Violinist Eugene Draw, whose band, Dr. Draw, mixes musical styles with abandon. (Alchemy Entertainment)

It’s safe to say that violinist Eugene Draw was the only player at last month’s Toronto Beaches Jazz Festival to jump off the stage and into the crowd while soloing. His band, Dr. Draw, is comprised of guitar, bass and drums augmented with keys and harp, and it pounds out layers of spliced styles including bluegrass and rock with Latin and gypsy rhythms, or Romanian wedding music mixed with ska and jamrock — all in the same song.

The audience at the Beaches show was all ages and everyone was enthralled. Fascinated grandparents and rocker teens pressed in close as Draw reeled around wildly, his instrument positively seething.

Draw, whose band is playing Toronto's BuskerFest Aug. 21-24, started off as an aggressive middle-school fiddler performing thrash and skatepunk; he dropped out of Montreal’s alternative scene to form Dr. Draw six years ago because he was tired of scenester restrictiveness.

“I wanted to create a therapeutic environment through music and energy,” Draw said in a recent interview, “and avoid all subcultures. At my shows, you don’t have to be cool. You don’t have to fit in.”

Draw’s lack of divisiveness seems downright subversive. He leads his own crusade to sculpt music out of mainstream components. All three of Dr. Draw’s recordings — Train 64 (2005), The City (2006) and Adagio (2007) — showcase the violin and explosive, shameless solos, a punk no-no that Draw happily defies. “It’s a new skill to make virtuosity interesting again,” explains Draw. “In an instrumental band like ours, virtuosity is necessary and freeing to a certain degree. You can’t say much with a limited vocabulary. That’s not to say you should clutter everything up with notes. Skill should set musicians free. My playing isn’t crazy — solid technique helps me express myself.”

Draw during a peformance in Barrie, Ont. (Alchemy Entertainment)

His dazzling fingerboard abilities come from constant gigging and busking on the streets of Montreal and Toronto. But to give himself an edge, Draw spent two years as a teen studying in a conservatory. “I was there just long enough to get my chops together,” he says; “after that, there was no point in more instruction.”

Draw’s approach to virtuosity and the music industry is consistent with punk’s original Do It Yourself standard. He’s not a joiner, and has been his own record company for years now. Formal and informal institutions repel him in equal measure.

“After busking since childhood, I learned I didn’t need a clique to excel,” continues Draw. “As a kid, I starting getting involved in battle of the bands competitions. Back in 1994, ’95 in Toronto, there was a punk revival for people aged 14 to 20. The skate scene was really in. There were bands coming out from any corner of the city. Everyone was forming groups and yelling punk stuff into microphones. It gave kids a chance to play, but promoters and other adults were making a lot of money off them. That was really lame. And it was very limited, insofar as what you could do or say without betraying the general sensibility. Ultimately, I decided that it was more important to find something that was right for me.”

Draw flows through genres like bullets through butter, as in his jam over Seven Nation Army by the White Stripes. That memorable riff evolves into a foundation for long-range cadenzas with all the rhapsodic build-up and dramatic sweep of a Paganini caprice. His own tune Rain is like dinner music for vampires. Live, Draw heats up potentially schmaltzy bits with his stage presence, baking away the kitsch that infects schlockier violin players like waltz king Andre Rieu.

Draw’s manic intensity is indebted to iconic power punk Henry Rollins. “Rollins was a big influence on me, because he didn’t give a damn about the scene,” says Draw. “Henry contradicts himself a lot, but contradicting yourself is fine if you keep growing. As a teenager, I saw him perform some spoken word in [Toronto’s] Kensington [Market]. He didn’t give a shit about forming countercultures. Not being categorized was way more important to him.”

For many music fans, choosing to be part of a certain scene brings with it pressures to uphold an ideal of musical purity, stemming largely from hero worship. From Jimi Hendrix to Johnny Ramone, musical mavericks have always been the lifeblood of pop. They’ve also been plagued with imitators, which means that you can have hundreds of bands that all sound the same.

Dr Draw performs at Summerfest 2008 in Toronto's Distillery District. (Alan Swinton/Alchemy Entertainment)

"I fight against mental constraints,” says Draw. “In music, it’s good not to know what’s good from bad. I’ve noticed people who are geniuses musically and they don’t make good music. Knowledge constricts you. There should be no standard of comparison in music.”

At the core of Draw’s meaning is the impulse to make an instrument sing without judging it. If you hate your guitar playing after a week of lessons, you’ll never learn; if you’re comparing yourself to Eddie Van Halen, the talent discrepancy will crush your spirit. And that’s precisely the sort of thinking Draw wants to free people from.

When Draw accepts applause at shows and graciously thanks his mother for his good fortune, he’s rejecting a worn-out rebel pose. “You don’t have to be an arrogant degenerate to play hard music,” yelps Draw, and that’s true. Also, at rock concerts the audience expects some form of dissent, so that it’s become the norm. If being weird isn’t enough to shock people any more, is being real a viable alternative?

“We have so many subcultures because nobody wants to feel molded by society,” Draw says. “They’re about avoiding readymade structures so they make up their own. But making music’s different. It comes from deconstructing reality and working with what’s out there.”

Dr. Draw will be performing at Toronto's Scotiabank BuskerFest Aug. 21-24.

John Keillor is a writer based in Toronto.