Walkers Road part 2

Hi everyone!
Let’s recap a little. Walkers Road was my first full-time band. It had existed in another form for a few years previously, but had been dormant for about twelve to sixteen months. It re-formed in February 1974 to back up  Canadian celeb, Dini Petty. 
After a month of rehearsals, Dini and the band parted ways due to a confidence crisis (lack of). There was nothing nasty about it, and we have all remained friends.
Art, Jim, Rick, and I kept things going by hiring two former Walkers Road members, Helen Lewis and Jon Casselman.

The Story Continues

How we were to be dressed on stage was something I never gave much thought to. 
Our manager, Carol Casselman (sound familiar? Jon’s aunt…a long story), decided that the band was to be decked out in suits (mine had tails) designed by a tailor in Toronto. He took all of our measurements one afternoon in his apartment. He was very efficient and quick, except for the inseam. He seemed to put a lot of importance on that. He measured it twice.
The front people dressed differently. Jon was in a white suit, and though I don’t remember anything specific she wore, Helen always looked pretty cool. 
Okay, four guys in medieval suits with effeminate frilly shirts, an attractive hip chick, and Mr. Clean. We couldn’t lose.
We organized a showcase at a bar on the airport strip and invited the agents. They were ready to sign us before hearing a note. The fact that we had four sets of well-rehearsed dance-friendly music seemed almost irrelevant.
“It’s not how you sound……. it’s how you look. And you look marvellous”.
The next day, our manager, Carol, signed us up for six weeks in bars in Halifax and Montreal.

Hiring An Assistant

Regular followers of my blog will remember Marty Aune (pronounced aw-knee with the accent on the first syllable). He had been a close friend of mine since 1961. I knew he was planning on coming up to Canada from his home in Springfield, Illinois, for the six-week tobacco harvest in Southern Ontario beginning in early August. 
I got an idea. It was a long shot, but I needed help with my stuff on the road. Hell, everyone in the band could use help. “I wonder if he could come up in June and travel with us until harvest?” I mused. 
Nobody in the band knew Marty. I had to convince them that the chances of him being a serial killer were low. They trusted my judgement, and I called him and pitched the idea. I don’t think I even got to the end of “Are you interested?” before he said yes. Not your regular run-of-the-mill “Yes”. More like an emphatic FUCK-YES!

Van’s Full. He Needs A Car

One thing that may have swayed the band’s okay was when I pointed out that we’d have a second vehicle with us. The Walkers Road van was looking to be a claustrophobic nightmare. Six people plus all of our equipment wedged together for twenty hours.
Marty had a car. He was fine with driving it to Halifax and Montreal. 
We had a gathering a few days before leaving, and everyone had a chance to meet him. They were impressed. Marty had something about him that made people trust him on first meeting. And it was for real. He was sincere. But he had a quirk:
A short period of time after meeting someone, he’d decide that the honeymoon was over. He was adept at ripping your ego right out of your chest and stuffing it in your mouth. I witnessed this for a number of years. 
Marty wasn’t mean-spirited. There’s no question that he considered his pokes at people to be good-natured ribbing. It was as if life was like one of those “roasts” they put on, where you were expected to trash the honoree. More about that in a future post.
So the band and hangers-on are buzzing about this cool guy with the shoulder-length blond hair who says he doesn’t require any pay. He says he will be fine as long as he’s allowed to bundle up in his sleeping bag on the floor of my room. 
The leader of the band, Art Hyne, gave a sort of “global” okay to the idea, which was what we were looking for. 

A Confession

Having a second vehicle was a real perk in those days. Hell, sometimes even one vehicle was a bonus. The band I joined after Walkers Road, “The Doug Sullivan Band’, had no vehicle at all for one of our gigs. We rented a small truck on Monday and disconnected the odometer cable. Next, we drove until we got to the place where we had played the week before. We had made a deal with the bar owner on the previous Saturday night to leave our band gear there until Monday. We picked up the equipment and took it to the next gig. After that, one of us drove the truck back to Toronto, but stopped first within a few kilometres to reconnect the odometer cable. It saved us a ton of money.  During the week, we used public transit.
This worked because the gig was within two hours of Toronto and because we didn’t get busted for tampering with the odometer.
I don’t remember what kind of car Marty had. I’d ask him, but he passed away in 2011. It wasn’t very big, but we could both ride in it comfortably, which considerably lessened the crowd scene in the band van. 

Halifax Or Bust

The bust came early. If you’re familiar with the geography of Southern Ontario, you’ll know that the city of Oshawa is not far from Toronto. That’s where Marty’s car, after a refuel, did a few epiglottal coughs and, in car talk, gurgled, “not even one more kilometre, you assholes, until I get some maintenance”. 
Like a rat fleeing a sinking ship, I grabbed my suitcase, threw it into the rear of the band van which had pulled in behind us, and climbed into the back seat with Jon, Helen, and Rick. 
That was Friday afternoon. Marty showed up in Halifax on Monday morning. 
“The fuel injectors needed cleaning, is all,” he explained in his quaint rural United States accent. 
“I put three dollars’ worth of some shit I got at Canadian Tire into the gas tank. The car hacked and farted and then purred like a kitten. I didn’t figure that out until after I had it towed back to Mississauga.”
Monday afternoon, we hauled our equipment into the bar and set up. 
Although the hotel had been open for two weeks, this was to be the grand opening of Flanagan’s, their large nightclub on the bottom floor. 
Monday to Wednesday was usually light in most bars, but whoever was in charge of advertising and promotion had really done their job. 
By eight Monday evening, there was a double-width line-up stretching down a fifty-foot hallway. Just before we went on at nine pm, it was snaked outside to the curb. 

The Dark Side

During the first set, we played well and got some applause, but this whole gala event had nothing to do with us. If you were young, well-dressed, and grew up in a middle or upper-middle-class family, this was the new hip place to be seen. 
Right across the road was a blues bar that definitely appealed to a grittier crowd. Working class people in blue shirts with their name stitched above the left pocket, bikers in patched denim jackets, chicks with lots of eye makeup, and tough-looking waiters carrying trays of 10-ounce 25-cent beers.
We had wandered in there the night before, drawn by the sound of a hot band letting it rip with an up-tempo boogie shuffle. 
“Flip. flop and fly, I don’t care if I die,” half sang and half talked the front man in a growly baritone. 
It was standing room only, so we made our way over to the bar, ordered some beers, and as discreetly as we could, asked some of the patrons where we could get some weed.
We explained who we were and that we’d be playing across the street for the next two weeks. There wasn’t much response.
During our third set the next night, though, a guy made his way through a packed dance floor and placed a bottle cap with some kind of dark liquid in it on the bottom keyboard of the organ. Hash oil. 
I went across the street during our next break and found him.
“What do I owe you?”
“Just enjoy,” he said, “You’ll want more, and then we’ll talk money.”
After we finished playing, we gathered in my room and tried to figure out how to smoke it. We ended up dropping some on a piece of foil and putting a match to the bottom. A puff of dense white smoke went up, and we all inhaled through plastic straws. 

Good Lord, What’s In This Shit?

It was very strong. My memory is murky, but I do recall returning to the nightclub with Jim to make sure our gear was turned off. As the elevator doors opened at bar level, there was a body in a three-piece suit sprawled out on the floor in front of us. I was high as a kite and close to freaking out when I heard Jim laughing. He was bent over observing the guy. Not dead. Snoring. Out cold.
“Another satisfied customer,” Jim quipped. 
Later, five of us went to a late-night restaurant and stuffed ourselves with the best egg rolls and fried rice I ever tasted, then stopped at a 7-11 for a couple of buckets of Rocky Road ice cream and some Oreo cookies. Our drug dealer was right; we wanted more of what he had. The next time, however, it wasn’t free.

Dudley Do-Right Ruins The Fun (Almost)

It was an amazing two weeks. The club was packed every night, and the dance floor was seldom empty. I fell in unrequited love-lust with three of the very attractive waitresses at Flanagan’s. On a day off, Rick, Marty, and I invited them to the beach. Things were fine until an RCMP officer on horseback spotted us sharing a bottle of wine. 
“I could have all of you arrested,” he said, “There’s no public drinking in a provincial park.”
I managed to weasel out of it by claiming that we were from Ontario, where the laws were different. They weren’t, but he bought it. He watched while I poured the wine out on the sand and then left us with a stern warning. No big deal, there were two more bottles in the picnic basket. We found a thicket of trees and resumed imbibing. 

Eden Lost

If it had been up to us, we would have stayed the whole summer in Halifax. We were going over, the staff and management were pleased, the food in the half-priced (for us) restaurant was great, and the waitresses were all very cute. 
But duty called. At the end of the second week, we packed up the van and headed for Montreal. 
To be continued…….