12 Bar Blues

In more than 12 Canadian blues bars

Over twenty years ago, I had an idea for a freelance story. I was travelling a lot across the country and I had a fondness for live music especially the blues. My idea was to write a piece called ‘12 Bar Blues’. In the music world, bars are the basic framework for good time. In the bar world, music is the basic framework for good times. So, I loved the double entendre. I just had to find 12 blues bars in Canada and tell their stories.

I found them.

I made notes.

I did not write the story, lost the notes and my memory these days is deeply overdrawn.

But what I remember, I recall with fondness, and I am going to look back and see what random musical notes might replace the lost pencil notes.

St. John’s

Let’s start in the east with the Rock, that is, Newfoundland/Labrador for the more geographically precise. More specifically, let’s hang out in St. John’s and head down to the iconic George Street. George Street is truly Canada’s first and still vital music district. I remember a blues bar there but the name is gone. However, ‘when in Rome’, as they say, and when on the Rock, the good stuff leans fully into the Irish history and the Celtic sound. The home of their truly homegrown music is in an Irish pub called O’Reilly’s. The joint is like a retail kitchen party.

One fine Tuesday night, I went down there, as I was told it had the longest running open mic in Newfoundland. They had a house guitar and a welcome grin and I was on. I had just started singing and writing, green as grass but determined to give it a go.

I believe I truly crapped the bed.

Still the lovely waitress complimented me on my cowboy song and invited me out back for a smoke. I did not drink or smoke, but some comfort chat would be good, and I figured there might be a story.

Sure enough, there was. I asked her for her craziest moment serving alcohol for twenty-six years on George Street.

She lit up and told me this tale.

She is out back, in this spot having a smoke when Buddy joins her. He is way past half in the bag. He is in dire need of two things at once, a smoke and a leak.

He lights up and lets go.

As relief settles, he starts to go down, backwards.

He lands flat on his back, in full stream, and Bob, she says, that old bugger put out his own cigarette!

Later that night I found myself sitting between two grizzled old fishermen at the bar. I got chatting with them both. They did not know each other and as I questioned them it turned out one fished the east coast and the other fished the west coast. The conversation was fantastic about the colour of water, the difference in fish and the type of boat. I was locked there for the rest of the night.

The Duke on Duckworth where Ron Hynes hung out was another fine, truly homegrown spot and one night I got talking with a friend of Ron’s who told me I just missed him by a couple of days.

St. John’s is not only a good starting point, but even though we all believe we live in music cities, St. John’s I believe, can take home the ribbon.

Halifax

I recall wandering in to a few spots where the fiddle and the mandolin still held court. I believe it was a bar called Durty Nellie’s where I met a couple of gents who were keen to help the western visitor find the true heart of Celtic soul, in a pub actually built in Ireland and shipped overseas like a hard-working oak and brass immigrant. It was grand!

Montreal

My first few times in Montreal were metaphorically like the indigenous kid I taught, who was raised in a non-indigenous world, and after we were treated to a sweat lodge, tossed away the saddle and started to ride bareback.

My family came to Quebec in 1665 and my grandfather had a deep wonderful French accent but there was no French culture in my Saskatchewan town that I could attach or relate to. I remember going into Old Montreal where grandpa was a cop and I felt a sort of homecoming with big swatch of sad. Sad that I did not have a clue what those folks were saying or why they only came out very late at night.

I wandered into a pub called Deux Pierrots (Two Clowns). Now back home, pubs were generally just for drinking. Sometimes they might have a band and some brave and inebriated soul would get up and dance, but no singing.

Yet in this Montreal pub, they were drinking, listening, dancing and oh my god, they were all, even the boys, singing! Singing their French hearts out. I phoned home and suggested that maybe we should send our girls here when it was time for boyfriends.

Linda and I were young, we took advantage of the first seat sales, and flew to New York. She treated me to stunning art tours every day. We ended up in Montreal on the way home, with more art and one night a sign that said, ‘Rising Sun’. We went up the stairs and were treated to a fine evening with the iconic Big Mama Thornton. I knew she was the songwriter who penned Hound Dog and I could not believe our luck. She was frail and I don’t think it was very long after that we lost her, but that night she gave us the blues in heaping spoonsful.

Credit to https://montrealconcertposterarchive.com/rising-sun/

Toronto

Toronto was a street version of all the music lessons I never got. It felt like every day I developed my music literacy.

We lived in a Queen Street artist co-op. Down the street was the Horseshoe Tavern, the harmonic convergent incubator for every Canadian music beginning. It was like living in Greenwich Village in the sixties.

I remember one evening in the Shoe and I was wondering who this new band was. Turned out that me and the maybe twenty people in there were seriously digging a new band called the Tragically Hip.

I also sat in the basement of that venerable joint with X-ray, the boss, waiting to interview Colin James busy rocking Toronto upstairs. He tells me the story of the ratty couch we were sitting on, and how they lost Hank Williams in Toronto years ago and found him passed out on this very couch.

I got the shivers.

I saw the emerging Cowboy Junkies in the old Silver Dollar bar.

Great evenings in Albert Hall and Saturday afternoons in the Brunswick with that cool old gal on the upright piano. The Cameron down the street was the home of the alternative and I wish I would have caught Handsome Ned. I did see Molly Johnson there on Stormy Mondays. Oh yeah, the Rex was across the alley from our place and I finally started to get a proper schooling in jazz. And finally, I got a night in Massey Hall years later. No big deal, just Mark Knopfler making me grin from ear to ear.

Winnipeg

In the ‘Peg, I found the ultimate blues bar. The Windsor was smoky, greasy and just getting more and more seedy. I spent an evening getting to know the indigenous blues guy, Billy Joe Green. Stories of indigenous life and adventures in northern Manitoba were exchanged. The Windsor fell into bad times and was destroyed by fire in 2023.

The Blue Note was also a fine hang especially for the singer songwriter crowd. I did not really know the decades of music memoirs and the role of the Blue Note in that storied Winnipeg music history.

Speaking of Winnipeg music history, I got to spend an afternoon one day with my old drummer friend Gord Osland. We were over at his new bandmate’s house. That new bandmate happened to be Greg Leskiw, former member of the Guess Who, now hooking up with Gord in a new creative band called Mood Jga Jga. I was hoping for a few Guess Who stories, but I suppose things were still a bit raw.

Saskatoon

Saskatoon was my coming-of-age city. There was such fine music and musicians in that place, and it was there where I realized that being great did not mean being successful. Remember Humphrey and the Dumptrucks?

The Bassment was the jazz entre with blues appetizers. Buds on Broadway was blues with jazz appetizers. Amigos was the home for folkies and the Broadway Theatre was the funky concert hall.

Edmonton

I spent a couple of fine Saturday afternoons in the Commercial Hotel now better known as Blues on Whyte. I wish I would have found my way to the iconic Yardbird Suite, where Tommy Banks held court.

Calgary

My home now for two decades and where I found my own voice and co-founded the Music Mile and ElderSong. Another story.

Best early memory was coming here years ago and enjoying Tim Williams and his band playing in the smoky old, historic King Eddy. I helped Pat Macintyre move furnishings from the old Ironwood quonset to the new Ironwood in the Garry Theatre.

That old quonset became a blues favorite. The Blues Can lost out to commercial real estate but landed well in another part of the city.

Calgary is now recognized as a Music City with many venues including:

The Palomino

Commonwealth

Gravity

King Eddy (with Rolling Stones mobile studio!)

Mikey’s

Ranchman’s

Whiskey Rose

Festival Hall

Palace Theatre

Bella Concert Hall

Knox United

The Lantern

and many more

Hell, we have Canada’s Music Museum and Hall of Fame in Studio Bell.

Vancouver

We spent a decade in Vancouver.

I spent a few afternoons in the Yale and became friendly with the bouncer. We enjoyed a day at the Canadians ballpark as we were both baseball nuts.

One big Yale memory was another Saturday afternoon when I met three members of the Colin James band. Colin had just broken up the band to pursue a more personal vision. It was an uncomfortable moment as I was faced with the reality of music divorce. It was not pretty.

I liked the Railway Club for the singer songwriter vibe. I met and watched Billy Cowsill at the Fairview Pub in my Kits neighbourhood, and we shared a breakfast in the Sunrise Café at two in the afternoon. Another story.

My good friend Frank Osendarp took me to see the Violent Femmes at the iconic Commodore Ballroom. I am not a mosh pit kind of guy, but bouncing on that horsehair floor was a fine moment indeed.

The North

You may recall my Churchill story. I was playing washtub bass with a couple of teacher friends and we may have in a small way integrated a live music bar in that northern town. It took a while, but we soon noticed that the bar floor of this particular establishment had a small raised section in the centre of the room. It was apparent that the white folks sat up there and the indigenous folks sat around the edges. It was called The Racetrack and it was about race all right. So, we valiantly went on strike for a few nights, brought our indigenous friends into the centre island and started a fuss that ended with the bar finally renovating both the segregated floor and hopefully some attitudes by the next summer. Peter Mansbridge tells the story of this bar in his memoir as well.

In Whitehorse, Yukon I believe it was the historic 98 Hotel where I found a little music and a lot of history.

I spent a week one night in the Gold Range in Yellowknife. At two in the morning, it was light outside and dark inside. The music was classic CCR but I was feeling better once back in my hotel room.

So, it’s been a wonderful pilgrimage over the years, poking my nose into the dark and the light of the live music world in Canada.

People lost their bands.

People lost their venues.

People lost their minds.

But I don’t believe any of them lost their love of good live music. I am convinced that music is the one supplement we should all be taking to ward off an increasingly toxic world.

Catherine and I have been playing lately in parks and gardens. We don’t have crowds or even many folks come out, but the people there took the medicine well.

Many people, places and moments in this story are gone but the music will live forever. Take your medicine!