String Spel

Early in 1980, within 3 months of living in Vancouver, I met Edmonton musician Daryl Wallace through his girlfriend, who was a good friend of mine from London. We had all just arrived in Vancouver within months of each other. Daryl played guitar and dulcimer. I was a huge fan of BC folk trio Pied Pumpkin/Pear and the dulcimer playing Rick Scott, who I had met a few years earlier in Ottawa on the banks of the Ottawa River. Incidentally, after meeting Rick Scott, I went out and purchased a dulcimer as well.Daryl & I played & shared many songs together – covers and originals, but more importantly he knew the Pied Pumpkin song “Move On” and played dulcimer to it while I played the guitar and sang. Thus we formed an instant bond.One Tuesday night in May 1980 we headed to the Soft Rock Café at the corner of 4th and Yew Streets in Kitsilano. This happened shortly after first meeting and we had heard about the Soft Rock which was THE most popular folk club at the time in Vancouver’s famed 4th Ave hippy district and we went to watch the performers who would play for the “Open Stage”, which was prevailent at most folk clubs back in the day (and still is!). If you wanted to play, you would arrive about 30 minutes prior to the start and sign-in for one of the 15 minute slots. There was usually a headliner as well.We grabbed a table and were blown away by this 23 year old singer-songwriter on stage performing his own songs. Mikael Kihlman was his name and he was visiting from Sweden on a one-year visa. When he left the stage, I invited him to join our table and within minutes we were talking about getting together to jam. Two weeks later we played our first gig as “String Spel”, yes with one “L” – it’s Swedish for “game”, which is what we tried to achieve with our string arrangements - “String Games”.Mikael wrote the songs, played guitar and sang lead vocals, Daryl was on dulcimer, guitar and backup vocals, and I played mandolin and sang backups. Our sound was very influenced by the Laurel Canyon Cali-folk/rock bands of the 70’s. We all listened to bands like America and CSN&Y at the time, but also loved some of the great 70's rock bands like The Who, Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd.We were together for only 6 months as “The Mad Swede” had to return to his homeland in the fall before his 1-year visa expired. We entered the studio after some live shows around Vancouver and recorded 5 of Mikael’s songs at Fiasco Bros Studio in New Westminster, B.C, "live off the floor" with mistakes and all. But it is how we sounded live after playing together for only a dozen times, so not bad overall. We had a sound that we strived for. We hired Allan Alvarez to play bass on Makt Spel, Change My Mind and Before The Morning Light (this last one is a beautiful song Mikeal had written that we had worked out the arrangements on, for 2 acoustic guitars, mandolin and three part harmonies).Years later, with Mikael long gone back to his homeland, Daryl moved back to Edmonton and I moved back to Ontario. Daryl and I would talk a couple of times a year on the phone or on the internet, but we had lost touch with Mikael and hadn't been able to contact him for 15 years or more. Late last year, we finally tracked Mikael down and called him late at night (early morning in Sweden) while I was visiting Daryl in Edmonton. It was a great reunion and we pledged to get together as soon as we could make ourselves available, what with all of our schedules and family commitments.In the spring of 2007, after 27 years, I discovered the Master Tapes in a box tucked away in the basement. I contacted a local recording engineer and had the tapes transferred to digital. The mix is definately muddy and although we strived for dynamics, we didn't always achieve the goal as we would at times flailingly all strum our instruments in unison to get that rock punch that we loved so much. Now years later, we are all a little more experienced. This is definately considered a lost archive of a snapshot in time and it brought a huge smile to each of our faces.This past year in August 2007, the three members of String Spel, with families in tow, re-united in the South of France for an evening of jamming and drinks and socializing. This is the first time the three of us were together since the recording session in 1980. We hugged, talked, laughed, played, sang, reminisced, almost cried and vowed to get together to record some new music at some point in the future.This site is to allow our friends to visit from around the world and either hear the sounds for the first time or reminisce about the lazy, hazy, high, heady, hot days of summer in Vancouver, Canada in 1980 and a chance meeting of 3 twenty-somethings looking for fun on a musical journey.Barry James Payne