second string open B, and I'm going to my third string again to go to my higher next note, I'm going to a lower string.
Okay, now again, my first string, second string,
And I finish it with my fifth string. So you can play almost after a while, you develop that and you use the open strings, which you can play, the most common scale you need. I mean in bluegrass and old-time music, it's based on pretty much the same kind of chords. So it's always in the key that is playable with the violin. So it means it's like in a D or in G sometime. Okay. So when scales on the banjo, you actually can play these tunes pretty much. Now there are ways like to play any keys if you want, but I won't talk too much about, it's really like for banjo geeks maybe. And now later people have developed a way to play scales, which what we call single strings, which is more closer to what the guitar player would do, which mean we play several noss on the same string. If I play, you see, it looks even closer to what a guitar player would do, which mean I place two notes on the same string and I go to the higher string to make the higher note. It's more logical too, it looks more logical that,
So you have two ways to play these scales. The melodic style or the single stringing styles and single string came pretty early in the process too. I mean even in the 1940s, fifties, at the same time as Earl Scruggs, people was playing this type, but it wasn't until the famous banjo player named Béla Fleck came in and really started to develop that single string thing up to an incredible level that all the possibilities of the single string came out. And so it allows you to improvise just more closely to what a guitar player would do. And so he was able to play in any style of music because he could master the original style. I mean the basic, based on the arpeggios, you could master the melodic style, you could do scale. I mean, if I want to make a melodic scale in the E-flat, I can do that. It is possible you just have to know yohur neck a little bit, and then you can do the same scale E flat, but melodic style
In the single string style. So you have plenty of possibilities to do things in the different styles and also what is typical to this instrument and to strings instruments in general. But with the banjo, I think a little bit more that you can find the same note in several different places. So if I want to play a D, I can play a D with my open first or here or here or here. And so having these two elements, which I can play a lot of notes close to the same position, and I can find the same note on different plays on the neck, it makes it really interesting and it can be confusing at some time because I mean, okay, which is the best fingering to play the same note? I mean, if I play a simple (music) or if I play (music), I played the same note here and I have played it with three different fingerings while on the piano, if you want to play that note, there was one way to do it, not three ways, and I probably would have more if I was looking forward to it. So it makes it incredibly interesting, but can be confusing at one point.
Leah Roseman:
So listening to your albums Guy, it seems like Béla Fleck was definitely an influence.
Guy Donis:
Well, of course. I mean, it's just like how can you avoid it, obviously, I mean it really like revolution. He really made a revolution in the technique of the banjo. But what is even more important that he made a kind of big step up with musically what you can do with the instrument, which is even more important because many, many players have great technique, but after all, it's just like, okay, how do you use it to make great music? And that's what he made. I mean, it's comparable to Django Reinhardt made for the guitar. It's really to that level. He took the guitar and all of a sudden, wow, you can do that on jazz with the guitar. Béla Fleck has done the same with the banjo. You can take the banjo and the banjo because the banjo was not taken seriously as an instrument for a long, long time. In the early 20th century, banjo was highly popular and you had banjo orchestras and they were playing in classical music, in ragtime music, and all of a sudden it just disappeared. It was also an instrument that was used a lot in comedy, things like white people color their face in black and were playing banjo. It became an instrument that nobody wanted to hear that much about.
Leah Roseman:
It had a racist connotation. So even though the banjo came from Africa originally.
Guy Donis:
Yeah, exactly. And so when Earl Scruggs came in and make the banjo popular in Bluegrass world, it was great because banjo became popular again. But it was in a very narrow musical community. The Bluegrass fans loved Earl Scruggs, but I mean, when Béla Fleck came in and started playing with Chick Corea and Joshua Bell and all these incredible names in any kind of music, then all of a sudden the banjo was respected in any kind of music, which was great. For people like me, it mean that you don't have to prove to people that yes, banjo is worth listening to it. So when you were making music, nobody, well, the people that knew a little bit about wouldn't ask you, well, what do you play that silly instrument? Well, it's not a silly instrument, it's just like, I mean, no music instrument is silly, it's just the way you use it that is silly or not the same was sometime I listened to some players that play. I was once bothered in my life with a djembe player that was playing near my house and he was playing really badly. So I developed a really kind of hate for the djembe.
But when somebody is playing djembe very well, it's super nice. I mean, so no instrument is a joke or is I was one invited at the radio show at Radio Canada. They were making a special kind of segment. I don't remember what show it was. And they were talking about instruments that when once not considered serious. So they made one show about the accordion and then there was the banjo, and then there was a few others. And so yeah, it's all depends on the music you do. And so Béla is the guy that took the technique of the banjo to another level, but also took the banjo to another level of recognition amongst the music world in general. So that's incredibly important.
Leah Roseman:
I think "Paroles d'arbre", the speech of the trees, I guess we translate it that way?
Guy Donis:
Yeah, Exactly. Yeah. Tree talking maybe, I don't know,
Leah Roseman:
Tree talking. Yeah. So the title track actually, are you playing dobro on that?
Guy Donis:
No, I'm not playing dobro on that. It's Joe Grass that is playing dobro, on that particular track. I played a few tracks on dobro here and there, but when I need it on that track, he's playing the lead melody and he's making a solo. I had to ask somebody that is a serious dobro player, which I'm not.
Leah Roseman:
Okay, so do you want to speak to that album?
Guy Donis:
That album is just like, I already had a project that was a bit similar in when I was in Europe that I called Badiane at that time. So it was a bit the same instrumentation, which is double bass, violin, percussion, and banjo. So that was my first try to get out of bluegrass. And as my musical roots are really different from somebody that is from Kentucky or Texas or I always felt that I had to do something that was coming from my background musical background. And so that's the first band I started playing my own compositions and alongside the other band members. And so that Paroles d'arbre album is a bit like the following of that project. I took the same instrumentation again, and so I composed the whole album with that. And what was nice at that time that I was lucky enough to have a grant to write the album and then to record the album, which is one of the only time in my whole life I had that.
So all of a sudden I have plenty of time to just focus on writing and arranging, which was really great in my life. So I'm really happy with that album. It's probably the album that if somebody asked me which album of you should I listen to, if there was one album. And I would say that that's probably the one, even if it was recorded 15 years ago now or even more. But I still think that just because I had that amount of time to just think about nothing else but preparing that album, I think it's good. And now the only thing with this music is that people ask me, okay, what kind of music do you compose? And I'm like, eh, well you have the banjo, so it's related to bluegrass, but it's related also to my classical training that I had in my youth on the piano.
And then you have that jazz element because on my father that was listening and playing jazz, and then I have all this folk music, I am in Quebec here, and I try to play the Quebec traditional music as well. And so it's all these elements mixed together. And even, I mean, you can find if you listen to it and a little bit, I mean, when I was a teenager, I was listening to mainstream music to whatever rock pop music was, and you can hear these elements too in that. So it's a bit of mix of everything. It is just like what pops out at the moment, but I really try to make something that doesn't sound weird. Also, I want it to be easily listening music, even sometime if it's complicated stuff because of that banjo thing. But I mean, I want it to be easy to listen to when you tell people, well, it's a mix of classical and bluegrass and jazz, and people could tell, oh my God, what is that strange thing? I don't think it sounds strange in any way, it just, it's just what comes out of my mind and my fingers at one point.
Leah Roseman:
This next musical selection is the title track from Paroles d'arbre with the Guy Donis Trio. (music)
Well, it's a beautiful album, and also the second one you did with that group, Roots, Risks and Rêveries, I really like that tunes, Grenouillage.
Guy Donis:
Okay, yeah.
Leah Roseman:
Which I guess we translate as frog-like?I don't what you meant by that.
Guy Donis:
Yeah, it was like I have a little cottage in the middle of the woods somewhere, and every spring you have these frogs coming alive and making huge noise. And so that tune just came from that period. And so I was trying to find some songs and is a bit like, it, I will just show you if you want, it's a bit close to at first, to a guitar player technique, which is like you're just playing the bass string (music) with your thumb like this, which we don't do often with the, as I show you, a smaller (music), the thumb can play any string at any point, but the guitar players play finger picking, mostly going to play, alternate the thumb on the bass string and play the melody with the other two. So that's a bit the idea of that too. (music)
I won't go too far because we're going to listen to the real tune. So that was the idea of that tune. It's just like, oh, give it a different bounce. And you see a little bit of the guitar technique on that. And also, I mean, I had that bass and violin player on that, and so I always liked having strings like that arrangement of my tunes for some reason. Yeah, the one I'm really happy with, I mean, that tune is just like, well, that's a nice tune to listen to. And sometime you try to make things that are really complicated, and sometime the best tunes are the one that are not that difficult. And this one is a good example. I mean, to play on the banjo is probably one of the easiest tune on the cd, but after several years that I have recorded, I can say, well, that's one very good tune. So sometimes you try too hard, you want to make something impressive, and sometimes when you just cool down a little bit, that makes things more interesting.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah, it's beautiful. Thanks. So it's with Marie-Soleil Bélanger. How -is it Solon McDade? How does he pronounce?
Guy Donis:
McDade. Solon MdDade. Yeah. Okay. Yeah.
Leah Roseman:
Now you will hear Grenouillages from the Guy Donis Trio album Roots, Risks and Rêveries.(music)
And now let's go back to your youth. I'm curious, so you mentioned you were taking classical piano. How did the banjo really come into your life? You heard the banjo that one time. How old were you then?
Guy Donis:
I was around 17. So I took classical piano from probably seven, eight years old until my teenage years came in and that I did not want to play piano anymore. I think it was not that cool. And so that's something I regret deeply. I mean, I should have gone further. And then I was fooling around with the instrument in the house, as I told my father was playing guitar and my mother was playing classical piano, and my father could play a bit of jazz piano too. So I had all these instruments. I was fooling around on the piano still, but more on bit of jazzy stuffs. And at one point I asked to have a string instrument for myself, and I bought a little and they bought me a little mandolin. That was my first personal instrument. It was a small mandolin and I was playing it, but I was not that passionate about it.
I just fool around, but never really dig it. And so when we were at that place that I were talking sooner, and I watched that banjo player and I really stayed the whole evening just watching him. And a few, I don't remember it precisely, but weeks or months later, my father bought a five string banjo, and he pretended that it was because he always wanted one, but my guess is probably he saw my interest. And when I put my hand on that, it just never stopped. I mean, that was definitely my instrument. And I still playing some mandolin, I'm playing guitar. I used to play a little bit of dobro, but banjo was always my main thing. The other ones I played because I was trying to be a professional musician. You have to try to spread your possibilities a little bit because I mean, obviously in Quebec being a professional banjo players is kind of a myth, but I mean, banjo was always my focus.
And even I am playing the banjo for more than 40 some years now, and I'm still thinking it every day and enjoy it and finding new stuffs every day. So it's still a work in progress even after all these years, which is amazing, which is truly amazing. And what is amazing too that, I mean, when I took the banjo, when I first started playing the banjo, I started a few years after Béla Fleck did, and the way the banjo was played when I started playing it, and the way it's played now is a totally different thing. So all through my career, I had to just like, oh, that's a new way to do things. Let's work on that. Always, always. It's not like, I mean, you are a violin player, and I guess when you learn classical violin player, the technique is pretty much set up.
That's the way you do it, and it probably won't change much during your life. While the banjo at the stage when I started playing and where it is now, the technique has changed a lot. So I had to adapt myself and to try to keep up with all these guys that were coming in like Béla Fleck and some others, just because I wasn't interested. It was not like a competition. I didn't want to be like, but I was so interested and fascinated by all the aspects of the instrument, and I always wanted to, okay, how do these guys do that? I wanted to know how, so it was like it's still a work in progress. It sounds crazy after all these years, but that's make it really interesting. I'm still passionate about it.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah. Hi, just a short break from the episode, which I hope you're enjoying so far. If you want to check out over a hundred episodes you may have missed in addition to your podcast player or YouTube, I have an extensive website, leah roseman.com with show notes, transcripts, the complete catalog of episodes, and you can sign up there for my weekly newsletter to get access to sneak peeks of upcoming guests. Please do share your favorite episodes with your friends, follow me on social media and share my posts. And if you can spare a few dollars to help support the series, that would be amazing, and you can find that link in the show notes. I'm an independent podcaster and I really do need the help of my listeners. Now, back to the episode!
I mean, I've played violin for almost 50 years, but it's still very much a work in progress. And I used to think if I got, once I was a professional, I would have this time to learn other instruments, or I'd have that motivation, but no, it is still all about the violin.
Guy Donis:
Yeah. What is nice is that when I take another instrument, it's the first steps you take on the new instruments, you're making huge progress. So it's like, it's great. It's just like, oh, I'm getting better really while on the banjo, if I want to get a little bit better, it takes a lot of work. So it's like sometime it's good to, if I decide to work on a piece on a mandolin, and then I can, after a few minutes, I can play just like, oh, wow, that's cool! On the banjo if I want to learn something new, it's a challenge, but that's what makes it interesting too.
Leah Roseman:
Speaking of mandolin. Were you influenced by Sam Bush?
Guy Donis:
Well, yeah. I was influenced by Sam Bush and well, the mandolin. I never went deep in the mandolin. I went with the banjo, so I played pretty much what came out naturally with me on the mandolin. I never studied precisely one player or another, just like what my instinct tell me to do. But Sam Bush was a really important person musically. I mean, when I was first started playing the banjo, I mainly listened to what was called at the time Newgrass music, which is bluegrass music, but a bit with a more rock and roll attitudes, which is mixing really high power tune and having that kind of less stiffy attitude that most bluegrass bands had in the early days. And so there was a band named Newgrass Revival, and you have two eras of that band. The first was, but Sam Bush was part of both, and Béla Fleck came in that band in the second era of that band, it was the first big important band where people discovered Béla.
So it was like, but I mean the heart of the band and the soul of the band was really Sam Bush all the way. And so he was more important as a musician than as a mandolin player, because I never was studying mandolin that hard, but I was listening to that band. It was probably my main influence when I was starting playing the banjo, which was in the late seventies, early eighties. That was the thing that really like, wow, I love that kind of bluegrass technique, a bluegrass roots, but was that more like, go for it. Let's rock it kind of energy that Sam Bush was bringing.
Leah Roseman:
Now in Belgium, did you have mentors? Did you have teachers?
Guy Donis:
I have teachers. I would say it's people showed me some stuffs, but I learned, so people showed me the few rolls. So finally I was able to understand what my fifth string is supposed to do. And so it was helpful. Obviously, I wouldn't call them mentor because I pretty quickly, I was way ahead of them technically because I was so fascinated and I was working so hard on the instrument, so I learned a lot by myself, which was quite an adventure because at that time you have no internet, so no YouTube, no nothing. So to find informations about bluegrass banjo, playing in Belgium was kind of a struggle. I remember recording vinyl on tapes and then playing a five second sequence on the tape trying to understand what the guy was doing and trying to reproduce it. But luckily at that time, there was an important banjo player named Bill Keith that was living in France, and he was the main guy that developed the melodic style that we talked about sooner.
And he was living in France, and he put out a few books about the banjo and melodic style at that time. So I was lucky to find a few and to learn his playing upside and down. Really, really, I went deep in that. So that was a great help. But I mean, after that, it was mostly listening to, I remember at one point there was a company that made tapes series of teaching, so I had one with Béla Fleck. You had six tapes with all the book with that, and you can really go deep in his style. And I had another one made by another very important banjo player named Tony Trischka, which was Béla Fleck's mentor. And then Bill Keith, the guy that has developed the melodic style we spoke about. These three guys were really by far my main influences.
I wouldn't call them mentor because I met them, but I never learned with them because we were on different continents. Yeah. And when I put on my first band, I was obviously the only one that had an idea of what bluegrass music was, so I had to find a way that I was already the one that knew a little bit about it, even if I didn't know that much. So it was a kind of bluegrass band. And so it was, that's why when I started to record my own music, all of a sudden I was playing with jazz musicians and classical musicians, and these guys helped me so much because they knew so many things that I didn't knew harmonically speaking, how to make an arrangement, how to, it really brought me to another level of understanding music. It was not in bluegrass, but just my understanding of music was really held by these people.
So I mean, these peoples were, I had some mentors that were not banjo players, but people that agreed with playing with me, even if I was exploring and not really knowing where I was going to precisely. And when I came in Canada, I finally found some people that were really bluegrass musician, and I realized how different it is. So I had to go back to my bluegrass playing to be able to really be there because my playing was good already, but I mean, to really understand the music and play it the way it should be played, that's where I came in that I really got it finally.
Leah Roseman:
So you immigrated with your wife. Yeah. Why did you guys decide to come to Canada?
Guy Donis:
Oh, well, that's a story. I mean, Belgium is a really strange place. It's a place that is good if you want to have a regular life and a regular job. And don't it, I mean, if you want to work for the government or if you want to work in a bank or if you want to have, but for somebody like me that wanted to focus my life on music, it was not a comfortable place. I mean, it was a mess. I mean, not that I couldn't find a way to play music, but it was like, okay, you are not a usual working nine to five guys and all the administration. Belgium is a kind of an administration nightmare because you have the federal state that is divided in two communities, and then they divided in two in provinces and et cetera, and et cetera. And the fact that you have two, you have the French community and the Flemish community that speak Dutch and was like, they just can't work together.
Just like if somebody proposed something, the other one was rejected automatically. And so everything is complicated in Belgium because as they don't agree on anything, they have to make compromise on everything. I mean, the name of, just to give a strange example, the name of the soccer team in Belgium, what's written on their shirt is not Belgique or België which would be the name of the country in our national languages. It's written by Belgium in English, because no one would say, oh, you can put your, yeah, let's call it, okay. No, they just couldn't agree. So they decided, okay, let's write it in English. So nobody's going to argue that we use the national language over the other national language. So everything is complicated in Belgium that way. And I just couldn't stand it. At one point I was like, okay, guys, just get along with it.
And it would seem normal for a banjo player to feel weird in a country like this, but my wife had the same situation. She was stuck in a job and couldn't go elsewhere because when you get a job in Belgium, you stay there, you don't move, and that's not what we want to in our life. So at one point we decided, okay, that's enough. Let's go go somewhere else. I mean, both my brothers, they started to work for a company when they were 20 years old, and they worked for the same place until the last working day. And here in North America, it's not usual. Most people, they change over the, they like to change. It's when you meet an employer, it's actually a good thing if you have different experiences. I mean, Belgium is the other way around. If you want to change, oh, are you like somebody that makes a mess when you work somewhere?
I mean, you have instability issues. Well, that's there. And I mean, it was a great experience. I mean, I never looked back. I mean, I never once in my life thought, oh, maybe I should have stayed, or maybe I should go back. Whoa. No, no way. The way it's, it's really a freedom that I have here that I didn't have there. That's really the final point. It's a kind of freedom. It's just Belgium and Europe and a lot of countries in Europe and so tight in one way to see things that when you try to make your own things a little bit out of what's usual, it makes things complicated. So I don't want my life to be complicated. My professional life is weird enough, so I don't want things around to be complicated.
Leah Roseman:
Before we started recording today, I had asked you if you knew Flemish. I was curious about that because Belgium is a very small country, and you said you had to choose between Flemish and English, so I guess you made the wiser choice. But it is surprising to me that most Belgians don't know a bit of both.
Guy Donis:
Well, again, it is that kind of antagonism, is it the right word between the two communities. I mean, I am a Flemish, I want bother learning your language. And the French I be, oh, I'm Belgian, won't bother. And again, I had some really good friends that were Flemish really good friends, so most people don't really bother about that, but against a minority of extremists or whatever, them are making this thing big all the time. And that means that politically, it's always like a nightmare. I mean, when Belgium once was not able to put on a government for a year and a half, the country was without government for a year and a half because they couldn't settle together to do it.
Leah Roseman:
So they couldn't make a coalition because they have smaller political parties?
Guy Donis:
Exactly. Yeah.
Leah Roseman:
Interesting. We were just talking before about Tony, so you actually worked with him a little bit. You met him
Guy Donis:
A few times. Actually, I have a little story with Tony. I mean, in my first band in Europe, a long, long time ago, we decided to make a recording and we asked Tony Trischka to come in Belgium and produce it, and he came. And so it was fantastic for me to meet such a high end banjo player and such a nice person as well. We spent the time of the recording in Belgium together, and we felt good together. Then I went to New York to spend a few days with him. And so yeah, I told you sooner that I don't really have a mentor, but I mean, if there was one important banjo player that I actually met and learned a lot from him, just watching him closely, it is Tony Trischka. And when I started playing, he was the big guy, and he was the guy pushing the boundaries on the instrument.
And then he had a student named Béla Fleck that came in and just like, wow, take over everything. And when I went to spend a few days with Tony Trischka, he was living, he's still living in New York, and the first night I came and he said, okay, come with me. We go see a show. And it was Newgrass Revival with And then he had a student named Béla Fleck playing the banjo. And it was all of a sudden I was just coming out of Belgium from nowhere, obviously, speaking of bluegrass. And I was sitting at the table with all these big musicians because Tony knew them all. So I was there, but what am I supposed to say to these guys? Just like, what? I have no idea. I just shake hand with Béla Fleck. This is, hi Béla. This is my friend Guy from Belgium. He's banjo player too. And I say, hello.
I was still very young at the time. I was like 20, well, I don't know exactly, my late twenties probably. So I was super shy. What am I supposed to say to these guys? So yeah, I had the chance to meet these big people and see what their life is. And the thing I didn't want to do was to try to push and keep being friends with these guys I want to be friends with. Yeah, absolutely. Because I know what their life is, and they're meeting people like me every day, so you don't want to bother them. If it happens, it happens, but I don't want to be sending emails every two days and then calling them and say, Hey, no, I don't feel comfortable with that. There was one thing in my life that I don't want to do is bothering people. This is something I'm really scared of.
Leah Roseman:
Well, it is a problem. The majority of musicians are freelancers and have to have these business skills that we mostly aren't taught and doesn't come naturally to most
Guy Donis:
Artists. Yeah, yeah. I'm a disaster that obviously, because I was always, most of the time the leader of the band I was putting on, I had to do the business side as well because nobody would do it. And so I did a bit of it, but I mean, just to give a simple example, nowadays it's easy. You can send emails to a group of organizers, but after that, you have to follow up. I don't, because if I have to call somebody and say, Hey, did you listen to my demo? Did you watch my video? I feel like I'm bothering people. And as I told, I hate that. So I don't do it. And so whoever wants to hire me, yeah, hire me, but I won't call you 15 times in a row. Unfortunately, that's the way things worked. I mean, now to be a successful musician, you have to be a good musician, but you have to be a good entrepreneur as well, or to have a good team around you that takes care of it. But I mean, very, very few person managed to have that outside of the show business world. I mean, obviously I am not part of the show business at all. I'm so underground that no one's going to say, oh, I'm going to make business with that guy. I'm going to make a lot of money out of him. Well, no, you won't probably.
Leah Roseman:
So watching Tony Trischka, what kind of insights did you get when you're able to see him in person?
Guy Donis:
I mean, there was a kind of power in his playing and a power in his focus. I think that people ask me what makes a difference between high end musicians? And I say it's the brain. It's totally the brain. I mean, you can have some physical abilities that can put you a little bit, give a little advantage, but I mean, the brain is all there is. So the brain you start with, but also the way you train your brain later. And I'm focusing on that a lot when I'm teaching now, because I realized that I say that earlier, I realized that really late in my process. And so I had to work hard on that to force my brain to control what I was doing and knowing what I was doing. And so that was amazed me. You watch these guys and the power of the concentration is amazing.
I mean, how can watching Béla Fleck playing like Rhapsody in Blue on the banjo? Wow. It's just like, because that's not an instrument where the fingerings are natural. I mean, when you're playing Jean Sebastian Bach on the violin, I guess the fingerings, the tune was written for violin. So it's logical. So it's easy. It's easier to remember because you have the melody and the melody feels natural. When you have to play Jean Sebastian Bach on the banjo, the fingerings are not natural at all. So it takes a lot of mindpower to be able to do that. And so I am always really impressed with that. I think that's what makes a difference between these guys and the others.
Leah Roseman:
So should we talk about the Montreal Bluegrass League?
Guy Donis:
Yeah. So the Montreal Bluegrass League, for many years, my main act in the Bluegrass was an band named Notre Dame de Grass. And so we toured in pretty much over Canada, but I never have made in my life a bluegrass album under my name. I have made several with bands, but never one under my name. So that was the first idea finally, maybe I should do one. And the second idea was I wanted to gather all the people that I had a chance to work with in Montreal since the year I was there. And it was at the beginning of the pandemic too. And at that time I was thinking, oh, maybe I should do a series of videos with my friends, put that on YouTube just to have fun and show people what we can do together. And then the pandemic came in and the whole planet were making videos. And so I decided, okay, no, that's not the good moment to do that. And so I started recording tracks of the tune that I thought should be a video, would be a video at first. And I did that by myself. I was going to my little cottage with my gear and started recording things making pretty much.
And after a while, I listened back to it and I say, well, that sounds good? And so I went further on that. So I prepare all 14 tracks, and I asked the 14 people that I have in mind as a guest, would you be part of it? And all 14 people accept it, which was like, wow, thank you very much. And the second great thing was that when they came in my studio mostly for the singer, I have imaging what could be good for them and what key they could sing in, et cetera, because I know them quite well, but it was still risky. But they came in and recorded, and I'm so pleased with the results, and I really decided on that album that I would make only covers, which means - This is the first album in my life that has no composition on it.
I decided, no, it's just, it's going to be like all covers just because when I was playing around playing in several different bluegrass situations, and I didn't have any bluegrass CDs to sell, and most people don't know nothing about that music here around or don't know a lot. So I say, no, I want to show people what bluegrass is. So I really decided it's going to be all covers from all bluegrass person from different areas. So it was from the early days until some more progressive things. And so that was the idea, and it kept me busy during the pandemic, which was a pretty good thing for musician, as you know. And so it came out really well. And so now the Bluegrass, the Montreal Bluegrass League, idea started with that album, and then it became a band, and then now it became a monthly event.
So in Montreal, I have once a month and invite a musician or two to play with me, and then we have an evening with that, that is split it in a performance. And then after that, I invite anybody that want to jam with us to jam with us. And I really make it for any level players, just the guitar player that can stum few strings, a few chords come along will integrate you, or because I did that, because many of my students are totally petrified when they have to play for people. So I want them to introduce them to playing with other people in a non-stressful situation. So when they sit down with 15 or 20 other musicians playing around, it's not, the focus is not on them. So it's a good tool for them to just get used to playing with people. I was listening the other day to a Béla Fleck interview, and he said, the first thing I learned on the banjo was the roll I showed you.
And so I learned that roll, and I learned two chords on the left hand. And so he went to folk jams or bluegrass jams, and he was sitting in the back and just practicing his roll with changing the chords to play along. That's how it started. So that's where everybody is started starting. And so I really encourage people to just, oh, yeah, we won't play fast. We won't play flashy stuff during the jam. It's just for everybody to feel able to play with other people. So the Bluegrass League is a kind of concept now, if I can say it was for the album, then the band that I play live with, and then the monthly event that is a performance and jam thing. So it became pretty interesting finally.
Leah Roseman:
And I guess it's also what you would've liked to have had when you were coming up in Belgium.
Guy Donis:
My God, yes. Yes, please. I mean, I miss that because that probably was a struggle in my development, which was like I couldn't find anybody to play with. And the musician that I was playing with, I was the one that was teaching them how to do things, but nobody never took me as a musician, you get better when you play with better musician than you are. And so at first in Belgium, it was tough for me to find these because nobody was as passionate as I was. It's never a matter of I was more gifted. It's just that I was so interested and so willing to be good at that very quickly. I was a step up of everybody else around me. And so if I had been at that time surrounded with people with the same level of energy in the way we want to be good, it probably would be really helpful.
And that's probably why I reached my peak, I think pretty late in my development, musically speaking, I was always able to play fast. Fast is no problem with that. But I mean, really being able to control what I was doing and to really be aware of what I was doing precisely, that came pretty late in my development because nobody told me, Hey, man, you should be a little bit more aware of what you're doing. Usually I was just reproducing what I have learned just by repeating it over again. I was able to do it, but never was we understanding what was going on. Really. It was way later in my development that I decided, okay, now I should understand a little bit more how this instrument works. So yeah, that was tough in Belgium to be a bluegrass banjo, just because you don't have that emulation, is it the right world? Just people to push you to go to get better, the right thing. But I had that when I was playing more jazzy stuff, my own material, because I could play with jazz musician and classical musician that has so much knowledge that I didn't have. But with the bluegrass side, again, it was really when I came here that I met some people that know exactly how you should play that music.
Leah Roseman:
And have you spent time in the summers down in Virginia or Kentucky?
Guy Donis:
Not much actually. Obviously, first thing is just the summer. There were two situations, or I'm touring and I'm busy, or I'm not touring and I'm broke. So I can't allow myself to go all to these old festivals and take a plane and just, well, no, I just can't. And that's something I wish I could do. I mean, just go there and jam with as many people as I can. And also playing in the States when you're Canadian officially, I mean, if I wanted to book dates, it's complicated. I mean, just like it's really an issue. So I never bothered to try to, I mean, I am still so passionate about the instrument, but I'm not a businessman at all. I'm not an entrepreneur. And all that side is missing in my career actually. I know that that's the way I am. I try to, but when you try to do something that you're not interested in, you're not good at it. And that's where my business side is. I mean, I don't like to do it, so I'm not good at doing it. I try to, sometime I send a mailing, I send a email, Hey, would you hire my band? But that's about everything I do. I will not call back and say, Hey, did you listen to it? Because no, I just can't.
Obviously, who in the business, who would say, Hey, you're a banjo player, I'm going to take care of your career. Well, it's not like the flashy flashiest thing in the world if you want to be an agent or whatever, but Well, I managed to make regular gigs. I have students always. So I mean, my career, it's to the point where I'm with it. I mean, I'm not, sometime I see those musicians, highly successful musician. I mean, they are all over the place all the time. I mean, they have quite a frantic life. And I don't know if I want this. I mean, I probably would've enjoyed it on one point if I could have it, but now, just like to, the luxury I have in my life is time. That's the only luxury I have in life. But I think it's a big one. And so I make a lot of compromise in my life because of my musician career. But on that, I never made compromise, which mean I want sacrifice everything to music because I like to go to my cottage, just relax and read books, and not being obsessed with my next gigs or my next recording. I think it's a luxury that I have.
So yeah, it's just, I mean, when you read interviews about all these big guys like Béla Fleck, I mean, these people are so intense. I mean, they just finish a gig and then they go in the hotel practicing for the next project at like, wow, that's something that I don't, but I can't do. I mean, it's just after a gig, I'm just like, I just want to relax and have a beer with a friend. And so you see, I mean, that's why these people finally achieved to be such incredible musician. And I mean, he was, Béla Fleck was talking about his collaboration with Chic Corea, and that's how I realized how intense this guy, I mean, they had recorded something in the studio, and as soon as Chick Corea came out of the cabin, he was already looking at charts for his next project. And wow, that's intense. I mean, I'm not like that, and I'm more passionate, and I'm probably practicing more than many, many, many musicians, but compared to these guys, no, I'm not there, obviously.
Leah Roseman:
So you're teaching, you teach different instruments, different levels, group private and online.
Guy Donis:
Well, yeah. I'm mainly teaching banjo. Actually, when I have a request, I can teach mandolin and I even teach guitar to one person that asked me to. So banjo is the only instruments that I can say, I know it. I know how it works. I know how to teach you and how I can make things work for you. On mandolin, I can show you some things, but I am clear with people. I mean, you'd rather, I can show you stuff. I know the basics, techniques, things, but obviously I won't bring you to a high level. So banjo is really the main thing on my teaching because that's what I'm feel comfortable to do. Because I mean, sometime I see people pretending to be teachers, and I'm just like, whoa, you should not, and I don't want to be one of these people.
Leah Roseman:
Do you use tablature with most of your students?
Guy Donis:
Oh, that's a good question. Actually. When I started teaching, I was using tons of tablatures because that's the way I learned a lot when I found these things in Europe. And I realized that many, many people, if they just learned through tablature, they're stuck with it and they don't really understand what they're doing. So I have a tendency to use Tablature less and less as a teaching process now. So I, I'm am mainly showing the tune to the people just by ear. And then when they have it, I give them the tablature as a reminder. If they can't find the tune anymore, if they have it, oh, how was I supposed to play that? That's what I do. Because if you're stuck, I have so many students over the years, some of them were learning on tablature, were doing really well, but many, many of them, they were learning by tablature, were not really understanding what they were doing and were just reproducing numbers on the page rather than reproducing the melody they have in their head.
Leah Roseman:
It's interesting. Adam Hurt the claw hammer player I interviewed last year. He said the same thing and he doesn't like using tablature himself, but he'll give it to people at the end of the workshop at the end of the lesson.
Guy Donis:
Yeah. I use tablature a lot. I mean, I'm comfortable with it because what is written down on the paper make sense musically to me now, so that way it's good. I mean, Béla Fleck used Tablature all the time. I mean, he just transcribed the Rhapsody in Blue from Gershwin for his next album, and he can't read music fluently, so he always transfers everything in tablature for the banjo and he can read it really fast and really well. And the same thing when he made his classical album some times ago, he just transcribed everything in tablature because he can't read just as classical musician can do. So from my early classical training days when I was you, I can read music, but I'm not any close as good as real classical music musicians are. But yeah, I can read, if I have the musical score of a traditional tune, I can read it right there because it's in G or D or A, and it's okay. But I mean, I certainly couldn't play a Bach partita reading it because that's too complicated. I had to stop on it. I had one time I was asked to record some back on the banjo for a short film, and wow, I had to transcribe it to tablature and to work hard to be able to do that. I couldn't read it and transfer it to the instrument right away. You are able because you have the training for it. I don't have that training anymore for it.
Leah Roseman:
So you talked about your phantom, your tunneled string. Before when you bought this banjo, did you sell your old one? What kind of collection do you have for instruments?
Guy Donis:
Okay, yeah. I'm probably one of the only banjo player where, I mean owners that have only one banjo because I mean, this is a kind of pricey instruments. I mean, not in the same lane, the violin probably, but still. And when I feel comfortable on one specific instrument, I don't feel comfortable on another one. So I don't see the point to buy another instrument that I will never play because I won't feel as comfortable as I am on mine. Now the story of this banjo is that a friend of mine that is a banjo player and that always had a several high end banjo players at home, he likes it One time give me a call and say, wow, I have a new banjo. You should come in and try it. I thought you might enjoyed it. And I went there and I love it.
Really, really. And it is this banjo. And at that time, the guy told me, well, he looked at me and he saw how much I was fond of this banjo, but he said, well, I won't sell it. I just bought it. I want to use that banjo. But I went and I bought a similar one, the one that I could find in the shop in Toronto, which is the 12th Fret. They about the only shop in Canada when you can find high end banjo. And so I bought a similar banjo, but it was a different wood and it was a different tone ring. The tone ring is the middle part that you can see here, and I was happy with it. It was good. I loved it. It was the same kind of wider neck with a radius, which is not usual for banjo. Usually.
Most typical banjo is a flat fingerboard. This one is a radius fingerboard, which most modern banjo player use like Béla Fleck and all these guys, sorry, a bit of tuning. And so I always had in mind that when I tried this banjo, it actually sounded a bit better than the one I bought for some reason. And so a few years later, the guy called me and said, oh, finally, I never get used to that banjo. I'm going to sell it. And so I bought it and sell my other. So the run of the banjo is a Nechville banjo. And so it's a brand that makes only banjos and they really change the whole way the instrument is built. Usually when you see this part, what we call the pot of the banjo, the way to tighten the skin is always hooks and nuts here around while this banjo, it's a whole piece and you tighten it with the kind of system that makes the two big metal parts to be stuck together.
And so you can tie your skin by just moving one part over another. And so it makes the banjo really different. It's so easier to set it up when you had to type the skin with the other banjo. You have to go to one individual hooks after another, which this one you just, if I remove the resonant, the back part here, it's easily to remove. You can go on the side with a special key and you just tweak your skin in seconds, which is helpful. And also it changed the sounds of it because it's whole in one piece, instead of having 80 different metal parts that you have to adjust to have the right sound, if it just one body thing. So it makes things easier to, for example, if I had to change the skin, what I have to do, because it become pretty old, as you can see, it's all worn out here.
It takes minutes while in another banjo it would take hours. So all this thing has interested. And then the tunnel here with the fifth string, it's an old idea that they re-actualized, but it was not their original. It came for the banjo that was named the banjo that was made in England in probably 19th century or early 20th century. But this is an old idea. And it's good because I mean, when you move, sorry about that. When you move over the neck, when you have a key here, a tuner here, it's in your way. Now with this system, it's not. So it makes, now the main difference is really that body design, the neck that is a bit wider than usual. And with the radius, I mean the fifth string tunnel is a bit more of a gadget. I mean, obviously it is great, but that's not what make me buy this banjo. It's really the playability and the sound. It has a deeper sound that most banjo have. I mean, banjo has a tendency to be a little bit aggressive. This one is really like a fuller sound. And again, people like Béla Fleck or another name Noah Pickle how the big, big name. Now they have a tendency to want the banjo that is less bright than in the early days of bluegrass.
Leah Roseman:
So from the latest album, is there a tune you'd like to share? I was thinking also you had that promo video with the guys.
Guy Donis:
Yeah, that was a tune that I thought would be good for a promotion tool. And again, it was during the pandemic, so I spent some time putting on a video that was a bit more than four people playing the music for, and this is the first time in my life I've done that. So I went to around Montreal, it was during the winter, and I shoot a little view from there and try to mix it with the tune. And the name of the tune was One Way Track, which makes sense with roads or railways or whatever view you could find about that. So yeah, I have fun with that. And it looks like people enjoyed it more than just for people playing their instruments, which is like what I do usually, because that's what happens. So yeah, that's a good tune. It's a nice tune and it's powerful. I mean, you have a few ballads on that album, but obviously when you want to make a promotion, you want to have a powerful, powerful tune to promote it.
Leah Roseman:
This final tune is One Way Track from the Montreal Bluegrass League's recent album with Guy Donis on Banjo, Joémi Verdon on double bass and voice, Léandre Joly-Pelletier on Guitar and voice, and Tommy Gauthier on mandolin. For those of you listening on the podcast, I'll link the video to the show notes. (music)
Yeah, and it's neat with the scenes of the driving in winter. So for the people, most people listen to this podcast audio only, but for those who are watching the video, could we share that video as part of it?
Guy Donis:
Sure, sure, sure. Okay, sure. Yeah,
Leah Roseman:
Yeah. Were the winters a shock for you though, when you first immigrated?
Guy Donis:
I love it. Yeah, I love it really. It's weird because most Quebecers are moaning about the winter, and I like it a lot. As I am originally from Belgium, we have a weather system that is pretty close to Great Britain or Ireland, which is like, it rains a lot and you have a lot many, many, many cloudy days. So when I came here and you have that, you have two different life. You have the summer and you have the winter, and it's two complete different things. The natural change. Totally. I mean, you have such a separation between two. While in Belgium you can have the same temperature in December and in July sometime here, no, you really have a clear season difference. And I really enjoyed it. I mean, I love the summer, but I love the winter as well. I mean, the winter means no bugs. I mean, you can wander around on your raquettes and I love it so much, and you have no allergy problem, which I have some time in the summer. So I feel, I know I have some people that I know that has the to the south and say, oh man, you should come over here. That's so nice. And I say, okay, what is the temperature today? Well, it's 38. I say, whoa, no, thank you very much. I prefer the winter.
I never suffer from the cold. If you adapt yourself, it's cool while I suffer some time from heat, so I'd rather be in a country where like this.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah, I agree. So to close this out, Guy, I thought it might be interesting for you to reflect. You were, and growing up in a time, as you said, where we didn't have the internet, we didn't have all these sources of information, but we didn't have the distractions as well.
Guy Donis:
That's an excellent point. That's an excellent point. And even for myself, sometime I find today that just like, oh, please. I mean close. Shut your computer and practice. What are you doing? So if it's an issue for me that is born without all these things, I mean, can you imagine for a 15 years old kid how tough it is to decide, no, I'm going to leave TikTok and I'm going to put my hands on an instrument. You have to be to have a powerful mind to do that. Seriously. So you are right. I mean, I had some difficulties because I was missing these tools that we have now. But at the same time, I have an amount of time that most young people don't have because they have so much pressure to be on these screen all the time. And probably not only for arts, for anything. I mean, why should you leave your computer where you feel comfortable to just go out and practice tennis? That's the same thing for, or just learn how to be an engineer or whatever. I mean, for any learning process, I mean, these screens are a big, big, big issue. It should be used as a tool, and it's not a tool anymore. It's an abduction, I think.
Leah Roseman:
I imagine you teach a lot of adults and are they using the banjo as kind of therapy to deal with the rest of their lives?
Guy Donis:
That's a really good question too. Yeah. I feel sometime like a therapist when I'm teaching, I feel that people needs to just forget about everything for an hour, and they learn things about music and they have fun. But I mean, yeah, music, it's for many of them is a way to just like, okay, forget about everything is the issue that have in my life. And yeah, my younger students is 11 years old. My older is around 80. So you have any, of course, they have different goals and different possibilities because when you start playing an instrument and you are later in age, the more difficult it is. But I mean, I have many older students that are able to play with other people and to come to the jams, and it's a big thing in their life, I think.
Leah Roseman:
Well, thanks so much for sharing your story and your music today. It was really wonderful to meet you.
Guy Donis:
Thank you. Thank you. I hope I didn't speak too much. For some reason in my private life. I don't talk much, but when you give me a mic and allow me to speak, I'm fluent and sometime a bit too much.
Leah Roseman:
My job is to get you talking!
I hope you enjoyed this episode. Please to share this with your friends and check out episodes you may have missed@leahroseman.com. If you could buy me a coffee to support this series, that would be wonderful. The link is in the description. Have a wonderful week.
