Nanaimo-based guitarist Dave Hart was only a teenager in 1977 when he saw Alice Cooper and KISS perform all in the span of one month.
Afterwards, Hart was immediately hooked on music and asked his mother for a guitar.
“She bought me a guitar,” he said. “A piece of garbage from K-Mart and it was classical and I wanted it to sound like Jimi Hendrix and it didn’t really come off that well.”
Despite that, Hart’s love for playing music has never dwindled.
“I got into it and I couldn’t stop,” Hart said.
Fast forward to 2015 and Hart, a graduate from the Grant MacEwan Community College music program, has been involved with music as professional for nearly 40 years.
On Thursday (Aug. 27) Hart performs at the A&W restaurant on Turner Road as part of Crusin’ the Dub for MS, a charitable event that raises money for the MS Society of Canada. Hart will be joined by plenty of classic cars and local musician Brian Hazelbower.
“It is a lot of fun because it is a community thing to help raise awareness about MS,” Hart said. “If you buy a Teen Burger, one dollar will go to help their society and that is big.”Story continues below
After spending time in various bands in his earlier years, Hart, who regularly performs in Nanaimo, released his first solo record, Diversity, in 2007. The album was entirely produced by Hart.
“That was four years in the making and a very difficult record to make when you are doing it all by yourself,” Hart said.
“Previous records had some other musicians, but this one was a project I wanted to do all by myself.”
As a solo performer, Hart plays a range of styles from smooth jazz to rock.
Hart said that he doesn’t have a setlist when he performs.
“I play to a room. It is always different,” Hart said. “There is never a live situation that has ever been duplicated in my entire career.”
In addition to being a live performer, Hart is also a music teacher.
Even though the musical landscape has changed greatly since the 1970s and 1980s, Hart says he is still seeing plenty of students who listen to the classics.
“They are still listening to a lot of classic rock,” Hart said. “It is AC/DC. It’s Led Zeppelin. It’s Metallica. It is between the 70s and 80s.”
Hart says that students today are learning differently and at a faster rate than he did.
“They are learning faster now. There is so much more media,” Hart said. “There is an overwhelming amount of media and that has to be filtered and I kind of help them with that.”
One of the reasons for the accelerated learning can be attributed to the Internet.
“The hands on seem to be not as important as it once was,” he said. “Even I can go [online] and find a version of say an Alex Lifeson solo and you can break it down note by note and if you can transcribe that information than you are learning it differently than what I used to do with a vinyl record.”
Hart performs at 5 p.m. on Thursday (Aug. 27) at 5800 Turner Rd. One dollar from every Teen Burger sold will be donated to the MS Society of Canada. For information on Hart, please visit www.davehartmusic.com.
arts@nanaimobulletin.comTwitter: @npescod