Saskatchewan Seeds

Tornado Warning brought six players and a pedal steel guitar into Studio West in Saskatoon in 1981 and came away with five songs on Saskatchewan Seeds, the most of any act on the CHAB compilation.

The lineup was Ron Grace on guitar, pedal steel and vocals, Jeff Surtees on guitar and vocals, Kevin Barrett on keyboards and vocals, Ron Clemens on guitar and vocals, Mike Kraus on bass and vocals, and Jim Walker on drums and percussion. Three guitars, a steel and six singing voices made it the biggest band on the record.

The songwriting was spread through the group. Surtees and Kraus wrote 'Take It While You Can', Barrett contributed 'Better Days To Come' and 'Weekend Cowboys', Grace wrote 'Sundog' with Jim Lewis, and Surtees wrote 'Moving On' on his own. Tim Thorney and Randy Cloak produced the sessions and Gerry Galla engineered them. Terry Thorsteinson sat in on bass for 'Sundog' and 'Weekend Cowboys', and the sleeve also thanks the band's road crew, Greg Meldrum and Craig Finley.

Jeff Surtees, now based in Alberta, released the solo albums Peace River in 2016 and Simple in 2020, recording, engineering and producing Simple himself. One of its songs, 'Keep Moving On', carries music he wrote with Kevin Barrett, nearly forty years after the two shared the Studio West sessions.

Randy Cloak was one of the busiest people on Saskatchewan Seeds. Besides leading his own band through three songs on the 1981 CHAB compilation, he co-produced Tornado Warning's five tracks with Tim Thorney.

Cloak wrote all three of his band's songs: 'Fire On Main Street', 'Change Of Heart' and 'Iskay Ouyay', a title written in Pig Latin. He sang and played guitar, with Rick Doyle on guitars, Ivan Boudrea on bass, Len Sembaluk on drums and percussion, and Kate Clark on vocals. Cloak produced the session himself, and Rick Knight engineered it at Studio West in Saskatoon. It was the only session on the album that Gerry Galla did not engineer.

Kevin Cholerton and Blair Polischuk started playing in bands together when they were ten years old. By 1981 the two friends had a trio called Prodigy with Randy Reibling, and four of their songs made it onto Saskatchewan Seeds, the compilation financed by CHAB radio in Moose Jaw.

Cholerton played electric and twelve-string guitar, Reibling covered bass, six-string guitar, synthesizer and a strings unit, and Polischuk played drums and percussion, with all three singing. They produced and arranged the tracks themselves, with Gerry Galla engineering at Studio West in Saskatoon. Reibling wrote 'Penzadeaze', which features Phil Nevile on piano and Minimoog. Cholerton wrote 'Bye Bye Girl' and 'Well I'm Gone', and 'Scared Of The Future', credited to the band, grew from his original idea.

Prodigy became Mad Shadows when singer, guitarist and harmonica player David McLennan joined. The new band played ska, punk, pop and new wave, mixing originals with covers of the English Beat, and it spent about eight years on the road, playing bars from Crowsnest Pass to Saskatoon, east to Brandon and west to Victoria. Polischuk drummed and doubled as tour manager. In 1985 Mad Shadows released Music in the Night, a six-song 12-inch EP of McLennan originals engineered by Mitchell Barnett, with Reibling now adding saxophone and keyboards. Its song '747' also appeared on the 1985 compilation Saskatchewan After Dark.

Cholerton, Reibling and Polischuk came back together in 2005 as Benskuba and released three mini CDs. In 2012 Polischuk was diagnosed with ALS, and he died later that year. With Reibling by then living in Dubai, Cholerton carried on alone and made the Benskuba album Celebration, playing every instrument himself. He described it as a tribute to his best friend Spike, the drummer he had played beside since they were boys.

-Robert Williston