I wanted to write and upload this to express my profound sadness and condolences to all of Les Ross’ family and friends, for the recent loss of this beautiful man. 

Email from 2008…. 

“Sean - Thanks for the info on what you have been up to in Chile etc, sounds much like my life...never really satisfied with the mundane... life should be interesting....ALWAYS”

I met Les Ross at one of his Saint Paddy’s Day parties about 25 years ago, at the closeout of the 80s, after I was asked to join his band - Water Zeb. I was nervous at first because I thought he would resent having to share the guitar spot with someone else (guitarists can be a jealous, spiteful lot) but I was soon relieved to discover that Les’s sense of musicianship and lack of guitar egocentrism was beyond what was normal for someone in his late teens. Conflict didn’t seem to be written in his constitution.

Over the next few years we composed, played, recorded and a lot of music together and I got to know him very well as a person and as a fellow band mate. As a troubled young man that I was, Les always let me know I could call or just hang out if I ever wanted to talk. He was generous with his time, his cigarettes and sometimes (but not always) his beer. He introduced me to his other-worldly sounding Roland GP-8 effects box, and Irish rock bands. 

Les, as I remembered him at that time, was a shy, reserved and extremely tranquil guy - but never distant. To me, he was absolutely hilarious and loved to laugh at life and to not take things way to seriously. Being as crazy and listless as we all were back at that time, Les seemed to know, unlike the rest of us, when it was time to bow out and call it a night. As we entered into our drunken dialogues and quarrels during our marathon jams at Bart’s cabin, Les would intelligently recede into more important matters – changing strings or getting ready to sleep…. Les loved sleep. 

Musically, Les was all about melody and atmosphere and one of his contributions to Water Zeb was a song he wrote called “Shadows”. I have been listening to this song over and over the last few days - remembering that Les had written Shadows after one of his best friends had died. The song is about coming to terms with someone who was taken from his life before his time. Although Shadows was one of the band’s stronger songs, Les was never quite happy with the way engineer Archie Hachey recorded the delayed guitar part (direct in to board) and in one email he mentioned he was re-recording it himself to get it the way he wanted it. 

At any rate, the song’s lyrics are very strong and stand beyond the production trials and failures of that time. Shadows was a very dear and personal composition to Les and I hope nobody minds if I post it here, as I have found the lyrical content this song to be timely and pertinent to the moment.  

Not having spoken with Les for over 20 years, I was happy to be able to re-initiate contact with Les in 2008. We wrote each other lengthy emails about guitars and his renewed interest in music production as well as the old music we played so much of. He mentioned he had been spending some time with a young guitar player down the street named “Danny”, I will share some of that email here below….

“(he) is always asking me to teach him some “old stuff”, which offended me in the beginning but now I realize that the shit we play is timeless (just like me) so I got over it.” 

Good bye Les, my timeless guitar brother, may you rest well.......

Sean

Shadows - Water Zeb - 1989

Water Zeb was a rock band that formed around 1987 in Brampton Ontario and remained active until around mid 1990. Members included Doug Avery (bass / vocals), Les Ross (guitar), Doug Howey (drums) and Sean Black (guitar). This recording of Innocence for Sale comes from demo sessions in the summer of 1988 in a studio known as 'Studio A', located in the back of a newly opened music store called Musicplex. The song was written almost spontaneously in Doug Howey's basement during a rehearsal.

Sean Black 19