Walkers Road part 5

Hi everyone!

I hope you aren’t getting bored with this series. I had no idea when I started this that it would go on so long. My brother Pat and I have the type of memory called “episodic”. Given a cue, such as a date (particularly a special occasion), an incident, a song, a TV theme, or a commercial, it leads to a mental movie that we can run backward or forward in time.

Whenever I start writing about anything from my past, I’m flooded with memories—incidents, events, and people I haven’t thought about in years.

It’s fun for me; I get a real kick out of it.

I’ll get back to the antics of The Lightfoot Band soon.

No Place Like…..

At the end of part 4, we had finished our Eastern Canada road trip and were headed home.

We had a week’s rest before we travelled to London, Ontario, to play in the Paddock Lounge. This was part of the horse racing facility at the Western Fairgrounds. These tracks make a lot of money, but the cheap buggers wouldn’t supply accommodation.

Rick’s mother had a house in St. Thomas, a twenty-five-minute drive south of London. That’s where we stayed. Unfortunately, there was a shortage of places to sleep. We needed seven, but there were only five.

Marty (who had just rejoined us) and I must have drawn the short straws because we were in sleeping bags on the floor in a small room upstairs. I awoke one morning to see a huge centipede a few feet from my face. Those things are an abomination. Centipedes, spiders and a few of my school teachers were the most revolting creatures I’ve ever had to deal with, but that’s another story.

We played to less than half a room all week. We did get some interesting news, though.

The Good With The Bad

We had three songwriters in the band. Art, Jim and I. We had recorded a demo of five tunes before we left to go out east. It was shopped around by Carol, our manager, and a record company was interested in signing us.

That was good. What we didn’t know at the time was that Carol had also arranged a meeting for us with a management company. There was a hotshot new guy in town from the States who claimed to have managed Sonny and Cher. He wanted to promote Canadian talent. He already had a stable of reasonably well-known artists, which gave him some credibility.

Carol said he was very interested in co-managing us. We met with him a few times. An overweight ex marine with a military brushcut, he talked tough about the industry and dropped names like a talk show host. He was going to grab the Canadian music scene by the balls until it said uncle. “The biggest son of a bitch in the business” in his own words. “Sign with me and you’ll be farting through silk.” (Not very original, that was a Ronnie Hawkins quip.)

I wasn’t overly impressed; the needle on my bullshit meter was starting to bend. But under peer pressure I put my signature, along with the rest of the band, on a performance contract that gave him forty per cent, and another contract that gave him the publishing rights to our songs.

It required everyone to sign. If anyone refused, the deal was off.

“This is our big chance”, the others were saying. “We’ll make enough money that we won’t care about the contract”.

We recorded some masters at Eastern Sound in Toronto, did a few gigs around town and waited for stardom.

Back To Where We Started

In early December, I got a call on a Friday night from Art.

“ A band just cancelled at a club in Halifax. We’ve been asked to fill in. We start Monday.”

The next morning, Marty, Rick, Jon and Helen started driving. Art, Jim and I flew down on Monday.

When we got there, we asked the owner where we were staying.

“I don’t know. Not my problem.”

Village People

I don’t recall what Helen and Jon did, but with our profit margin already slim, the rest of us stayed at the YMCA.

When we called our management and told them, all they said was “Don’t bend over in the showers”.

We returned to the club the next day to find out we were fired. “You’re not exactly what we thought we were hiring.”

After a heated discussion over the phone, our management got us enough money to get home.

Not very much money, so flying wasn’t an option. Marty, Rick, Jon and Helen took the van, and the rest of us got on the train. We spent 36 hours in coach, alternately freezing and sweating, before arriving at Union Station in Toronto, tired, broke, hungry and pissed off.

Ya gotta love show business.

Marty and Art went home for Christmas. Marty to Springfield and Art to Vancouver. We had a booking at the Avion Hotel starting Dec. 30, so their visits were short.

When Art got back, he and Jim were talking cryptically about some big change coming.

A few days after we finished the Avion gig, we were summoned to a meeting with the hotshot manager.

The Sound Of Shit Hitting The Fan

He immediately tore into Art and Jim. A nuclear war of F bombs ensued reducing Jim to tears. Apparently, they had been plotting to fire Helen and Jon. He ended up letting Jim off the hook, but he told Art to take a hike and made me the leader.

I never heard another word about the record company. I suppose they  took a pass when this happened.

A new guitar player, John King, was hired. We had a couple of rehearsals, but my heart wasn’t in it.

Walkers Road RIP

We decided it was over and the band folded. It would be more than a year before I managed to get my contract signed off.