Rheostatics: Sorta Itches

Photo from Shauna De Cartier's Facebook page

Rheostatics

Massey Hall, Toronto

April 29, 2016

Never in my life have I walked an emotional highwire at a musical performance the way I did at Massey Hall last Friday night. Never once before have I spent an entire show on the edge of my seat, wondering if it would even continue, if the lights would suddenly go up and everyone would be ushered out and thousands of fans would stand outside the venue wondering what the hell they had just witnessed. Never have I seen a show of this size go so severely off the rails, repeatedly—only, it must be said, to have everyone else on stage rally together as a band of brothers to salvage the show and, for a few songs and ultimately for the closing number, ultimately triumph. There was a happy ending, but could just as easily have not reached any kind of closure at all.

But this is the Rheostatics.

The Rheostatics mean more to me than any other group of musicians of my generation, of any performer I've been lucky enough to see live during their prime, of people I've been fortunate enough to know, however tangentially, as a writer and fan and part of an extended circle of friends. When they decided to call it quits in 2007, they played a final show, at Massey Hall, which was one of the most beautiful moments of musical history I've been privileged to witness.

So there's that. 

There’s talk of a reunion of the ones that didn’t stay.

In recent years there had been rumblings of a reunion, all of which made me nervous. A 2012 show at the Horseshoe Tavern, with original drummer Dave Clark (1980-94), was announced and then cancelled due to Martin Tielli's anxiety and stage fright, which he wrote about in a Facebook post (which I reprinted here, and Brad Wheeler wrote about here and here). That came a year after Dave Bidini published a book ostensibly about Gordon Lightfoot, in which the author—in easily the most beautiful, heart-wrenching passage of his prolific career—wrote about the alcohol addiction of an extremely close musical comrade, whom he refuses to name, but whose identity is obvious to any Rheostatics fan able to read between the lines.

Then, last fall, the band did reunite to perform their 2005 album Music Inspired by the Group of 7, at the Art Gallery of Ontario. I went, with some apprehension, but: a) it's a largely instrumental album that is not even in my top 5 Rheostatics records, so I didn't feel the same level of emotional investment; b) they were joined by keyboardist Kevin Hearn and violinist Hugh Marsh, veterans who can handle any musical challenge or curveball thrown at them; c) with visuals by Jennifer Baichwal and Nicholas de Pencier, the whole performance promised to be more than a regular rock-show reunion gig, and more of an art gallery event.

The show was good (though the sound in that venue was terrible), Tielli seemed in decent shape, and yes, it was great to see all those men together; I also happened to be an AGO event earlier in the week where they made a surprise appearance, with Terra Lightfoot and Mary Margaret O'Hara joining them on vocals. I declined an invitation to a late-night show at the Monarch Tavern at the end of that weekend, where the band played a full set of their regular material, with the aforementioned guests and more. Memories of glory from the 2007 Massey Hall gig were still resonant; I didn't want to tamper with them. As one friend told his spouse before last week’s show, "I've already said my goodbyes."

That brings us to last Friday.

Again, I was apprehensive. This is a band who, as everybody but the die-hard apologists will tell you, were capable of playing the worst show you've ever seen and then follow it up the next night with the greatest show you've ever seen—by any band, ever. (Any time I say this it makes them sound like a jam band. Raised on new wave, punk, Max Webster and arty folk rock, this band has nothing in common with children of the Dead—to which I’m allergic.) How good could a one-off at Massey Hall possibly be? My concerns were only tempered when I heard there was to be a warm-up at the Starlight Room in Waterloo the week before; rave reviews of that show were heartening, to say the least.

No one said this would be easy / But no one said this would be hell

Massey Hall 2016 opened with “King of the Past,” from the beloved Whale Music, a song that plays to many of the band’s strengths: co-written by Dave Bidini and Tim Vesely, sung by Tim, a guitar solo from Martin, and Don Kerr’s drums driving the song to a thrilling conclusion. Solid choice: the song develops slowly, one can hear the band warming up and finding their feet as it evolves. So far, so good.

Then “California Dreamline,” one of many Rheostatics songs that is largely a showcase for Tielli’s voice—a voice that on this occasion started dropping lyrics and eventually flubbed a full verse. The next Tielli-sung song, “P.I.N.,” required Bidini to prompt him with lyrics. Anxiety was building. This was every performer’s stage-fright nightmares coming to life.

Meanwhile, the letters of the band’s name were mounted on wheels behind the band and rearranged during the course of the show into amusing anagrams; at the beginning, they spelled “RHEOSTATISC,” to the confused delight of the assembling audience—even if, in retrospect, that seems to have been an omen. When things first started going awry, the letters spelled “SORTA ITCHES.” As things got worse, they spelled “SHIT COASTER.” Oy vey.

Once I get good. Once I get better.

As another fan has pointed out, Tielli has always been emotionally bare on stage: he has no game face to appease a crowd. If he’s feeling it—joy, amusement, bewilderment, anger—you will see it. Kerr and Vesely are perpetually poker-faced, soldiering through any potential mishap. Bidini will always be the coach and cheerleader, fully devoted to spectacle, craving attention but also exceedingly generous and encouraging to anyone with whom he shares a stage. Bidini was all those things at Massey Hall, and thank God. Never once did Bidini visibly express concern; every one of Bidini’s glances toward Tielli seemed to tell him, “I’ve got your back. We can do this.”

But you will, you will, you will be happy / In spite of the shit and the pain of it

Forgetting lyrics is one thing (and a bit Desmond Howl-ish, but that’s another story). By the time they started “Self-Serve Gas Station,” Tielli’s volume pedal—a key element of his sound and technique—and his gear in general was not functioning. The song’s intro dragged out for several minutes while the problem proved it was not going to work itself out, to Tielli’s visible dismay—he stalked the stage and it looked like he might actually just leave. What’s weird is that Tielli has had this exact same problem with his gear for at least 25 years, since the first Rheostatics gig I ever saw. Here, however, as De La Soul would say, stakes is high.

Tech snafus happen; we’ve all been there. But when they do, you pick up another guitar, you move on—which is what the Rheostatics have always done, which is what I saw the Flaming Lips do at Massey Hall in 2002, after all their sequencers and visual gear stopped working mid-show. As Bidini joked during this show, that’s what live music is all about. Should we all stay home and watch perfectly edited concert videos? (Speaking of which, this show was being filmed for the Live at Massey Hall series.) Isn’t the thrill for the audience supposed to be the tightrope walk of the performers? Aren’t the most memorable shows the ones that go off-script? By the same token, no one goes to professional theatre and tolerates large swaths of dialogue gone missing or sudden curtain drops.

It wasn’t all discomfort; naturally, there were many moments of utter magic. Kevin Hearn’s elderly father was escorted on stage to read a carpe diem poem that brought tears to my eyes. The vocal trio Trent Severn, featuring Emm Gryner, was brought out to sing backups on an inspired “Fan Letter to Michael Jackson.” Don Kerr busted into a few bars of “I Would Die 4 U” over the beginning of “Queer.” After one of the particularly squeamish snafus, Bidini led the band to the edge of the stage to perform an entirely unplugged “Northern Wish,” during which Tielli rallied and triumphed, hands cupped over his mouth, calling out to the furthest corners of Massey Hall; Marsh’s violin danced around the edges of the melody, the way it once did with Bruce Cockburn and Mary Margaret O’Hara at this same venue; 2,700 people sang the “land-ho” backing vocals; Hearn looked particularly verklempt (as a child, he used to sing in Massey Hall with St. Michael’s Choir School).

Yet the show took another turn south, however, for the set-closing “Shaved Head,” the centrepiece of Whale Music. Again: Tielli dropped lyrics, but channelled everything he had left into an intense, operatic and transcendent delivery. It was certainly electrifying, but not exactly pleasurable; it simply encapsulated the emotional roller coaster ride we’d been on.

By this point the anagrams had read “ETHICS ROAST” and “ARTISTS ECHO.” This appeared to be not at all a new beginning for a revered band, but a fading memory of glory days. By the time the set was over, I wanted to cancel post-show plans with friends—friends who had travelled from Vancouver, from Ottawa, from upstate New York—and crawl home.

Forgive me, I don't know what made me this way / But I'll be all right if you'll be okay

But wait: there’s more. (With the Rheostatics, there is always more.) For the encore, the letters had finally been assembled to spell “RHEOSTATICS.” It was revealed that the anagram-assisting stage hands, who had been clad in white hazmat suits, were four long-time associates: Ford Pier (sideman), Michael Philip Wojewoda (producer, drummer 2001-07), Selina Martin (frequent guest singer, collaborator), and Justin Stephenson (video director), who all unmasked and sang back-ups on “Stolen Car” and “Dope Fiends and Boozehounds,” two more epic Tielli-led live staples. Tielli played Bidini’s electric guitar, without incident. All lyrics were there. Negative energy had dissipated during the short set break. The forgiving crowd—and you could not ask for a more forgiving, generous crowd than Rheostatics fans—rallied the band on. We would not let this band fail.

I feel like I'm swimming, and things will work out anyway

“Dope Fiends” is a song in which the lonely narrator feels abandoned by his childhood friends in his snowy suburb; he wonders, “why didn’t they stay here and help me shovel the walk?” Well, here we were, helping hands all, witnessing a concluding performance that was monstrous, powerful, gut-wrenching and glorious in all the best ways. There was a sharp left turn into a noise improv featuring only Hearn, Marsh and Tielli, an exorcism before everyone reassembled for the crashing coda, providing the pent-up emotional release we’d all been waiting for all night. It was what the Rheostatics do best, what they do better than any other band I’ve ever seen.

And as that old song always does, as it did concluding the 2007 Massey Hall show, it ended on a suspended note.

CODA: The next morning, I put on Mary Margaret O’Hara’s Miss America album. It was the only thing that made sense. It’s a Tielli favourite.It features Hugh Marsh. She sang with the Rheostatics at their most recent gig, which sent the Toronto music historian in me into fits of ecstasy. She is someone who is always lost in her own moment, with both brilliant and disastrous results, surrounded by sympathetic musicians who somehow tune into her wavelength. The first time I saw her play was full of false starts, falls, random spontaneous covers, and, of course, some of the most beautiful music I’ve ever heard in my life. She is someone to whom fans have learned to adjust our expectations—of everything. On this morning, titles, phrases from that record resonated with me in ways they never have before: “Body’s in Trouble,” “Help Me Lift You Up,” “Not Be Alright.” And of course…

You will be loved again.

Set list, not in order:

From Melville:

Northern Wish

From Whale Music:

Self-Serve Gas Station

California Dreamline

Queer

King of the Past

Shaved Head

Dope Fiends

From Introducing Happiness:

Claire

Fan Letter to Michael Jackson

From Nightlines Sessions:

Stolen Car

From The Story of Harmelodia:

It’s Easy to Be With You

Monkeybird

From Night of the Shooting Stars:

PIN

Mumbletypeg

From 2067:

Making Progress

Have Not Been the Same: My story

Later this week, Have Not Been the Same, the 10^th anniversary revision/reissue, should be on bookstore shelves across the country. The launch party is Friday, June 10 at Lee’s Palace in Toronto, featuring Weeping Tile, King Cobb Steelie and Kevin Kane of the Grapes of Wrath (tickets available from Soundscapes, Rotate This and Ticketmaster).

Between now and the date of the launch party, Radio Free Canuckistan will provide a series of insights into the origin of the book, what went into the reissue, and everything you never knew you wanted to know about the project.

Chapter one: Living my life in the tower of song.

In Peter Guralnick’s biography of Elvis Presley, Last Train to Memphis, he writes about how Memphis DJs were dismissive of early Elvis recordings. After all, how good could this guy possibly be when he lives just up the street?

There is a romance to art made outside of your experience, especially growing up in a cultural colony like Canada was in the ’70s, obsessed with the American and British influences that have shaped our country since its inception.

But as a kid, I was always fascinated instead by Canadian culture—maybe in part because everyone always seemed so defensive about it, if they weren’t being outright dismissive. “That guy’s Canadian, you know,” would be the inevitable adjunct to a mention of anyone famous who happened to be born here. Stories in the Toronto Star and Maclean’s would go out of their way to mention any remote connection that Cultural Icon X had to Canada (his sister-in-law grew up in Vancouver!).

Canadian culture was painfully insecure about its own worth, which, as someone who always sympathized with underdogs, made it fascinating to me.

For anyone born in the ’70s, however, Canadians ruled the world for kids: Dennis Lee poems, records by Raffi and Sharon Lois & Bram (Bram played at my elementary school when I was in Grade 1), the Kids of Degrassi Street and Anne of Green Gables on television.

By the time I was a pre-teen glued to my radio, I was curious about all the Canadian acts I was hearing—especially hearing them after 10 p.m., all grouped together, for reasons I later realized was radio’s way of fulfilling their CanCon requirements to make way for more foreign hits during prime hours. But while I loved many of those acts (Martha and the Muffins, Payolas, Blue Peter, Rough Trade), they didn’t seem to register with any of my friends.

As a Scarborough boy, that all changed with Gowan. I grew up literally around the corner from him; he had gone to my elementary school (St. Barbara’s) and still went to my church (St. Thomas More) when he became a massive star of the video age (CITY-TV’s after-school show Toronto Rocks played “A Criminal Mind” about three times a week). Everyone I knew loved Strange Animal. Both boys and girls in my Grade 9 classes styled their hair like him. The fact he had Peter Gabriel’s band on his album was a big deal. His smirk was irresistible and cheeky for 14-year-olds like me. His live show—my first rock concert ever, at the Ontario Place Forum in June 1985—was incredible, especially when he leapt off the top of his grand piano.

Unlike those Memphis DJs and their attitude toward Elvis, I was thrilled that the guy who lived up the street turned out to be a rock star. Of course, it turned out that Gowan was only ever a rock star in Canada; the rest of the world didn’t care. That illustrated a narrative I saw played out all too often in my adolescence: on many levels, if you were successful only in Canada, you weren’t perceived as being truly successful. There was something suspicious about you, like maybe you only ever made it because of CanCon rules or sympathy or because your uncle owns a few radio stations.

Who cares? I found Canadiana exotic in its own way, like secrets that not even most Canadians seemed to know about, never mind the rest of the world. And though many of those acts were certainly derivative, many were unique: no one else on the pop charts sounded like Rough Trade, for example, and Carole Pope was far more explicit and daring and subversive than Madonna.

(Our women in particular presented a diversity of images simply not found elsewhere: gutsy belters like the ladies in Toronto and the Headpins, artsy weirdos like Jane Siberry and Dalbello, genre-bending feminist bands like the Parachute Club, even metal chicks like Lee Aaron. What did the rest of the world offer at that point in terms of strong women in pop music, other than Pat Benatar, Kate Bush and Cyndi Lauper? But I digress.)

In Grade 9, my speech for English class was about Canadian music and how great it is and how it doesn’t get enough respect. Ah, prophecy.

During high school, most of my favourite concert experiences were at the Ontario Place Forum, an outdoor summer venue with a rotating (!) in-the-round stage, which held about 10,000 people (2,500 seated, the rest on the lawn)—which was about as intimate an all-ages venue got at that time. It was also cheap; if I recall, tickets were usually included in the $5 park admission price (this changed later on). Between 1985 and 1995, it was there that I saw the Spoons, Doug and the Slugs, David Wilcox, Bruce Cockburn, Crash Vegas, Grapes of Wrath, 54.40, The Tragically Hip, Skydiggers, Spirit of the West, Rock and Hyde, Blue Rodeo, Sarah McLachlan, and, shortly before the venue closed in 1995, a CFNY event featuring Lowest of the Low, Rheostatics, Shadowy Men, Change of Heart, 13 Engines and many others. I loved all sorts of music from all around the world, but the shows I saw at the Forum made Canadian music come alive for me every summer, gave me an immense sense of national pride watching these acts perform before adoring audiences, and are a huge part of why I ended up co-writing this book.

The first bar show I ever attended was a Deja Voodoo BBQ at the Siboney Club in Kensington Market. I was 16 and had grown a beard for this express purpose. I went alone; my friends either a) didn’t have beards or b) didn’t know or care about the freak show of garage bands from across the country that comprised the Og Records roster, as heard on the It Came From Canada compilations and on CBC Radio’s Brave New Waves, of which I was a devout listener.

I thought this was going to be a huge show that I’d have to get there super-early for. I showed up at 6 p.m. The doors weren’t even open. No one else was there except bands schlepping gear. I came back an hour later, was one of the first people admitted into the club, and slowly sipped what I considered to be an overpriced glass of Coke for about an hour before the first band started. I struck up an awkward conversation with Deja Voodoo’s Gerard Van Herk, asking him something about Brave New Waves’ Brent Bambury—my first rock star encounter. I can’t remember who played which of the two BBQs I saw at the Siboney (1988, 1989), but I saw Deja Voodoo (obviously), the Gruesomes, Shadowy Men, UIC, E.J. Brulé, Jerry Jerry, the Ten Commandments and other Og staples up close, closer than I’d ever been to the blood and sweat of rock’n’roll. I was hooked.

I moved to Guelph in 1990 to attend university there. Why Guelph? Honestly, because it was close to Toronto and I could come home and not miss any concerts there. Also, I’d read about the Albion Hotel being a popular spot for all the Queen Street musicians to play. At the student newspaper, the campus radio station and an alt-weekly serving southwestern Ontario (Id Magazine), I almost exclusively covered Canadian artists.

People like the Rheostatics and Bob Wiseman and King Cobb Steelie became heroes of mine, broadening my mind, challenging my perceptions of both music and the industry, and I hold their recordings dear to me to this day. I’m hard pressed to think of many ’90s acts, other than Bjork, whom I cherish the way I do those three artists in particular. They were very much underdogs in the broader sense: beloved by many, but completely obscure to most.

It felt like an intensely creative time, a time that was rewriting the rules, a time that existed in a whole other universe than the “alternative” scene sweeping the States or the Madchester scene in the U.K. Who was going to document it in anything more than an ephemeral manner? Who was going to stand up and say that these were fascinating artists making classic albums? Canada was full of secret histories already; this one shouldn’t slip by.

By the end of the ’90s, I knew that I had to write a book. Two friends of mine had a similar idea, and here we are.

Dave Bidini: Out of Africa

Regular readers of Radio Free Canuckistan likely discerned long ago that much of my adult musical life has been shaped by the Rheostatics, who packed it in almost a year ago now. Since then, founding member Dave Bidini published a memoir/travelogue/rock'n'roll book that's much, much better than its clunky title: Around the World in 57 1/2 Gigs.

It's Bidini's second proper rock'n'roll book, the follow-up to On a Cold Road--a must-read history of Canadian rock music that tells the story of not only the Rheostatics through the 80s and 90s, but that of the bands that came before them in the 70s, when slogging it across the prairie spine in pursuit of rock'n'roll glory still involved plenty of uncharted waters.

Part of that book's charm was its ability to tell stories that we thought we knew, but didn't really--and I'm not just talking about Rheostatics fans, but about all rock fans in Canada who don't think about what happens during the long slogs between gigs, about the horrors and hilarities of the working musician's daily existence beyond the usual biz stories about being shafted by record labels.

This time out, Bidini takes us to places we never think about in the first place--such as what it's like to play Canadian folk songs in a Finnish bar with African women and Azerbaijani piano players. Around the World is about the period of time leading up to the final Rheostatics show at Massey Hall, when Bidini is finding his feet as a solo musician--and doing so in places deep in mainland China and in war-torn Sierra Leone.

The best thing about Bidini's writing is that he always calls it as he sees it; he's not trying to create some kind of overly conscious cross-cultural connection to African hip-hop, or to offer a post-modern analysis of cultural imperialism and white colonial guilt. He's an open-minded , wide-eared Canuck, a rocker first and foremost, one who happens to be an astute observer of the absurdities that bind us together, whether it's a collective obsession that men with skates have with placing a small black disc in a net, or the universal truth of a power chord on an electric guitar.

In Around the World, Bidini finds himself more humbled than ever while facing the impending break-up of his band. As one of his close friends once told me, Bidini is a lifer: he married his high school girlfriend, he still wears ratty old hockey sweaters that he first donned in the early 70s (thankfully only on special occasions--he's really quite a dapper man now), and he's only ever really played in one rock band in his life. Having the rug pulled out from one of the certainties of his life--the Rheostatics--leaves him more open than ever to new discovery, to personal re-invention, to challenging conceptions he's held his whole life. Witnessing that unfold in his writing is a beautiful thing.

I had more in-depth thoughts when I first read the book (I've since given my copy to my brother for Christmas), so don't consider this a proper review. I will say, however, that it's one of the few music books I've even bothered to pick up in the last five years or so. (That it came out around the same time as Carl Wilson's mind-blowing musing on Celine Dion is purely coincidental timing--I'm not going back to rock books, really. They bore me as a genre.)

At the book launch in the fall, Canuckistan comrade Shannon Whibbs told me she had a great conversation with Bidini for Chartattack.com that was, as always no matter the medium, whittled down to a couple of hundred words. Because Bidini and I have gabbed at length countless times before, I thought I'd give Ms. Whibbs the spotlight here instead.

As I'm typing this, I realize that Bidini is playing right now at the Paddock to kick off the Exclaim! Hockey tournament this weekend (an annual event he wrote about in his book The Best Game You Can Name). No doubt you'll see him out and about, on ice and off, at that event all weekend. He is playing April 18 at Call the Office in London. Rheos fans should note that there is a new, downloadable "box set" of Rheos rarities being made available. And he's also been in the news lately for matching fellow hockey rock nut John K. Samson by "winning" the CBC's Canada Reads contest; Bidini championed Paul Quarrington's King Leary. All other things Bidini, music and literary, can be found here--including links to musical works in progress. His debut solo album, The Land is Wild, is expected later this year.

Without further ado, over to you, Ms. Whibbs.

---

Dave Bidini
Interview by Shannon Whibbs
July, 2007
Locale: McClelland & Stewart office

SW: After you knew the Rheos were breaking up, you did this solo tour that took you all over the world. What prompted you to write a book about all these experiences?

DB: I thought it would make good fodder for storytelling. When I’m away, I’m writing all the time anyways, in my journal and stuff. I want to see this as a bookend to On a Cold Road; that was about all the time up until a certain achievement, and this is the shadow of that. Having achieved that, it was sort of the top of the mountain and this is the other side of the mountain, and I thought that was worth talking about, through the energy of my trip or travelling.

SW: Did it start and end as you envisioned it, or did it change form?

DB: It changed a lot. I had this wish list. Originally it was gonna be 80 gigs; that was the working title. But we ran out of time. Also, family life [was a factor] too, with two kids. Some part of me envisioned just getting on a train and going right across Europe with my guitar; then I realized, practically and logistically speaking, that that was probably a book that was more suited to somebody with a freer lifestyle. And for the travel in this book, I used up all my coupons, all my domestic coupons, so I had to scale it back a little bit. In the end I wanted to have a full enough view, a perspective of “the world.”

SW: The book is a deeply personal reflection of the break-up of the Rheostatics. Do the other guys know what you’re getting into?

DB: Well, usually with Martin [Tielli], I’ve got carte blanche. When I was doing On a Cold Road, he said to me, “You can write whatever you want about me, it doesn’t matter.” And it really doesn’t—mostly because his memory recall isn’t that great [laughs], and so often he’ll be happy that I remembered half the stuff. Also, because of that book, the guys know that all bets are off; they know me as an honest musician, so why wouldn’t I be an honest writer? Actually, in a way it’s a relief that I was able to write about a breaking-up band that’s never really necessarily going to have to work together—as opposed to On a Cold Road, where I did, to a point, have to be a little bit careful that I didn’t say things that would come back to haunt me. But like any piece of art, the only way it would be a good book, an honest book, was to make it completely honest and real.

SW: I definitely felt that when I was reading it. As a fan, it was really heartbreaking to read. Were you able to achieve your goal in writing about it — were you able to achieve some closure?

DB: Yeah, for sure. For me, the closure came with Dave Bookman’s [on-air] interview [at CFNY] when he surprised us with [The Secret Sessions tribute album.] That was a great moment because we were together and we were all really emotionally moved and there were a lot of tears that night. It was good for that to happen a week before the actual show; you get that all out of the way. If we’d just shown up at Massey Hall, or at the few rehearsals at Massey Hall, and had not been together and experienced that emotional sense of closure, relief and comfort, then it probably would have been a different show and it probably would have been really, really difficult on an emotional level. Because we’d had that time, playing the show was more of a celebration than anything. Personally, and also in the literary sense, this book achieves a certain closure, too.

SW: What are you hoping that fans will take away from the book? Do you think that they will be able to achieve a sense of closure through it as well?

DB: I think so. I can relate that mostly to the response to On a Cold Road. I know a lot of the stories in that book were important to readers—not necessarily Rheostatics fans, but musicians, in the sense that they could see themselves reflected. [For] fans of the band, they got a sense of what we had gone through, personally and musically, as the band was coming together and also [the] Dave Clark break-up [Clark was the first Rheostatics drummer, 1979-1995]. That whole thing was illuminated [in the book] and I think—not that this would be the sole reason for the book—that our fans deserve that because they do pay such attention to the musical detail. And I think there is emotional detail in the literature based on the band. So I think people will get a greater sense of who we are and who we were and that, in a way, informs the experience as a fan and the appreciation of the music.

SW: For me, as a fan, it felt like it helped tie everything up. And when I was reading, I found it to be such an interesting mix of genres, which is great because there are so many travelogues written, and so many memoirs, and so many musical history books, but you’ve kind of mixed them all together in a really amazing way. I was wondering about what sort of readership you were envisioning when you put this book together.

DB: When the first two books came out, On a Cold Road and Tropic of Hockey, there was a lot of back stuff in there about playing music as a kid and rediscovering hockey as a young adult and stuff, but I never really saw it as memoir-ish. There was this whole big memoir wave and people were saying, “Oh, your books are like memoirs.” Growing up, I thought that a memoir was something that an 80-year-old guy would write. I always felt a little bit slighted or cheated when people would call it that. But this book, simply because I’m older and I’ve seen more stuff, is slightly more memoir-ish than the others and that’s just a product of age, I think. Maybe that’s informed a little bit by the maturity of the writing. Because I’m traveling to other places there has to be a travel element to it. Because it’s a reflective look at the band’s history there’s going to be a memoir-ish quality, and it’s also going to be a rock ‘n’ roll book because it’s about rock’n’roll! I would have denied it if I had tried to excise those elements and when you’re writing, you’re not necessarily thinking in those terms, either, that it’s three genres in one. You just write and then it’s over and it’s for other people to call it what it is.

SW: Which leg of your trip had the most impact on you?

DB: They all impacted me in a different way, I’d say Africa because I’d never been there before and I met people with such a completely different perspective, just a different life. And it’s the Africans who have been in contact [with me] the most and are probably the most eager to maintain those connections, too. But of all the places that was where I felt like I was truly far away and it felt like real travel writing, going off the beaten path.

SW: Have you found that your travels have impacted your songwriting since?

DB: It’s hard to say because it really hasn’t been that busy musically, but I wrote some stuff when I was over there and these things tend to produce themselves down the road; it might not necessarily make an instant impact. It’s also not as if the Rheos were a straight rock ‘n’ roll band. There were also African elements [in that band], so it wasn’t as if all of a sudden I started making African music and wearing jazz hats and playing a drum. But I have a song on the solo record that’s almost done, which is a long 14-minute song about a guy I met in Africa.

SW: I was trawling around on your website yesterday and I was able to listen to the MP3 of the performance of “Horses.”

DB: [laughs] It’s insane, eh?

SW: It was so great to have an audio to go with the visuals in the book. It was so powerful. I’m trying to imagine you standing there, taking it all in, going “what the hell?!”

DB: Yeah, it was mindblowing, astonishing. One of the things I did find with this book was no matter where you go and no matter who you’re playing with, you’re able to achieve that centre of just pure, musical exchange and musical communication. And I knew for them, that I was a guy playing a guitar and there were guys playing drums and people singing and it wasn’t really so absurd. I didn’t want to project to them that I thought it was really absurd that a white guy was coming to Africa and playing just for them! For them it seemed natural, so in effect, it seemed kind of natural for me, too. At one point this one woman stood up and closed her eyes and put her hands up in the air and started singing this song this hoser anthem that I wrote at King and Parliament and in my parents’ house. When you’re used to playing it in Canada, it was awesome to see that moment of musical translation and seize on to it. It was really beautiful.

SW: How did that and your other musical experiences in Africa effect your perception of how music is made in North America and how it’s structured?

DB: In Sierra Leone, people there are making music in spite of the fact that they have nothing. It’s a destroyed city with no money and no infrastructure or anything like that, but yet people have to play, against all odds. You do get the sense of the pampered-ness of music [in North America]. On a certain level, there are people here playing who live day-to-day and doing it because they have to do it, but it totally makes you appreciate it more. In the Studio D in Sierra Leone, they couldn’t record unless they had money to buy fuel to run the generator. Here, it’s like you go home, you plug in your computer and you tune up and play and you have a song. It’s much harder over there, so it gave me a new appreciation, for sure.

SW: The section about Africa is one of the most intense ones, and some of the stories were just horrifying. Are you hoping to raise more awareness, through the book, about these issues?

DB: Oh yeah, for sure. And not only that, just to tell stories for people who wouldn’t normally have their stories told. The other thing about Africans is that they’ll tell you the story just as if you and I were sitting around talking about hockey. And for them to have absorbed it for it, to come out the other way—completely calm and a sort of natural sense of oneself—it’s pretty amazing. It would have twice the book if I’d told every story.

SW: Regarding another section, that great stream-of-consciousness thing [wherein Bidini constructs a mammoth sentence of rock’n’roll memories that lasts over two pages; it's on pp182-184 for those following at home] in the China section, which ends with “In my life, rock ‘n’ roll has meant everything to me.” What brought it on and did your editor mention anything about it when you handed in the manuscript?

DB: She didn’t touch it, which was amazing. And of course, that was one of those things that you write in four minutes and it just pours out of your wrist. It was really fun to write and when it was done I was like, “Wow. That’s done.” I fiddled with the last line a little bit, but I really didn’t have to touch it that much. It was a blast. I’ve read other books before like this—I guess Roddy Doyle’s books are like that a little bit, in The Commitments when they’ll be arguing about who’s better, Marvin Gaye or Otis Redding— and it just evokes all kinds of memories of those songs and thoughts of those songs. That was kind of the intention, so that you’re reading it almost the way that you listen to a radio dial sort of spinning up and down, all these melodies and these thoughts. At the end of it, you’re so charged and so excited about being a music fan that you’ve shared in that kind of connection, too.

SW: That’s how it made me feel. You get the sense in reading the book about just how much you love rock ‘n’ roll.

DB: For sure. A lot of music criticism and a lot of music books tend to be a little bit bloodless. There’s always exceptions, but [there’s always] a bit of a distance, y’know? Fuck distance! It’s okay to say you love it if you love it and to prove that you do. I always have to kind of bring myself back a little bit remembering that rock ‘n’ roll is important and exciting and fun and huge in a lot of people’s lives and to portray myself as being one of those persons, it isn’t necessarily not more literary or lacking poise. I’m just going to celebrate it, right?

SW: When you travel to new and foreign places, you often go in to these experiences with preconceived notions of what you’re going to find. Did you have some of these notions of your own and were they kind of shattered when you were over in, say, China, or even Finland?

DB: Yeah, and Russia, too. I was certain—well [traveling companion] Al [Piggins] was certain—that we were going to get killed in Russia. The first time I was there I thought that as well. It was completely demystified. That’s why we travel — to have those stereotypes and misconceptions smashed. It’s the same thing with Africa; I thought it was one of those trips that I might never return from—which is a reason for going. But people talk about the fucking bugs, and they talk about how dirty it is and how you’re going to get really sick. In Sierra Leone I had a really bad three-day cold, and I saw like, four mosquitoes, and I didn’t see any guns. I saw some shady characters, but it was an easy place to be. Even though it was very sad—and a lot of parts of Africa where I was, people’s lives are very tragic— it was just really fun. I hadn’t prepared myself for fun because I was so on edge about what it was going to be like. Then you get there and people just want to have a good time. Finland was probably exactly how I thought it was going to be until our last show, in Eastern Finland and everybody was crazy and fun.

SW: I like your whole section comparing Canadians and the Finns and realizing that we’re not nearly as similar as we’d like to think.

DB: Fuck, Canada’s changed a lot. Canadians have really come out of their shell.

SW: What’s next for you in terms of your solo music?

DB: That’s something that’s going to come out eventually. I’m working on it with Don Kerr and The Scribbled Out Man guys — Paul Linklater, Doug Friesen — and Don is producing it in the studio. But Martin [Tielli] and I are doing a lot of stuff, too. We’re doing the soundtrack for this film and trying to figure out what to do, how we’ll go about it. And we did this Five Hole thing [based on Bidini’s book Five Hole: Tales of Hockey Erotica]: it was me, Selina [Martin], Martin Tielli, Ford Pier, and Barry Mirochnik doing the music for this [theatrical adaptation] that happened in Calgary and that was really fun. We did six songs for that and it’s going to go tour on the road as well. It’s going to go across the country in ’08.

It’s funny, before Massey Hall [closed the chapter on the Rheos], I’d done so much [solo] playing, it was really kind of weird: I’d done the Five Hole thing, I’d done these trips, I worked a little bit on my solo record. It was cool because it wasn’t like it was out of form, y’know, playing a big show like that or even the lead-up shows, which I was proud of. It was like, “Cool. Band breaks up, but…” It convinced me that music doesn’t die; it just exists in different forms.

-end-

Elliott Lefko 2000

Today's Eye Weekly has a moderately in-depth story I wrote about independent promoters in Toronto.

The crux of the argument is that while the U.S. is largely dominated by Clear Channel subsidiary Live Nation--which acquired many of the country's largest indie promoters as well as main rival House of Blues--Toronto (and by extension, Canada) has a thriving indie promoter scene with no fear of a monopoly taking over any time soon. And those promoters are responsible for increasingly bigger shows, including this week's Arcade Fire gig at Massey Hall, and this September's V-Fest.

One of the people I interviewed for the piece was Elliott Lefko, who started as one of the city's most successful indie promoters in the 80s before being hired by MCA Concerts (later Universal Concerts, then House of Blues) in the early 90s. He's a giant in Toronto concert history, and more than one of my other sources credited his 2001 flight to L.A. as opening up the indie promoter scene in Toronto, and loosening House of Blues' grip on the market. Lefko now works for Goldenvoice, the company that puts on Coachella--who, not uncoincidentally, usually has quite a few Canucks on the roster.

I first spoke with Lefko in 2000 while researching Have Not Been the Same. Most of the book focused on interviews with artists, with very few industry voices. But there are few people with more experience in both the underground and the mainstream in Toronto/Canadian rock history between the years 85-95, and Mr. Lefko was a great help.

It's funny, of course, to see how many of his memories are based on how much money certain artists cost, and whether or not he was able to eat that night. But his was/is a high risk business, and he took chances on a lot of artists--especially Canadian ones.

At the beginning of this conversation, I don't think he understood what it was I wanted to talk about, but after that, he required little more than name prompting to embark on long tangents for the rest of our hour-long conversation, which stopped abruptly when I ran out of tape.

---

Elliott Lefko
June 6 2000
Locale: squatting awkwardly on the floor of the hallway of Universal Concerts’ office in the Molson Ampitheatre

When did you start promoting?
I started off being a journalist and a publicist. I was working for my friend Ron Mann, who did the film Poetry in Motion, and so I was doing publicity for him. I got involved in bringing some of the writers to town: Jim Carroll, Ed Sanders. I liked the performance aspect of it. Then I started doing Cdn writers, trying to put a bit more bite into poetry performance, because I thought it was definitely happening, as you can see from watching the movie.

After that, working with Jim Carroll and Groovy Relgion, and doing shows, I liked doing rock more than poetry. I was presented with some theme weeks down at the Bamboo [pivotal reggae club on Queen St. W], they were doing a ‘white roots week’ where it was cowboy stuff instead of reggae, so I got to program that. Then I brought the Del-Lords in. I’m really good at finding things. So presented with the challenge of finding cowboy bands, which nobody liked, so I found the Del-Lords, Kinky Friedmann, the Texas Jewboys, stuff like that. I had a really good time, so I started doing more theme weeks down there, with girl band week, surf band week. It was lots of fun.

When I went down to New York to find some of these bands, I ran into this whole scene where things were happening. Bands like the Replacements, Green on Red, True Believers. All the agents in New York were working on this kind of stuff, it was a beehive of activity for tons of great bands. They said, ‘we need help bringing in these bands,’ and I was more than happy to do it. I started working at RPM [now the Guvernment] doing indie Wednesdays and bridging Cdn bands like A Neon Rome and bands like that with the best of the young American bands, and having success at it. I brought in British bands too, like the Jazz Butcher.

I really grew to love that, and my niche was the American stuff. There were other promoters in town who were bringing in the more corporate stuff and more British stuff. My thing was more young American bands. I had this friend in Buffalo, these Buffalo kids used to come up to Toronto a lot, and we’d go down there for some shows.

There was this girl Cindy Hersh, and she gave me this tape one time with one side of Buffalo bands and Seattle bands on the other side. The Seattle bands were The Fluid, Mudhoney, Soundgarden, Nirvana, everybody. I thought, fuck, there’s all these great bands out there I can bring in, and nobody knew about it at the time. I found out who booked them. At the time I was at the Apocalypse Club, and I was able to bring them in for $100. Phone up Niranva. $100. ‘Yeah, we’ll get there somehow.’ They couldn’t make it that time; they got lost in a snowstorm. But Fluid came up, Tad came up, Mudhoney, they all came up for really cheap prices and the kids came out.

I remember doing Soundgarden for the first time there. It was $1000 for Soundgarden. They all came in, they were so quiet, they sat on the bus at the end of the show, very nice and well behaved. At the time Chris Cornell had great long hair at the time so girls wanted to fuck him and the guys wanted to be him. It was like our version of Black Sabbath. It was beautiful, there was this great energy and uncharted territory.

Were you booking local people on the Bamboo series, or mostly New York people? Shadowy Men?
Shadowy Men were there and they were very helpful in playing those kinds of gigs. It was funny because at the time in Toronto there was – and still is – a band called Bunchofuckingoofs. There was a girl I met and we had a fun idea to form a band called Bunchofuckingsmurfs, with a little kid in the band, and it was really funny. We put this band on stage, and the owner came out and started freaking out: ‘you have a kid on stage!’ but it was really fun. It was funny, because Bunchofuckingoofs went crazy, they thought we were making fun of them. I said, ‘Isn’t this what you’re all about? You can’t take a joke?’ There was also the Dundrells from Toronto. There were some really great country bands, too. Prairie Oyster was there, Handsome Ned. It was a cross-pollination.

Where did you see Handsome Ned and what role did he play in bringing roots music to Queen St.?
I loved country music. I don’t know why, but I did. I would go down and see him on Queen St., at the Cameron, and he also had a show at CKLN. He was the nicest guy. I had a poetry show there that I did with Chris Twomey, and I’d see him all the time. He was a real sweet guy. Always willing to help, always wanted to talk. Whenever I wanted to do something, he was there. ‘No problem.’ He was involved, I didn’t have to ask. Blue Rodeo was in its infancy at the time, and they’d be the opening act for some of these weeks, and down at RPM, too. Handsome Ned was the star. I would do shows with him, and he’d be just such a sweet guy. I really like working with him.

Did you see how he influenced different people?
Yeah. (pauses). I guess I did.

That was around the time Blue Rodeo started.
Yeah, he did some shows with Blue Rodeo. (stammering). He was a very sweet guy and I was very sad when he died. When I heard about it, I walked down to the Cameron House. We’d have parties after the shows with the True Believers, Alejandro Escovedo and some of those people, and Ned would be with us. We’d have a lot of fun together. I don’t really see that sense of community now that we had then, where everybody would have a really good time together after the shows.

Was there something about his songwriting that set him apart?
He was a really great songwriter, a really great voice. He had a lot of presence on stage, which is the hardest thing to get. You couldn’t stand behind him (Ned) at a gig, because he’d be wearing his giant cowboy hat. A very sweet guy. I remember riding home from his funeral with Greg [Keelor] from Blue Rodeo, in this really old beat up car. I remember listening to the radio and feeling really sad about it. At the time, Blue Rodeo really wanted to play a lot. There weren’t very popular yet, but they certainly were afterwards.

Did you know Blue Rodeo’s early incarnations?
They had went down to New York and then moved back here, so I started to work with them a lot. They would do anything at the time. If you needed them to do a show, there was no problem to get them to play. They opened some really great bills.

Were there turning points in their evolution that you saw?
When they put out the first record, they had a really good manager at the time, John Caton, who subsequently had some heart problems and had to retire. When he was with them and Outskirts came out, Jim [Cuddy] had experience with video, so they were able to put out a really good video right away. It touched a nerve with a lot of people. The images were very clear. There was one song about Kennedy in a hotel room getting shot, and also “A Good Year for the Roses.” It seemed to touch a lot of people. Really good music, really good words, really good looking guys on stage. There was a time when the Queen St. thing was exploding, and they stepped out of that and into people’s homes, through their stereos.

In the beginning it seemed to be more of an adult thing, and then their audience grew.
The Cowboy Junkies, one of their first gigs was at the Bamboo for one of the country weeks. Michael Timmins gave me a tape with a couple of songs on it, and then they did a show there. Greg [Jim, actually] took those pictures on their record. Michael would lean over his guitar, and she [Margo] was very cheerful. They haven’t changed that much, in a way; they’re still the same band. Success came to them, left them, came back again, etc., but the band has stayed consistent. From the beginning, if you listen to their early music, it was that drugged-out kind of music then that they’re still playing now, with this graceful voice on top of it. The thing I liked about the Cowboy Junkies was they were able to go into the United States and tour, unlike a lot of other bands. They would go into a van. They saw themselves – maybe not an American band, but they never saw themselves as a Canadian band. Never did. That’s why they were successful.

Even before the first record.
Right away, they were touring. They got into the station wagon and toured. These other bands like Green on Red would play all over the world, and that’s what the Junkies were. They realised they wanted to fit on the same map. Even if they were only making 50 cents and sleeping on people’s floors. A lot of the other Canadian bands didn’t do that: they were scared to do that, or didn’t want to do that. That was a good thing about the Junkies.

Another guy was Jeff Healey. I knew him through this friend of mine Joe Rockman, who I grew up with, the bassist. He told me he was playing with this blind guitar guy. I was putting on a show with Dr. John, and I got Jeff Healey to be the back-up band for Dr. John. They hit it off like crazy, getting to play together on stage. They were his band. It showed a bit that he could rise above the level of just playing Grossman’s. Later they did get to see some success.

The Cowboy Junkies seemed an oddball choice for mainstream success. A lot of Canadian companies thought their records were demos.
Sure, if you look in terms of Canadian music and what was going on then, Haywire and the pop music that was coming out of Canada at the time. It was the furthest thing from it. But there was a different strata that was going on there. At the time I couldn’t even buy bands off of Canadian agents, they would laugh at me. But American agents were taking me seriously. The comparative thing with the Junkies was that they were appealing to things that were going on universally, rather than in Canada. Eventually A&R people would come and see them and think they’re really good. Or if they played at Maxwell’s, a place like that in Hoboken, then people would look at them as being a creative, interesting voice. To Michael Timmins’ credit, he didn’t really care. He was going to do it, and if people didn’t come, they didn’t come; if people came, then people came. That’s great.

Was there a point when that attitude changed in the industry?
Perhaps with people like Pursuit of Happiness, when they had some success. Or Chalk Circle. Those kinds of bands would play RPM on Wednesday nights, one of the many bands who would give me tapes. Eventually, they had good videos and got signed – maybe in the Pursuit of Happiness’s case because they made a really good video. At that point the A&R people saw that there was something happening here that they could work with. Still, to this day, though, people can’t really go out on a limb and sign a weird, eccentric Canadian band and think that that’s going to make money. They want more commercial stuff.

As a result, you saw Zulu Records and Og Records and other independents putting out stuff and having a little bit of success; Mint later on. Part of the problem in Canada is that when you leave out a couple of urban centres, people don’t care what’s going on in modern music. Our friends in Montreal and Saskatoon and Winnipeg and Calgary and in Vancouver, you hear this stuff on Brave New Waves, but try to sell a show with the Apples in Stereo outside an urban centre, and not many people are going to come and see it.

There was a lot of stuff going on in Montreal. I know you were a big Gruesomes supporter.
I really liked the Gruesomes. There were certain things in Canada that I would hear about that I thought were a combination of artistic – I thought they were really good – and money; I’d think, this is how I’ll make some money and eat that day.

The Gruesomes were fantastic. When I first found them, it was for one of the things at the Bamboo. I brought them to Toronto. They had really long hair, and all they wanted to do was eat cereal and candy. John Davis’s younger brother Eric must have been about 15 or 16; he got to the Bamboo gig and he didn’t have any drumsticks! He was about to go on stage, and I had to run down to the Horseshoe and get him some drumsticks. The guys at the Bamboo were howling on me: “What is this?” And yet the band would pack them in. People loved it, it was really good.

I’d do combinations like them and the Chesterfield Kings; at the time the Chesterfield Kings were so good, and the Gruesomes just rocked their heads off. They didn’t care about anything. They were really great on stage, so easy to work with, and fun, and people would come out. It was a pleasure for me.

Other bands at the time were the Asexuals. I’d heard the records, and it was as good in my mind as the Replacements. Another band was The Nils. Again, you couldn’t believe how good those records sounded. When they’d play Toronto, I’d offer them $2000 for a show and they’d make it easily, we’d all make a lot of money. Or the Doughboys. The first or second time we did the Doughboys, we did a free show, and it was just packed. There was this big fat doorman at the Silver Dollar who was taking money from people just to get into a free show. It became a carnival atmosphere. People really wanted to see this stuff, the shows would sell, and things were working. The bands were great, made great music. Later on, they became such a great band. Jerry Jerry was also a great band.

A lot of the credit at the time went to Lee’s Palace. Mr. Lee and Craig Morrison. I would do shows all over town, wherever there was a stage. But the best place was always Lee’s Palace. I quickly realized that places would come and go, but that place would always be there. There was one point where I had no money – I’d been fired from the Silver Dollar or the Apocalypse or some place like that. Mr. Lee called me and took me out for lunch, and said ‘Do shows here. We’ll give you money. Don’t worry about stuff like that. You’ll be okay.’ I felt so good. There were all these nights when I’d sit in their leaky basement counting my money and feeling really thankful that I had a place to go and a place for the bands to go.

There was another band in Toronto I used to make money off of called Rare Air, with bagpipes. Amazing band, really good. I used to promote their shows in Toronto, and I’d make $100 and I could eat that day. It was so much fun. Then the Vancouver connection was with bands like Slow. I brought them into Toronto because I’d seen their video, and it was really amazing. It was around the Expo thing, all the hype. I brought them in for a show with Soul Asylum, and then the next night they did their own gig. They were so good, so incredible, but so fucked up.

On drugs or in general?
Not on drugs, no. They were the kind of guys who could walk down the street and get into an accident because they stepped on the wrong thing. They were funny guys. To get to Toronto they spent all their money, so they had no money to go back home again.

So they slept in their van, parked in front of my apartment on St. George for three weeks or something. My friend across the street was like, ‘Hey, is that Slow?’ And he’d invite them in to listen to music at his place. Tom was sleeping in the van, and the inner linings of the top of the van went into his mouth while he was sleeping and he had to go to the hospital because he was swallowing fibreglass. Ziggy got into a fight at a club in Hamilton and broke his arm. Chris and the other guy got into a fight with Bunchofuckinggoofs and hurt himself.

Steven Hamm, we were invited to a party up north for this guy who really liked the song and wanted to impress his girlfriend, so he took us to his parents place. He went into the Jacuzzi when everyone else was downstairs, and he flooded the Jacuzzi, and there was water everywhere. They were that type of band: everything would happen to them, but once they got on stage, they were so good.

I recently saw Tom Anselmi, and the guy still looks like – if there’s a rock star in Canada, it’s that kid. He looks and dresses the part. It’s a bit of a shame that band never achieved the success that was due, because of all the problems they had and the guy was a prima donna. It’s only now that he’s able to act halfway normal, and be nice to people. He was such an asshole to people for so long that people wanted to bury him. When I see him now, I think, that guy’s a star.

Did you see Circle C? [the band that formed out of the ashes of Slow]
I got to work with them a little bit. I booked them when I first started working with MCA Concerts, and he sent me this t-shirt with the Circle C logo based on the Chanel thing. It was one of these Spinal Tap things, where they got the wrong dimensions, and it was too little [he holds his fingers three cm apart]. We had all these t-shirts we couldn’t do anything with. When I heard A Neon Rome’s record or the Circle C record, I thought these were grandiose, beautiful records that deserved their place in the whole thing of Canadian rock. But those records never really did anything. I loved the Circle C record, but they weren’t able to do it live at the time. Maybe their story will come out one day.

A Neon Rome.
Those guys were almost the house band down at RPM when I was doing shows there. They were very popular at the time. They were a great band live, they’d go off and do these long songs. One day I was sitting somewhere and I saw their record, which was put out by New Rose Records in France, who put out Replacements records, and I said, ‘I really, really want to put this record out.’ So I formed a record company called Rightside Records and I put the record out in Canada. I loved that record. I thought, how can anybody not put out a record like this, such a beautiful record, beautiful cover? What a great record! But the singer at one point stopped talking [literally: he took a vow of silence]. You wonder why a band like that never got signed or nothing ever happened with them, because they were incredible live.

I’ve heard they were also dangerous live, hurting people in the audience.
I believe that they were to a certain extent, and they also were dangerous to themselves, too, at the time. From wherever they came from in Toronto, they knew that they were making sophisticated, universal music that was coming out at the time. I don’t know from what place inside of them it came from, but it was amazing. It’s incredible. Nowadays, you have guys like John Borra, who’s still one of the nicest guys around, playing really excellent music. He eventually became part of the lineage from Handsome Ned, in terms of cowboy stuff. But at the time he was doing psychedelic music.

Ian Blurton [Change of Heart, C'mon] was their drummer for a short period of time.
I remember Change of Heart always being around. There was a scene at the Beverley, and they would play there with bands like Vital Sines, Breeding Ground. That guy probably started when he was 16 years old or something. He always put out really great records, did really good live. If you’re going to have scene people who you recognize as the Toronto music scene, there’s Ian Blurton, Handsome Ned, Jim Cuddy. Faces to the music, those were the guys. Ian Blurton, you wonder how the guy ate for all these years, because there was never any money coming in, but he’d always be playing gigs.

There seemed to be a glass ceiling for that band.
There certainly was. They were the quintessential traveling-across-Canada-in-a-van-for-$100 band, back and forth, they did it so many times. And tried to probably go to the United States. He never had the attitude; or, he never had attitude, really. That was the good thing about him; he just wanted to play.

How did people find out about those Montreal bands that drew so well? Where did people find out about them? CKLN? BNW? Nerve?
I think it was a combination of all of those things. And once they did a gig, they were really good. If they were shit, it wouldn’t matter, they’d be come and gone. But they were all really good bands. They came out of their circle; Foufounes Electrique was a really great club at one point. There was a really great scene going on with people in Ottawa like Eugene Haslam, and in Hamilton there were guys doing shows, and in Kitchener and London, James McLean was there. And Suffer Machine was coming out of there. Disappointed a Few People were an amazing band at the time, too. There was a whole scene where bands could come in and do ten gigs in a row and do very well.

L’Etranger [early 80s Clash-y new wave band with Andrew Cash and Charles Angus]. Was that before you started booking?
A little bit before, so I wasn’t involved with them very much. I worked with Andy Cash a lot after that. When he signed a deal with Island, that was a little bit of a milestone, for someone plugging away for a long time, had really good songs, had a really good personality on stage, and got recognized by a major record label. It’s funny, because Island recognized him, an independent in its own way. When he got his deal and his songs were getting some radio airplay, “Time and Place,” that was a really good thing going on there. He was a guy who always wore his heart on his sleeve and was political, but always was a face that you could recognize Toronto rock by.

Rheostatics.
I used to work with Dave [Bidini] at the Excalibur when I was a writer at York University, and he was too. He told me he had a band, and I did some shows with those guys. (pauses) There are some guys who are the good guys of Canadian rock. I’d look at Bidini as being one of those types of people. And all the people with him, like Dave Clark and all those guys in the group. They made you feel so good whether you were in the audience or wherever.

On stage, or professionally?
Professionally, for me. Sometimes it was not so much the music. For some people it was the music, and with others it was being associated with really great people, and for me the Rheos were more like that. They never had a bad word for people, they always had a smile for people. They were always going out of their way to help other people. The way Don Kerr or Dale Morningstar [owners of Gas Station studio] are now. That’s what those guys were like then. Bidini loves Canadian rock, like Max Webster and stuff like that. He sees them as the older brothers, like Led Zeppelin would be England. He treated them with respect. Rush, and people like that, he loved those bands. They would help him, and then he would help out the littler bands. That was the nice thing going on, a sense of community.

Barenaked Ladies. Was that a fluke of time and place?
Yvonne used to book them at Ultrasound and do really well with it. At one point I became aware of them and decided I had to get involved. They had really good songs, just excellent, excellent songs. Their father would sell the tapes out of the back of his car and do really well.

Jane Siberry paved a lot of roads for non-commercial music that did really well.
I really loved her. I first saw her when she was doing her folk stuff. I thought she was really beautiful and very talented and very poetic. I started to work with her when I was taking musicians and getting them to do poetry and spoken word and performances, and she fit into that well. She was very into the whole Laurie Anderson thing, and wanted to evolve out of that. She appealed to people and worked really hard to get her own thing going.

She was really smart. She had her band, she was the leader of her band, she put up her posters all over the place, and she worked her way up the ladder one rung at a time. From a little club to a bigger club. She had both things, which was the best thing about her: she had a firm understanding of what it takes to be successful and all the hard work she had to put into it, and she and Bob Blumer went into the United States early, and worked hard to get the level of recognition going. Subsequently, 20 years later, she can still go to places like New York and Los Angeles where she has a following, because she worked it back then.

She took a lot of chances, too, and sometimes she’d miss the mark. But because she did that, she stayed ahead of the game and didn’t get lost, whereas so many other people just got lost and became clichés afterwards. She never did become a cliché. Even now.

Why do you think her music became so accepted, beyond just her hard work?
People like her and, say, John Critchley [of 13 Engines], they have a very broad sense of what’s going on in the world. They look at you when you talk to them, but they don’t look at you totally in the eye. You can see that the wheels are always moving in their head. They’re always thinking about how they can change things, how to do something different from what everyone else is trying to do. With her, she always knew how to change things and make things different. She was never going to let anybody tie her down. It all came from within her. And she was an artist, too. That’s how her head worked, like Joni Mitchell. They were always going to change. I don’t think she even thinks about it; I think it just happens.

Mary Margaret O’Hara.
Again, there’s somebody to an extreme, though. She’ll be so popular that Michael Stipe announced her from the stage here.

And that’s 12 years later.
Yeah. People are still knocked out by her. With her, though, it’s her beauty and her fault that she can’t understand the mechanisms of commerciality. She won’t go down that road. In a way it’s artistically really good, because she’s able to put out a record like she did, and play with the Glass Orchestra or whatever she does, an evening of love songs, and then you won’t see her again. That’s the positive. The fault is that if she’d learn to take a step towards the centre of the road, she could be huge. But she won’t, or she can’t, or she doesn’t know how, or whatever it is.

Did you see the Go Deo Chorus? [O’Hara’s first band]
Yeah. There was this place in Toronto called the Blue Angel, where Ultrasound was, and it was kind of this white elephant of a place. She’d play there, and she also had her way of writing, and she did the logos for the Rivoli and posters for people. She would do those kinds of gigs. Very much a Queen St. diva at the time.

You mentioned Critchley, and there was another band who went to the States right away.
Critchley realized what was going on with Husker Du and the Replacements and all these bands, and he went down to Minneapolis to record and play in the States. He was doing something which a lot of people failed to do, which was just go down there and knock on some doors and eventually they would open. But they were hard.

I remember trying to get gigs for the Gruesomes in the United States, and there was nothing happening, nobody wanted to know. One time this girl sent us a letter saying she wanted to invite the Gruesomes down to New York to play and we drove down there, did the gig, and afterwards she had no money to pay us. That kind of stuff. For a Cdn band, it was very difficult, and difficult to draw across Canada because it was so huge. There were daunting tasks. You could sit down with Ian Blurton and he could probably list a million reasons why things never happen and why it’s so difficult.

Were you managing the Gruesomes?
I just booked them and was friends with them. I never did any managing, I was always just friends with people. There was this band, Rang Tango, at the time when Blue Rodeo was starting. They were such a big band in Toronto at the time, and she was so good, they were making great music and packing houses. That was the one time I went to someone and said, can I manage you? I guess they looked at me and said, ‘you’re too scruffy’ or ‘you’re not enough of a businessman’ or ‘we think we can do better.’ They said no. That sort of frightened me after that; I didn’t want to put myself on the line for people and ask their permission to work with them. I know I’m good and I know I can make money off of what I was doing, so I went back to that. I never managed everybody after that.

They got signed to a deal and then fired the band, is that what happened?
They got signed to a deal and got a lawyer to manage them. It was ridiculous. They’d be playing the Silver Dollar and this lawyer would be running around backstage, telling everybody what to do. And everything was fine beforehand. Then the record company said, ‘we want to sign you but fire the band.’ She had to make this hard decision. She made the wrong decision. It would be like saying to Blue Rodeo, ‘Fire that fat bass player! Fire that postman drummer! You don’t need all that stuff, just use your two beautiful singers.’ But that’s why bands are bands, it’s that intangible quality, and it also keeps the lead singer’s head down to a reasonable level, by having everybody in the band, and having band meetings and band practices. That’s what was wrong in her case. She made a lot of moves, but she’s paid everything back in spades in subsequent years. She realizes she made a mistake, and if she could take it back she would. Again, she’s one of the nicest people in Cdn rock.

The east coast explosion in ’91 with Sloan.
People were going out to the east coast and coming back and saying, ‘there’s this amazing band called Sloan down there.’ I brought them to Toronto to do gigs. They were not unlike the Gruesomes in that, um, they were totally naïve in the way they were. They were making really fresh music, really good music. They did very well when they played gigs. And then Eric’s Trip, they came down to open for Sonic Youth at the Concert Hall. Again, that started rolling. They were really good, they draw people, and all the other bands followed suit coming out of there. For a while there, there were a whole lot of really good bands coming out of there.

I seem to remember some Toronto snobbery towards those bands at the time. Or was it all hyped up too much?
I think those bands were really great bands. They had a lot of confidence. Because they came from so far away, they travelled 15-20 hours to get here, they built up a bit of protection around themselves and self-confidence. They did very well.

Edgefests.
The shining moment for me was when Dave Bookman and I booked an Edgefest at the Ampitheatre. I had done a few of them, and things went well and people came out. Lowest of the Low, Violent Femmes, the Rheos. One time [1995] we just wanted to do a show, it was the show with no fat, we called it; we didn’t want any bad bands on the show. We had so many great bands, 40 bands or whatever. Bookman’s girlfriend at the time did a poster and a t-shirt. There was only one bad band we had on the show, that we were forced to put on. What were their names—a funky bass player from Toronto, I forget.

But every other band was amazing. From Montreal there was Merlin, from the east coast there was Thursh Hermit—the Steve Miller set! [Thrush Hermit’s entire set that day was spent covering Steve Miller’s Greatest Hits album.] That was such a beautiful moment. To have the sense of irony that they had, and for the biggest moment in front of their biggest crowd, instead of going for it and playing a set to do that, that’s when you realize you have a sense of community here and a band with a guy like Joel [Plaskett], a superstar singer like that who said, ‘You know, I don’t care if I sell a million records. This is my moment and I’m going to enjoy it.’ And for him to make the audience enjoy it that much, everybody understood the joke at that point.

No bad bands on it, really good bands, people came out that day, about 4000 people. Bands like Cub and Pluto from out west, bands of every single kind, and Sloan was doing sort of their farewell gig at that time. That’s when you saw, there are 40 amazing bands in Canada doing really good and who can take their place with anything. A lot of credit goes to Dave Bookman, too, for thinking of the whole thing, and helping a lot of bands along. And Sloan for leading the charge with all these bands.

Any other highlight moments for you like that? Seminal shows or bands?
Well you know, all the marijuana smoked clouds my mind a lot. I really liked the Lowest of the Low. When you see a band like that achieve the commercial thing too, with people lining up to see them, that was exciting to see. [Lefko coaxed them out of retirement a year after this conversation, for three shows at the Kool Haus that sold out instantly. It was his last hurrah in Toronto before moving to L.A.]

Doing my first show at Massey Hall with Grapes of Wrath, and having John Critchley's 13 Engines open. Doing shows at the Concert Hall with Skinny Puppy, or Sarah McLachlan at the Diamond Club. Having giant line-ups and doing really well with those things.


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