Wascana (4)

1975
Craig Kaleal - drums
George Martin - electric trumpet, valve trombone, percussion
Daryl Gutheil - keyboards, vocals, trumpet
Kenny Shields - lead vocals (RIP July 21, 2017)
Ken Sinnaeve - bass guitar, alto saxophone
Bob Deutscher - guitar, vocals, bass guitar

    We had been friends with Kenny Shields for some time and began our efforts to persuade him to join the band. We wanted someone strong up front to help project our fairly esoteric, jazz/fusion style. Kenny had been somewhat of a fan of the band since the early Wascana days and we thought the mix would be interesting. He balked for quite some time then in early '75 finally came to Winnipeg to talk seriously. He arrived at our band house on Henderson highway with his personal manager, Gary Stratychuk in tow. The proposal in a nutshell was Gary would manage the band leaving Gerry  Stoll out of the picture. We consented, Gerry was somewhat hurt and we moved on under the wing of  Star Kommand Productions.

    The band was never quite the same. We drifted from our original ideas and turned into a pretty good mainstream rock cover band. While in Winnipeg we hired David Lynes as sound tech who brought along Greg Skeen  as light tech. Soon after, Strat presented his idea for us to return to Saskatchewan and change the name to Witness to benefit from Kenny's past association with Witness Inc. We moved to Saskatoon in the spring of  '75.  Immediately after our move to Saskatoon, Gary promptly fired Greg. We then hired Guy Scott, from the BC interior.