Bob Wiseman - Biography

Bob Wiseman is a Juno winning Canadian musician, filmmaker, singer-songwriter, and actor. Wiseman was an original member of Blue Rodeo.

Career

Wiseman was raised in Winnipeg, Manitoba. He studied piano at York University. Wiseman joined his first band in 1984 Blue Rodeo and quit in 1992 following their 5th record.

From 1982 to 1989, he regularly played at open stages in Toronto, and developed his own songwriting and started producing his friends Sam Larkin, Sara Spracklin, Bob Snider, Kyp Harness and Ron Sexsmith. Wiseman's songs often incorporate avant garde musical elements and explicit political lyrical themes.

His second solo album, Bob Wiseman Sings Wrench Tuttle: In Her Dream, was released in 1988 on Atlantic Records. The album created some notoriety as the first thousand copies were destroyed by Warner Music Canada, due to the song "Rock and Tree" being feared libelous. It was about the murder of Salvador Allende and mentioned Richard Nixon, Henry Kissinger and Donald M. Kendall, the president of Pepsi Cola. "Wrench Tuttle", the credited songwriter, was a pseudonym for Wiseman himself. The album yielded the video "We Got Time", a small hit on Much Music, with cameos by iconoclast Mendelson Joe and his young actor friends, Tracy Wright and Don McKellar. The album also featured "Airplane On The Highway" which had an accompanying video by Caroline Azar. In 2009, the album was re-released on the independent label Blocks Recording Club and the songs were performed live by various friends including Ron Sexsmith, Geoff Berner, Owen Pallett, Kyp Harness, The Phonemes, Picastro, Don Kerr, Michael Holt, Maggie MacDonald, UIC, Laura Barrett, Henri Faberge, and Don Christensen.

Wiseman was also a member of The Hidden Cameras. His wife, Magali Meagher, was the original drummer. They are in a 2006 video accompanying Daniel Johnston on his songs "Speeding Motorcycle" and "Beatles". Wiseman was also a member or regular guest of Toronto bands Slutarded, Black Eyes and Dick Duck & the Dorks.

Some of Wiseman's better known songs include "What the Astronaut Noticed and Then Suggested" aka Separated- the theme song for CBC Television series Material World -, "White Dress" - a song about sexual assault, recorded by Serena Ryder, and "Maureen" - a song added, with three others by Wiseman, by David Byrne to his 2010 March playlist

Touring and theatre

In 2009 Wiseman, created a play about his experiences with lawyers and the music industry entitled Actionable, a power-point presentation utilizing super 8, video and live accompaniment on accordion and guitar which he mounted in 2010 at the Uno Festival in Victoria as well as the Fringe Festival circuits. It is now being made into a film by Jeff Rogers and Andrew MacDonald. Wiseman has collaborated theatrically with Scott Thompson of The Kids in the Hall creating and touring Scottastrophe also with Anand Rajaram on award winning Cowboys and Indians also with Sean Dixon for Barbara Gowdy's story The White Bone adaptation, also with The Madawaska String Quartet and with Maggie MacDonald and Stephanie Markowitz writing the music for their play "The Rat King".

Wiseman has toured with Feist, Final Fantasy, Ron Sexsmith, and Scott Thompson and has been a guest performer with Wilco, The Wallflowers, Eugene Chadbourne, Jimmy Carl Black (of Frank Zappa), Edie Brickell, Michelle Wright, Ashley MacIsaac & Garland Jeffries.

Videos on Youtube of Wiseman songs performed with Feist (You Don't Love Me), Serena Ryder (White Dress) & Ron Sexsmith (All The Trees). Other artists who have covered Bob songs include The Madawaska String Quartet, UIC, Leah Abramson, The Bourbon Tabernacle Choir, Michael Holt, Change of Heart, Tom St. Louis and The Blind Venetians.

Wiseman makes super 8 films and videos which he accompanies live on accordion, guitar or piano. He tours/ performs with these films in Europe, United States, New Zealand and Canada subtitling them when necessary.

Wiseman is the only live musician on John Oswald's 1988 release Plunderphonics. He was on the board of directors for LIFT, TAIS, The Tranzac & the Blocks Recording Club label in Toronto.

His upcoming record features Mary Margaret O'Hara, Richard Underhill, Maylee Todd, Serena Ryder, Mark Hundevad, Michael Keith and Michael Holt. Pitchfork has never reviewed any of his records, surely a conspiracy.

Production

Wiseman produced recordings for Ron Sexsmith, Bruce McCulloch, Friendly Rich, Katie Crown, Kyp Harness, Bourbon Tabernacle Choir, Eugene Chadbourne, Bob Snider, Edie Brickell, Andrew Cash, Carmaig de Forest, Sam Larkin, Anhai, Maria Kasstan, Levi MacDougall, The Phonemes, UIC (band), Basic English, The Lowest of the Low, Sophie Traub, Kwesi Immanual, Stacey McLeod, Laska Sawade, Sean Dixon, Random Order, Jeanette Froncz, Christine Cleary and Kira Sheppard.

Wiseman's brothers are Ron Wiseman, a Jewish jazz–reggae singer-songwriter, film professor Howie Wiseman and playwright Gabriel Emmanuel. His mother is painter Elaine Wiseman.

Solo discography

• Wet Water (1984)
• In Her Dream: Bob Wiseman Sings Wrench Tuttle (1989)
• Hits of the Sixties and Seventies (1990)
• Presented by Lake Michigan Soda (1991)
• City of Wood (1993)
• Beware of Bob (1994)
• Accidentally Acquired Beliefs (1995)
• More Work Songs from the Planet of the Apes (1997)
• It's True (2004)
• Theme and Variations (2006)
• The Legend (2008)
• In Her Dream (2009) - 20th anniversary edition made available on vinyl and through the free music archive (http://freemusicarchive.org/) along with previously removed tracks from 1989
• Punching Bag Etiquette (2011)

Film and videography

A retrospective of his films and videos were shown in 2010 both in Kuopio, Finland and in Genoa, Italy at the Associazione Culturale Disorderdrama.

• Alexander and the Hydro Pole (1999)
• All Dressed Up (2001)
• Bhopal (driftnet plan) (2003)
• My Cousin Dave (2003)
• Uranium (2004)
• Drum Sounds (2005)
• Bob And Choice (2006)
• Found Poetry (2006)
• 100 Instruments (2007)
• Dead Inside (2007)
• Who Am I (2008)
• Ten Cent Job (2009)
• Response of a Lakota Woman to FBI Intimidation (2009)
• Disappearing Trick (2009)
• Hand Language (2010)
• You Don't Love Me (2010)
• Three Men (2011)
• Two (2011)

Footnotes

Citations

==

• "Bob Wiseman". exclaim.ca. 2010-05-19. Retrieved 2011-03-03.

External links