Bob's musical background started with piano lessons at age 7 but when the family moved to Canada, the piano lessons ended and there was a musical interlude for three years. On holiday back to England at age 16, Bob ran into an old school friend who was a fingerstyle guitar player. After watching his friend, Bob asked Santa for a guitar for Christmas.
"My first guitar was a Japanese-built Kent 6-string acoustic. Looking back at it now, it was an entry-level instrument but it opened a fabulous vista for me. It was just like the Bryan Adams song: "played it till my fingers bled, was the summer of '69."
The late 60's and early 70's were the golden age of folk music and Bob quickly found his niche. His cousin Will introduced Bob to the English folk scene - musicians such as Wizz Jones, John Martyn, Gordon Giltrap, Al Stewart and a host of others who have influenced Bob's playing style.
"We spent one entire summer playing guitars." says Bob. "I wasn't very good and I spent a lot of time just watching what other guitar players were doing and trying to copy them. We played mostly covers although I was starting to write my own material. I remember from learning to play that you need to do three things to get better: practise, practise, practise. We'd spend four or five hours a day playing and by the end of the summer, I had come a long way. I still wasn't very good but I was improving and my fingertips didn't hurt anymore. I played guitar every opportunity for a couple of years with the result that I became a fingerstyle guitar player. A friend of mine had a 12-string and I loved the sound so I saved up and bought myself one too."
Living out in the country without a TV, there was always lots of time to practise, practise, practise. From his early efforts to simply copy what others were doing, eventually, Bob started putting his own stamp on his music.
"At the time, I was writing songs for myself. Some of them were memory aids - stories about places I'd visited and people I'd met. With others I was dealing with emotional issues by writing a song about them, all rather personal and not really for sharing. Most of the songs are best forgotten but some of them survive. Others have been the inspiration for new songs that I have written recently so they live on in a new form. I wasn't much of a performer. I'd tried playing at open stages and realised I wasn't likely to make a living as a musician. I couldn't sing all that well and although my guitar playing was improving, I still had a long way to go."
Although Bob hates to admit it, life eventually got in the way of guitar playing. Along the way, he finished his degree in Computer Science and a career and a wife and home ownership intruded into playing time. The guitar sat unused in the basement. Bob was living in Central Ontario, not thinking much about guitars until his old friend from England came for a visit and brought his guitar with him. Inspired, Bob dug out the 12-string, brushed the dust off and played for the first time in about 10 years.
"It was pretty scary," recalls Bob. "The strings were so old, I almost needed a tetanus shot before starting to play. My fingertips were soft and it was like learning to play all over again. I ran into town and bought a new set of strings, which served to remind me what a pain in the bum it is to change the strings on a 12. However, I perservered and did get the calluses back on my fingertips."
Shortly after, Bob went through some major life changes. Once again, he found himself living alone with no TV which gave him lots of time to practise, practise, practise. At the same time, a folkie friend introduced him to some Canadian and American folk musicians like Greg Brown, Lynn Miles, Susan Werner and others. The North American music also had an influence on Bob's playing and the memories of the English musicians remains. The two differing styles added to each other to change the style of music Bob played and wrote.
Just off Highway 400 north of Barrie, Ontario is a hamlet called Hillsdale. There's not much in Hillsdale except a convenience store and an elementary school. The one other feature of Hillsdale that would have a major effect on Bob's musical direction was Don's Coffee House. Wednesday and Thursday nights Don's rang to the sounds of an open stage where folk music continued to flourish.
"I popped in one night to see what it was all about. It was a neat little spot - very reminiscent of a 60's coffee house where you could sign up for 15 minutes of fame on the open stage. The first night, I just watched but I thought if all these other people are willing to get up there and try, I should too. So I went home and practised three or four songs until I felt confident about playing then went back a couple of weeks later and signed up. I was incredibly nervous because I hadn't played in front of people for a long time but it wasn't too bad for my first time out."
While Bob was playing, one of the interested audience was Jennifer Ives. Over the next few weeks, Jives and Bob got to know each other through regular visits to Don's. One night apropos of something said on stage, Jives sang "Is it peace or is it prozac?" Bob followed with "Is this mellow? Am I a maniac?" without missing a beat. Jives did a double take and asked, "You know Cheryl Wheeler?" Bob and Jennifer started identifying favourite musicians and from that point on, a musical collaboration seemed inevitable.
Over the next couple of years, Bob started composing again and performing,
sometimes alone sometimes with Jennifer. He picked up the stage name "Homeless Bob" - a sad story related to divorce and custody battles over e-mail addresses. On several occasions, people suggested
he should record some of his instrumental pieces, and an idea was born. Bob laid down a set of
guitar instrumentals and released his first solo CD. Although his nickname of Homeless Bob had stuck,
Bob actually had a very nice home where he occasionally hosted house concerts. One of the concerts featured an early performance by the Wailin' Jennys and Cara Luft started calling him Not Really Homeless Bob so the CD title Not Really Homeless suggested itself.
Bob's collaboration with Jives had taken off. DON'T PANIC!
was conceived, inspired by a mutual love of music and Douglas Adams's The Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
DON'T PANIC! took off on a tour of folk festivals and coffee houses in Ontario.
The duo released a couple of CD's: So Long and Thanks For All The Fish in 2003 and Live at Milliways in 2005.
While continuing to play with Jennifer, in 2006, Bob embarked a solo CD called Returning Home - which has several meanings. The title song is about the aftermath of major life changes, travelling the world looking for answers and eventually going back to your roots. At the same time, Bob wanted to appear under his own name rather than the Homeless Bob stage name. The cover of the CD shows Bob walking up the walkway to the front door with a backpack and a guitar over his shoulder and a towel tied to his guitar case strap as a reference to the Hitch Hiker's Guide.
In the fall of 2006, Bob went on a fateful vacation to the Maritimes. There's something of a story behind the event but Bob and his partner Julia fell in love with the town of Lunenburg and decided to buy a house and move to Nova Scotia. Over the next year, Bob sold his house in Ontario and moved to the new home in Nova Scotia and began to establish some musical roots in the Maritimes.
The move to the Maritimes spawned new inspirations and enough songs for a new CD, released in early 2010. Most of the songs on the CD relate to the process of moving to Nova Scotia and the pleasure of living in Lunenburg along with some references to the history of the area. With the east-coast theme running through the songs, the title Come From Away suggested itself. (For those not familiar with the term, Nova Scotians divide the world into two parts: "Nova Scotia" and everywhere else, which they call "Away." "Come From Away" is a term used to describe a person who has moved to Nova Scotia from somewhere else.)
Since that first night at Don's Coffee House, Bob became a seasoned perfomer, initially as the "DON'T" half of DON'T PANIC! and after the move to Lunenburg as a solo performer. Before he retired from touring in 2017, Bob was a regular performer at music festivals, and played as feature at Concert Series as well as at Coffeehouses, Arts Centers and House Concerts.
Among the many festivals, Bob played Live From the Rock Music Festival, Trout Forest Music Festival, Campobello FogFest, Lunenburg Folk Harbour Festival, Sandywoods Folk Festival, Old Lynn Concert Series, Music On Deck, and more. He toured regularly in the United States and in 2015 he toured in the UK with several feature appearances at the Lancaster Music Festival and music clubs.
In 2011, Bob embarked on a new project - a CD of guitar instrumentals. He was never really happy with the quality of Not Really Homeless and had been writing new material. So during the summer, Bob headed up into the recording studio and recorded twelve guitar tracks. Prompted by conversations with Julia, Bob decided to add some other instrumentation to the album and joined forces with another recent arrival in Lunenburg, David Findlay. David is a music producer of over 25 years experience as well as an accomplished musician in his own right.
The collaboration culminated with the release in 2012 of Wires Rosewood & Roots, a 12-track album of guitar instrumentals. Some of the songs are solo guitar pieces and several have other instruments to round out the music and bring out the best in the guitar sound.
During the spring of 2012, a radio and media campaign was undertaken to promote Wires Rosewood & Roots. The CD was submitted to approximately 175 radio stations and program hosts in the instrumental and new age music field. The majority of the stations are based in Canada and the United States with some stations in Europe (Holland, Romania, Belarus, Germany, United Kingdom, Spain) as well as Korea and Australia.
The album was also submitted to several music reviewers for critical appraisal. Without exception, the reviews were extremely positive and you can find links to them on the Reviews page.
Wires was a resounding success in the instrumental radio market. It debuted at No. 3 on the Zone Music Reporter™ Album Chart in March 2012, rose to No. 2 in April and achieved No. 1 ranking in May. Overall it spent 6 months on the Top 100 chart and was ranked at No. 6 overall on the ZMR Top 100 Airplay Recordings Chart for 2012 and was nominated for Best Instrumental Album — Acoustic at the 9th Annual ZMR Awards held in New Orleans in May 2013.
In 2013, Bob started working on a follow-up CD to Wires Rosewood & Roots. The title of the CD comes from Bob's previous career as a cabinet maker and a nod to the greats of the Arts and Crafts architectural style of the early 1900's. Recorded in Lunenburg and produced by David Findlay, Craftsman was released in March 2014 and comprises 11 tracks. Nine of the tracks include other instrumentation to round out the music but still maintaining the guitar at the core. In addition, there is a bonus track, which is a solo guitar version of one of the other tracks.
As with Wires, Craftsman was submitted to radio stations, program hosts and reviewers around the world. It was well received, reached as high as Number 2 on the ZMR Charts, was in the top 100 for several months and finished the year ranked at #15 in the ZMR Top 100 Albums of 2014.
One of the tracks is called Nova Scotia New Age Blues. Bob tells us, "Wires wound up in the hands of a music reviewer in Toole, UT and he was listening to the CD on his commute home on a snowy evening. The last track on the album Windrush is a kinda sorta bluesy piece as a nice upbeat way to finish the album. With Windrush clearly in his mind, the reviewer coined the term Nova Scotian New Age Blues to describe the music. I may be the only practitioner of Nova Scotian New Age blues so I figured I should have a theme tune."
Almost as soon as Craftsman was released, Bob started working on more music. The muses were kind and a number of new pieces came together very quickly. Combined with the new pieces, Bob had an idea for a couple of instrumentals he had co-written with his friend Duncan years ago. "We had two instrumentals that we had composed when I'd been back in England on vacation. We only had poor quality recordings of them but I always thought they would be interesting to include on an album. Duncan came to Lunenburg for a visit, brought his guitar and we spent some time in the studio and laid down good tracks, which we took to Otitis Media and let David do his thing."
During Duncan's visit, the two composed a third track and two versions of it appear on Eight Winds. One version is just Bob and Duncan playing a guitar duet and the bonus track is a "full band" version with Dave Findlay adding bass, piano and percussion.
Eight Winds was released in November 2015 and immediately met with success with the critics and with radio play. The album was nominated for Best Instrumental Album - Acoustic at the Zone Music Reporter Awards and in May 2016, Bob went to New Orleans for the Awards show and was absolutely ecstatic to hear "And The Winner Is . . . Bob Ardern - Eight Winds!"
After the success of Eight Winds Bob continued performing and composing. However, in 2017, he made the decision to retire from the road. "It was tremendous fun being in front of an audience and sharing my music with an appreciative crowd but it was getting more and more difficult to arrange the tours. So we put together the Last Chance To See tour in 2017. We'd come a long way since the first open mic at Don's in 2001 but it was time to hang up the van keys and call time."
But that didn't mean the music was over. A new album is complete and ready for release but of course the CoronaCrisis of 2020 has had a devastating effect on so much of the world and the release has been deferred. The album is called Still . . . which has a couple of meanings. The music is intended to bring a little stillness into the listeners' lives and at the same time Bob continues to compose, to record and to collaborate with Dave Findlay. Still . . . will be released once the world recovers from Covid-19 and we hope it will bring a little calmness back to a tumultous world.
Lunenburg, NS, May 2020