Labour Day Déjà Vu

            The night of Monday September 5^th was as warm, or warmer than any night we’d had all summer, as I rode to the Tranzac for my last performance on the Monday night open stage until probably next April.

            I had a sense of déjà vu as I walked into the Southern Cross room, because Sarah Greene was working the bar, just like she had on Labour Day the year before. Adding to that was the fact that I knew Chris banks would be the host that night, just as he had been on Labour Day the year before, because he always MCs on the first Monday of every month.

            Terry Jones and his band were doing their weekly performance, but this time he was releasing a new CD.

            Sarah and I chatted loudly for a while against the music, about how annoying the annual Labour Day air show at the Canadian National Exhibition is for someone that lives in Parkdale. We also talked about our cats and I offered my observations about the differences between male and female felines.

            Once Terry finished playing I found a free table. John P had a conversation with Terry about their mutual musical influences. They were discussing the songs of Gene Clarke, of The Byrds. John told him, “You’re gonna thank me for this!” Then he told him about a song by Gene Clarke called “If I Hang Around”. Bob Cohen looked it up on his phone and they listened to it appreciatively.

            Chris banks arrived to set up. Even early on it looked like a long open stage list. We got rolling at around a quarter after the official start time of 22:00.

            The first name on the list was Isaac Bonk, who shared a new song with us that he said was a talking blues. With this piece, Isaac continued what seems to be his almost obsessively derivative march through Bob Dylan’s early repertoire. Another problem with a lot of Isaac’s songs is that they are about specific events and people that may soon be forgotten. The danger of this is that the forgetting of the events and people in question will also drag the songs into obscurity. This was, for the most part, the downfall of Phil Ochs. Isaac’s song was called “South Country Blues” – “ …I saw a man on the tube one day … If you’re a fan of bigotry, and the colour orange … The polls were open in mid-November … glad I’m in Canada, the beavers they won’t hurt ya … So the orange fella would build a wall and thinks that everyone should own a trigger. I think his hands should be bigger … Just don’t live there, they don’t have free health care.”

            Isaac’s second choice was a cover of a traditional blues song called “Moonshiner’s Blues”. As he began to play his harmonica though, he discovered that it had a broken reed. He continued anyway – “I’ve been a moonshiner for seventeen long years, I’ve spent all my money on whiskey and beer … I go to some barroom and drink with my friends, where the women can’t follow and see what I spend … The whole world’s a bottle and life is but a dram, when the bottle is empty it sure aint worth a damn.” John asked who sings that song and Isaac told him that it was Bob Dylan. Asked what album it’s on, he answered that it’s on a bootleg.

            Next was Jodie, with a couple of original songs. He asked Chris if he had to sit to play. Of course he didn’t. He started with what he said was a country original, called “Broke As Fuck” – “Well I hear the train a comin, but I got no cash. It does suck to be broke as fuck … It’s hard to be a pimp when you’re broke as fuck …”

            His second offering was a reggae song about the U.S. – “All we’re gonna do is party … We weren’t meant to be commanded … You can be Sri Lankan or come from the Balkans … Soldiers, come as you are … Shake hands with a rival.

            Chris had used a photocopying application to put the list onto his phone.

            After Jodie was John P., with Chas Lawther on steel guitar.

John’s first song was entitled, “You’re Gonna Have Me Cryin” – “Dippin my toe in … your temperature is fifty degrees … Maybe we’ll get married in Winnipeg, we’ll honeymoon in the Pas …”

I had noticed that John pronounced “Pas” as “Paz”, so I asked him if he actually knew that the name of the town was spoken that way. I’d always heard it as “Pah” because it’s a French word, meaning “footprint” and so the “s” at the end would not be sounded. John said that he had heard it pronounced “Paz” but what he’d heard could have been wrong. Chas agreed with me that it’s “Pah”. John said that he would have to change it then and just find a new rhyme.

He said of his second song that he’d written it in Montreux, Switzerland – “Are you acquainted with the rain? Your life will never be the same. Are you acquainted with the clouds …”

Then Chas stayed onstage for his own set. He told us that he would just play a couple of short tunes because he’d just played two songs with John and people get tired of steel guitar so fast.

For his first improvisation, which he’d at that moment decided to call, “First Monday in September”, Chas asked John to time him for two minutes and twenty seconds. It started with slow, mournful sliding, but later picked up speed and became more staccato.

His second offering was a rendition of the Shaker song, “Simple Gifts”, by Elder Joseph Brackett, which Chas started singing in tongues and finished in English – “Tis a gift to be simple, tis a gift to be free, tis a gift to come down where we ought to be, and when we find the place just right we will be in the valley of love and delight. When true simplicity is gained, to bow and to bend we will not be ashamed. To turn and to turn will be our delight till by turning and turning we come round right …”

I followed Chas, and had planned on making an announcement that this would be my last time at the Tranzac for a few months, as if anybody really cared, but it slipped my mind. I started with “The Wooden Leg”, which is my translation of Serge Gainsbourg’s “Le Jambe de Bois” – “In a bygone age was a wooden leg who went looking for a husband. She said upon my life if no one wants me for a wife I’m gonna put a bullet in my noggin … Arriving at the field of battle, amid the dancing of the shrapnel, she saw a rocket on the fly, and as it came whistling by, she said to him “Hey toots, I like the way you look on your way to kill the Cossacks, do me a big favour and take a little detour before you make the attack …”

For my second choice, instead of doing one of my own as I usually do, I did another translation. This was “The Ticket Puncher at Lilas Station”, which is from Gainsbourg’s “Le Poinconneur Des Lilas” – “I am the ticket puncher at Lilas, the guy you pass but don’t quite ever see there. There is no sun underneath the ground, strange way to get around …” Even though I have practiced playing that song every morning for about five years, and can play it without looking at the fretboard, I screwed up the chords several times on this live performance.

Next up was Kwezi, who surprised me on his way to the stage when he stopped to shake my hand to tell me he really liked my last song.

There seemed like in this part of the night, there was a heavy atmosphere in the room. A slightly darker mood.

From Kwezi’s first reggae song – “Please know, this love won’t let you go, it shows, in every move. I wish, in a great big house on a hill, you and me, chill …”

            He told us that his second song was pretty new and commented that it’s interesting to jump into new songs, take them on a journey and then transform them into something. It was called “You Find” and he sang it exceptionally well, with his already great voice – “What can I do to get closer to you? I’ve been climbing; hard work’s been something to do. All these choices; I know where my voice is … The wheels are burning, as long as they turn …”

            After Kwezi, came Anthony, who played two of the four or five original songs in his repertoire. He played and sang them impressively well, as usual.

            He started singing his second song – “You won’t let me down, oh yeah” but then he stopped to talk a bit – “ … One green shoe, one blue shoe … The veterans of any goddamn war … “ The he began to sing – “I can see everything. I can see through rain. I can see through everyone cause we’re all the same … I don’t think you see sir, cause you don’t see me … Lost in a world of illusion with friends who don’t play the same game, till you can see through rain …”

            Then we heard from Marc, who I recall hearing the year before on the open stage. He played to of his own songs on the twelve-string guitar. The first was called “Dreams” – “Dreams that fly against my will … Silence that makes me scream … Perhaps it’s just your beauty that makes me sing … You synchronize your feelings, you need to change the frequency … Perhaps this drunken reality makes me imagine things …”

            Marc’s second song was entitled “Never Too Late To Smile” – “It doesn’t matter if it rains, I know I’ll always find my way …” After a couple of verses, he whistled an instrumental and then continued singing – “Nobody can make me cry … It’s never too late to smile …”

            The last performer of the night was Trevor, who borrowed the house guitar for his set. He started with his own song, which he said was about finding a new home down east – “ … I feel the distance, I feel the pain … Go back to Ontario and face my distance from you …”

            His second song was about Alberta, where Trevor told us that he grew up. He said that the only previous performance he had done of the song was on Skype, to his girlfriend in Korea. Trevor was reading the lyrics from the music stand, so his down turned eyes made it look like they were closed– “ … You cower neath … patchwork shield … Chase the waves … a reservoir road …”

            At the end, Kwezi approached me in the end and asked me about the writing that I do during performances. He wanted to know if I was writing songs. I told him that it was just a journal about everything I see and hear but that sometimes pieces of it can turn into poetry and then songs. He told me that he liked my writing.

            Marc, who had been sitting to my left, told me that liked my performance and the feeling that I put into my singing. Wow! Compliments from two other musicians at the Tranzac! Maybe I’d somehow shifted into an alternate reality. It was as if people knew that I wasn’t going to be there in a while.

            As Sarah came out from behind the bar to clean up the tables, she said goodnight to me. I told her that I’d see her in about seven months. She asked why and I told her that I’d be taking courses at U of T and so I couldn’t spend any late nights playing when I had to be studying. She inquired as to which courses I’d be taking, just as I recall she’d asked last year at the end of the night. I told her they were a half course in Aesthetics and a full course in Canadian Poetry. She said, “Nice!”