Abigail, not Annabelle

           

           
            While getting ready to go to the Tranzac on the Monday night of August 22nd, I remembered at the last minute to take some scrap paper along with me to write on and so I found about twenty sheets.

            As I started out I noticed that it was so late in the summer that it was finally dark enough at that time for stars to appear.

            I was riding up Brock Avenue, and after the underpass I suddenly wondered if I’d actually put the paper I’d found into my backpack. I stopped to check, and sure enough I hadn’t. I went back to get it but I only lost about twelve minutes in getting to the Tranzac.

            When I arrived in the Southern Cross bar there was a jazz quartet playing, and though it didn’t look like Chris Banks playing the double bass, the drummer and the pianist were familiar, from previous installments of Chris Banks and Friends. I went to sign in and saw a familiar face out of the corner of my left eye. I turned and saw Charles Winder. He had put himself down on the list at number 1 just like he always does at Fat Albert’s. I said hi and then I went outside.

            I tuned up and practiced my song one time through. I peeked in the window and saw the show was finished, so I went to go back inside just as Cad arrived. He told me he wouldn’t be staying long.

            Back inside, I shook hands with Charles. He has the handshake of an overcooked noodle. We chatted for a while. This was the first time I’d ever seen him performing anyplace other than Fat Albert’s.

            I sat with Cad and he told me he was going on an eleven hour boat cruise the next day. I asked if it was a trip to Israel and he confirmed that it was, with a stop over in New York on the way. I asked where he was really going and he told me, Dearborn, Michigan”, which was another fib, related to an anti-Muslim post he’d made online that depicted some tough looking gangsters, which I’d argued proved that Dearborn is just an ordinary community, since every urban area has street gangs. I finally got Cad to tell me that he was really going to Buffalo by boat, which was also probably not true, since it would take about eleven hours just to get through the Welland Canal, so with all the stopping and starting at the locks, it wouldn’t be a very pleasant cruise. Maybe he was going to Rochester, but I really don’t think Cad can get across the border easily, so who knows where he was going. I wouldn’t be surprised if Cad didn’t know. It would be a free boat ride and that’s all that would matter to him.

            He was bragging about how he got into the Ex for free this year.

            He said that on the weekend he’d gone to the Philippino festival and that he’d also gone to a Jamaican barbecue where they gave him four chickens.

            The host that night was Abigail Lapell and she started at about 22:10 with one of her own songs, called “Down By the Water” – “Where will you go my darling daughter, I’m gonna live down by the water … I’m gonna send a dozen roses down the river like baby Moses …”

            Her second song was The Tragically Hip’s “Wheat Kings” – “Sundown in the Paris of the prairies, wheat kings have all their treasures buried and all you hear are the rusty breezes pushing around the weather vane Jesus … Twenty years for nothing, well that’s nothing new. Besides, no one’s interested in something you didn’t do …”

            First on the open stage, as he always was at Fat Albert’s, was Charles Winder, who of course played flamenco guitar, as usual, from sheet music.  Instead of two songs, he played the two long parts of one piece.

Cad left early as he said he would.

            After Charles, was Andrea Hatala, who went to the piano, as usual, and played her song “The Bridge” – “ … Trying to find the key or break the lock … Take a look inside me, we can build a bridge out of love … Wood, steel and stone … hide us from unknowns …”

            From Andrea’s second song – “ … I know this is a circus, but does it have to feel so worthless … Always doing less than what you’re told, you’re so cold.”

            My set was next. I did “Skin Like Coffee”, which is my translation of Serge Gainsbourg’s. “Couleur Café” – “ … Love is not philosophy, it’s more like coffee, we drink it too quickly and before long it’s all used up. I can’t just drink coffee, we’re about to leave, to forget everything, but I’ve got to just have one more cup …”

            Then I did my own “Love In Remission”, which went over well – “ … There isn’t a cure for love in remission, as if festers neath the bandages of our politesse. We wake up one day to see that love is a prison and we’ve been condemned to a sentence of happiness …”

            Abigail commented on the abundance of music stands in the performance area. She said it looked like it was for a high school band, with “music stands, mic stands and a lot of love.”

            Someone called out, “Prison of love!” in reference to the song I’d just sung.

            Then John P. came to the stage. From his first song – “I was a ghost nearly all of my life, I stood around watching the world go by … You can’t see through me, séances do nothing to me …”

            John told us that someone told him that his second song sounded like it could have been written by Lou Reed – “I know I look very much alive, Get a shovel out, you can bury me now … I know that I look like I’m kind of a ghost, You are the parasite, I am the host …”

            Following John was someone new to the Tranzac open stage, named Ardin. He told us that he’d just moved back to Toronto after five years in New York City and that he was going to do one song about time and another about regret, neither of which had been before played in public. From the first one – “You grow through change, it’s true … Things keep moving around me and I just can’t stay the same … I liked who I was … It’s nice to have just a moment when things stay the same. I wear myself down till there’s nothing left but sand. Change, where’s that boy? Is he in there? Can you shake him out again? Cause I miss him, he got lost in the change … When things don’t change, how can I learn to rest in motion?”

            Ardin’s second song was the one he said was about time – “Aint got no Delorean and I aint no Dr Who … At night, when I’m half crazy, I just travel in time, and in a second I go to you … It’s still April, 2014 … So now when I get lonely, I know just what to do … So keep your old Delorean and keep your Tardis too …”

            Next was Ardin’s friend, Carminelle. From her first song – “ … I could never chase as far as she ran … I love a flower … Someone so broken that I can’t be the one to mend all her wounds …” It was kind of a slow and sleepy song. She told us that she wrote it after someone she had been dating cheated on her.

            From Carminelle’s second song – “As though an ordinary morning like this can fool me into thinking that I don’t exist …”

            After Carminelle was Brian Rosen, who, like Charles Winder, I had never heard perform outside of Fat Albert’s before. This night was like a little Fat Albert’s reunion.

Brian started with a cover of Paul Simon’s “Loves Me Like A Rock” – “ … I’m a consummated man, I can snatch a little purity …”

His second choice was “Wheels of Love” by Marjy Plant – “ … The wheels of love will never compromise … So she broke your heart, don’t look back, maybe next time you’ll keep your feet on the ground …”

Anthony and Kwezi were both on the list but they were AWOL when their turn came up, so all that was left was for Abigail to put her musical signature on the end of the night. She reminded us that she hosts the Tranzac open stage on the third Monday of every five Monday month, but added, not if that Monday conflicts with a Jewish holiday.

Her last song was called “Sparrow For A Heart” – “ … When I am old would you carry my bones to the sea? Don’t let the earthworms and the carrion crows get the best of me.”

I chatted with Brian Rosen, who suggested that one could never be discovered at an open stage. I said that they have been discovered while playing on the street or in the subway. He offered the view that those locations make more sense.

            Abigail thanked me for coming out, and I thanked her as well, but called her “Annabelle” as I often have thought that to be her name. I think it must be my mind’s rhyming machinery at work, connecting Annabelle with Lapell, but I felt bad as I left for having gotten her name wrong.