Paul Snelgrove
See me play my song, Empress of Ireland at Aurora Baptist Church
Bio Paul Snelgrove aka Groover.
I was born Halloween, 1950. About 4 or 5 years later I started singing in Sunday School at the Salvation Army, on the Danforth in Toronto. Soon I was singing in larger churches on Sundays and at larger events. I sang at the service before supper at the Harbour Light Mission with a band called The Envoys. This led me to sing in some larger venues such as Massey Hall, Varsity Arena, Maple leaf Gardens.
Then my voice changed and not well. I struggled thru my teenage years playing guitar, often backing up more talented singers. I operated my highschool folk group. At night and on the weekends I had a folk band called The Message. We played almost every church coffee house in Toronto. I played at the Yonge Street Mission from time to time. At this time I picked up the bass fiddle, it was new to tune a bass violin to match the bass string tuning of the guitar. I also wrote a few appreciated songs at this time. I love it when I can tell that people actually do enjoy my music.
I was a player on a few recordings including being the cast guitar player for the Salvation Army's 60s rock play, Take Over Bid. We toured several large theatres in Canada and in the United States.
Later I joined a rock cover band called Outlaw. I am sure there is more than one of those. We were an excellent band and I played all bass. I picked up a bit of style at it here. Time moves along and good paying day jobs take up all your time.
Flash forward to late 2004. Patty McLaughlin, a friend of mine started a regular Tuesday night song circle at Jonathan's on Yonge St in Aurora, Ontario, Canada. I was encouraged to go out. I found it like returning to something I like to do. As it remained popular and well attended, it has been going on now for 5 years.
Some of us have become active with other bands or jam events. For me it is all for the fun of it. If it is not going to be fun, well hmmm. This is new for me, man of duty that I am, to just do something for fun.
I was blessed to meet up with my guitar teacher, Red Shea. You have heard him. He played for lots of stars and with lots of the greats. You know him as being lead guitar for Gordon Lightfoot. He taught me how to do things I had thought were impossible. Now I do know how to play my axe, so look out.
At this point, with Red's help and encouragement, I wrote and copywrited my first collection of songs, called Aurora Blue. There are songs from my younger years as well as new things I wrote on there. I like them all and a couple of them have been liked by my fans, who are mostly the regulars that come out to the song circle. I had Jason Pegg and Patty McLaughlin work with me on those tracks and Jim DeVries on drums. The studio said I made off like a bandit for the price to make Aurora Blue.
I met up with Paul and Mike after Paul came to Patty McLaughlins song circle and invited me to come and help play for a drop in breakfast, every saturday morning. We quickly hit it off and settled on the Texas Swing kind of country boogie that they like so much. I like it too. Some of the songs Paul sings are like my mom used to listen to before rock and country split. There was rockabilly kind of swing music and I remember those songs from my childhood. It is where my love for boogie came from.
Now we are getting more bookings, and it is good because I love to make people dance and be happy. This Texas swing is the thing that makes me feel like I really am The Groover.
I still do my personal Pop Folk music as a solo act, and now and then I get Patty or the Dustaleros (Paul E. and Hurricane Mike) to come out and help out. I am flexible, I have musical variety and I love it.
Regards and thanks,
Paul Snelgrove.
