Prison arts program brings Grammy-winning guitarist behind bars for performance

It started with some quiet toe-tapping, but as the sounds of bass, drums and guitar swelled over the course of an hour, the audience reaction rose with it, until the music was met with whoops and a standing ovation.

Compared to the typical response from a jazz concert crowd, the applause might have been a bit unrestrained — and the differences didn't stop there.

Most of the listeners were dressed exactly the same — a blue T-shirt and jeans — and the venue wasn't a stage, hall or stadium, just a gym with a punching bag hanging in the corner.

But for The Bill Frisell Trio, and the inmates who packed the seats at the Collins Bay Institution in Kingston, Ont., on Tuesday, those differences are all part of what made this show so special.

It's the second time the group has played the prison and the Grammy-winning guitarist who fronts the group said there's no other audience like it. 

Usually people buy a ticket and have at least some idea of what they're about to hear, but that's not the case when it comes to inmates, Frisell told CBC.

"It's kind of intimidating," he said.  "But ... it's just so inspiring seeing their reaction because it's just purely on the strength of the music."

4 albums recorded behind bars

The group was brought back to Collins Bay by Hugh Christopher Brown, founder of the Pros and Cons Prison Arts Program.

Thirteen years ago, he hosted his first songwriting workshop at a Correctional Service Canada site.

Today the program operates in five institutions and has built studios where inmates recorded, then released four albums — all while behind bars.

Proceeds from each recording are donated to charities, often tied to prisoners' crimes, Brown explained, offering women's shelters and food banks as examples.

"Once you start tapping in to the vast human potential in incarcerated populations, it's humbling, you know?" he said.

Now a national charity, Brown said he plans to expand to every prison in the country, describing music as a way of communing and communicating with inmates.

"It's a way of showing courtesy to people. People who are in a rough space and yes, of their own hand and their own doing."

Brown said Pros and Cons gives prisoners a chance to control their own lives, if only for a short time. That's something that's rare in an environment where they're constantly under observation and each day runs on a strict schedule.

"They're doing it because they like it, and they have agency, and when you provide agency and trust to someone, they start providing it, not only to themselves, but to others," he explained.

There's another important aspect to the program too, according to Brown.

"When you play music, you're present. Guess what you've been avoiding the entire time? The present tense, because it sucks," he said.

"When ... you've done great harm to another, the courage and the humility that that takes, I think, brings you to a place where you're less likely to do harm than most people walking the street."

Music brings different groups together

Scott Argyle said he discovered the program by accident while serving an 18-month sentence for aggravated assault at the Joyceville Institution around five years ago.

A lifelong musician, he met another inmate who was very excited to learn Argyle could play drums.

That led to an introduction with Brown.

"They said, 'Hey, you want to do some recording while you're in prison?' Well, hell yeah," the 49-year-old recalled, describing the difference music can make.

"It helps you calm yourself, ease your mind for all the static that's going on in that place every day, right? To find it was heaven sent."

Argyle, whose time in prison is behind him now, is eager to sing the program's praises.

He said Pros and Cons brings together rappers, R&B artists, rockers and metal heads, allowing them to find common ground in the studio.

"They're all going in the same room, and they're creating something together, which is unheard of," Argyle said. "There's guys that we wouldn't even have talked to each other, let alone play music together."

While the chance to make music "meant the world," the former inmate said, what the program taught him about life was even more important.

It helped him be more understanding of others and to shake off a jaded worldview — two big changes Argyle said have allowed him, and others, to rejoin society with a more positive attitude.

"More guys like me are going to end up walking out of those gates ... and they're going to have a better view on things."