Lennie Gallant

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Slide - 50 Voices, 50 Years - Lennie Gallant - 0:00
Hi my name is Lennie Gallant and I’m a Prince Edward Island songwriter
and I’m aslo a graduate of UPEI.


Slide - Memories as a UPEI Student - 0:12
What do they say about growing up, and the rock stars say about growing up
in the sixties, if you remember then you weren’t really there so maybe at
university undergrad experience is a bit like that, we’d, we had a lot of
fun at university what I do remember outside of the actual courses is the
fact that for me I was starting to become more and more of a performer and
writing more songs and wanted to share them and UPEI offered a lot of
opportunity for that because there were coffee house at Marion House that
were attended by a lot of songwriters wanting to show what have been
working on and I did a lot of gigs on UPEI at the Barn down in the Panther
Lounge and various other gatherings so it was an interesting place to get
started in my songwriting career in many ways.


Slide - Speed the Plow - 1:17
I did meet some people in my years at UPEI that certainly had an impact on
my life, when I think about it, we had a band, we started a band a folk
rock band called Speed the Plow when I was in university here and I do
remember meeting Roy Johnson we started this band the two of us, originally
it was called Lennie and Roy and Friends and I do remember the first time
we ever played together was at the Panther Lounge and that band eventually
expanded included Marty Charmichael and other musicians from around the
Island, eventually Chris Corrigan, Cig Ralph, David Papazian and it ended
up being a band called Speed the Plow which toured the country and used to
showcase original music and a lot of music from PEI so it had certainly had
an influence on my later career things I was doing.


Slide - From Psychology to Song Writing - 2:27
When I was going to UPEI I was majoring in Social Sciences, I thought I had
wanted to be a social worker so I was majoring in Psychology. I ended up
being a songwriter and but I suppose, you know, given the music industry is
full of interesting characters and unusual situations that having a broader
understanding of the mind and the psyche through my studies here and having
that information in my back pocket probably doesn’t hurt in the music
industry. I can remember a number of Professors that I found rather
intriguing and interesting while I was here and in the psychology end of
things I particularly remember Don Mazer, he was a great Prof, Father
Sharkey was very eccentric somewhat very perceptive at the same time but
probably some of my courses that I took were more interesting to me were
outside of the realm of Social Sciences more in English Literature and
creativity for instance but I remember John Smith really intrigued by his
work but also even on a more local level I had taken a couple of courses
from Father Bolger and his enthusiasm for Island History probably
influenced a few of the songs I had written with a more local content which
resonates to this day, I’m doing you know over the last few number of
years, I did a show called Searching for Abegweit, and there is a couple of
songs in that show that were directly, I could probably directly attribute
to some stuff I that got through attending Father Bolger’s lectures and
just writing in general. I was very attracted to poetry, people were
putting out on campus at the time and profs who actually published as well
so yeah, I would say that in subtle ways that it certainly had an impact on
my writing.


Slide - Remembering Frank Ledwell - 4:40
Probably the professors and the course I remember the most from my time at
UPEI was a creative writing course that I took with Frank Ledwell who’s
no longer with us unfortunately but I remember that when I was taking the
course I didn’t really expect that much from it, I was majoring in Social
Sciences and this was kind of an elective but it ended up being a course
that in many ways meant the most to me. Frank was very unassuming, down to
earth Professor but he had passion for writing and a passion for finding
the essence of whatever it is you are writing about, writing about in a
very creative way avoiding cliches whether it was writing about sports, or
documentaries, or poetry, play writing, novels, songwriting whatever it
was, finding the essence of it the spark that made it work, I loved the way
he spoke about writing and it, I took that course at a kind of, probably, a
formative time in my budding writing career and one instance in particular
I remember, because I was taking a crack at poetry as well as lyric writing
and I passed in a poem and when it came back, Frank had written in the
margin, I wish I had written this, and it might not seem like very much to
other people but to me it meant a great deal that he had written that
because at that time I was dealing with a little bit of non confidence and
perhaps insecurity in what I was doing and wondering if what I was writing
really had any weight and to have him write that, I remember that stuck
with me and it meant a lot and I think helped me get over a little bit of a
hump I was dealing with at that time. Interesting that over thirty five
years later, after recording twelve albums my most recent album which many
people tell me they think is probably the best thing I have written, I made
that album with Daniel Ledwell who is Frank’s son, Daniel was the
producer on that album and I very much enjoyed working with him, we had a
great relationship and in ways he reminded me so much of his Dad and just
the attention to detail and wanting to get it right and find that creative
spark, it’s interesting how it almost seems like bookends, like you know
what goes around comes around in a strange kind of way and interestingly
enough the album was called Time Travels so maybe it all kind of worked
out.


Slide - Final Thoughts - 7:22
I really enjoyed my time here at the university I made a lot of friends
that I still, I’m in contact with from time to time. A lot of great
memories, as I mentioned I think in many ways I started playing more and
more publicly when I was here at UPEI so I remember that and it was great
to be able to go to university in my home province that seemed to have so
much to offer on so many different levels and I hope that it continues to
you know inspire Islanders to be proud of where they are from and to become
good citizens of the world and take a good look at what’s happening in
the world right now and seeing if maybe you can’t bring a little bit of
that Island community spirit to the world in general because I think it
could use a lot more of it right now.