Forgotten Masters’ hilarious improvised riffs showcase the talent of Vancouver’s unstringed guitar hero

In the second episode of the first season of Forgotten Masters, DJ Ian Leighton interviews German hard rock guitarist Klaus Schröder about his early days.

“In Berlin, when the Wall came down, things started to move all at once,” Leighton says.

“That was 10 years later, in the mid-’80s,” Schroder said.

“I didn’t mean that wall. I meant the wall at your mother’s house.”

“Oh, yeah. When they expanded my room.”

This is the type of antics viewers can expect when they tune in to the web series, which is the brainchild of experienced improv performers Ken Lawson and Gary Jones. The series has earned him two Leo Awards, one for Jones in 2022 for Best Leading Actor in a Web Series, and one for Best Leading Actor in a Web Series a year later. It won the Web Series Award.

The conceit is that Jones plays Leighton, who wears an ascot, and has a show in the popular 3-3:15 a.m. time slot on Vancouver Co-op radio. In each episode, he interviews a different guitarist in a different genre, and each plays by Lawson. In the first season, along with Schroder, Lawson plays funk and blues-based guitarists Walter (Wow-Wah) Walker and JJ (Blues Dog) Jacobs. Shot at Exile, a local guitar shop on Main Street, the series is largely improvised.

“We come up with the general story and then we just go along,” Lawson said. “I don’t remember any of the conversation.”

For example, he didn’t think Jones was going to ask about “the wall.”

“Later, when I called him about the historical inaccuracy, he talked about tearing down the wall in my brother’s room.” (And yes, the Berlin Wall actually fell in the mid-’80s, not , 1989).

Lawson and Jones are both Vancouver actors with extensive improv backgrounds, but Lawson also spent many of his formative years playing in bar bands. This sparked the idea for Forgotten Masters.

“We thought, what’s the best way to improvise with Ken?” Jones said. “Then my next thought was his guitar playing. Can we come up with something that celebrates not only Ken’s amazing improvisational talent, but also his amazing virtuosic guitar chops?”

That’s right, at the end of each episode the lights dim and Layton watches Lawson rip.

They first tried this idea live, but it didn’t really work. The series was formed when he met local director John Murphy, whose credits include an episode of Netflix’s Painkiller. He also plays guitar in a band called China Repair.

“John was like, ‘Oh my God, I love this,'” Jones said. “So the three of us got together. And I witnessed two guys who spoke fluent guitar, which is a language I don’t speak. But Ken and I improvise and speak fluently. . It was this cool triangle.” The three will produce the series along with producing director and editor Mark Halliday.

The second season showcases the musings and riffs of angry Scottish punks, experimental British musicians, and Norwegian fingerstyle acoustic guitarists.

Lawson invents many characters with the help of wardrobe.

“Greta Hedley, our costumer, was really helpful in bringing the characters together,” he said. “And that’s a very classic actor’s thing. Once the character is done, there’s the character. I try not to think about it too much before I go off. I get into the character and connect with Gary and mess with Gary. If only I could. That’s what works for me.”

The teasing with Jones is exactly what happened when his character, Leighton, had to interview Lawson’s Norwegian guitarist. He wasn’t even Norwegian until 10 minutes before filming started.

“He was supposed to be a Californian,” Lawson said. “Then when I put on the wig and had my eyebrows done, Gary couldn’t stop laughing at how ridiculous I looked. Then I started speaking with a Norwegian accent. Gary was going to talk to a Norwegian guy. We didn’t have one, so I was disappointed in that. We’re so connected to each other that it became our favorite. We had changed everything 10 minutes before the shoot, so we really didn’t have to worry about each other. I had to listen to their opinions.”