Moving Up

(1997)  The Tim Harrison Trio, comprised of Tim, cellist Alyssa Wright and me, were booked to play Global Network Television’s News at Noon.  We decided to play the Irish folk song ‘Carrickfergus’.  One of the show’s hosts, Bob MacAdorey, an old acquaintance from earlier TV appearances Tim and I had done, welcomed us heartily and made us feel comfortable.  We were sent to make-up, and got prettied up for the camera.  Then they sent us to the taping room, where we were told they had a few novelties on the show, including the fact that there were no more human camera operators in the room, but just two remote-controlled robot cameras.

I get nervous playing for television.  It’s pretty hot in the room, too, so sweating away under all that powder I sit on my barstool and await the cue.  We commence the tune, and a big robot with a red eye comes rolling at me.  (Did you see ‘Forbidden Planet’?)   I silently creep out, praying the camera goes over to Tim as we go into the chorus, and phew!, it does.  After the second chorus it’s time for the guitar solo.  The robot comes back.  I mimic heartfelt emotion.  The thing pulls nearer.  Forget the expression, now it’s about hitting the right fret at all... and the robot doesn’t stop.  The bastards in the control room are in for a close-up.  The camera hits the stage marker, keeps going, and buzzes at me, four inches from my fretting hand.  Tim can barely keep from laughing.  Should you ever see the clip somewhere, that heartbreaking guitar phrasing in the last bar, that’s not a vibrato.  That’s shaking.

Two hours later we sit in a bar discussing the gig.  A guy at the next table looks at me funny.  One time I’m sure he’s winking at me.  That’s when Alyssa and Tim tell me I forgot to take the make-up off.

Ostrich Massacre Talking Blues

(1997)  There was a fundraiser for the second Caledon Folk Festival at Toronto’s famous Horseshoe Tavern.  The concert was broadcast live by a local radio station, and there were quite a few great musicians and songwriters there, including Mose Scarlett, Norm Hacking, Glenn Maguire, and outstanding folk eccentric (not that there are any such characters in the scene) Joe Hall, writer of the quite unofficial Canadian anthem ‘Vampire Beavers’.  Joe and I met at some other festival a couple of years before and got into talking, as he’s of German descent, and liked to test a few old-fashioned German cuss-words on me now and then.

One of the sponsors of this festival turned out to be an ostrich farm near Bolton, Ontario.  Gearing up for the festival, they had put up a sumptuous buffet for the performers in the backstage area.  Looking for some food I perused the table.  I saw ostrich pizza, ostrich pastrami, ostrich jerky, ostrich sandwiches... when suddenly a tall, lanky shadow loomed over me.  “Guten Abend, Nick”, Joe Hall said in a gravely voice, and took a close look at the table.  Then he scratched his chin and said, “So that’s what happens when you stick your head in the sand.”

We Skip The Light Fandango

(2002)  Rule #1: I don’t do weddings.  On general principle.  Rule #2: Except if it’s friends.

And I don’t usually do requests.  Unless somebody has one.

So Naffin & Wright sit in a Toronto ballroom playing a wedding; there’s 35 degrees outside, the air condition conked out long ago, and I’m asking myself, how did I get here?

It started with an innocuous petition.  Won’t you guys play at our wedding?  We love you, and...   Rule #2 applies.  And what do you know, there’s a request.  We’d love ‘A Whiter Shade Of Pale’.  So Alyssa Wright and I go on the internet to find an official score of the old barnstormer.  What we do find eventually is an East Indian karaoke site, replete with lyrics and a bouncing ball, and an irresistibly wrong MIDI soundtrack.  We hunker down and practice.

THE DAY comes.  It’s scorching hot, and we’re set up at the back of the ballroom, next to the altar, with no visible line of escape to the bar.  We’re supposed to play as the bride comes in, and we’re ready.  Somebody gives us the cue, and here we go!  We play the verse; we play a passionate chorus, but the bride doesn’t come in.  We repeat; second verse, same as the first, a little bit louder and a little bit worse.  We feel the tune ... no bride.  I start contemplating a few variations.  ’’No Woman, No Cry’ would actually make a nice bridge...  Alyssa, a consummate professional who knows me well, shoots a warning glance.  Fine.  No signs of life at the door. – We play a third verse.  Signs of exasperation abound, handkerchiefs come out; now I’m thinking of ‘I Knew The Bride (When She Used To Rock’n Roll’)... YES!  The door opens, and here comes the bride, beautiful and radiant, an excusing smile on her face.  Her flowers had not been delivered on time.  A sigh goes through the room.  Here she is!, and her gangly walk up to the altar takes another 90 seconds, about half-a-verse, and another chorus.  Waiting there, her husband is smiling.  So is the audience, some of them discreetly covering their ears.  We finish, and in a rare feat of telepathy the last line goes “... turns a whiter shade of pale... and she’s buy-uy-ing a stairway to heaven.”

Rule #1 (2.0): I don’t do weddings, thank you.  Rule #2: No, really.

Donkey Day

(2003)  Naffin & Wright were asked to play the annual benefit at the Canadian Donkey Sanctuary near Peterborough, Ontario.  The sanctuary is a farm providing shelter and retirement to donkeys too old for farm or circus work, and the benefit, we were told, was quite a prestigious happening.  So we signed on, and played the main stage tent around noon.  There were quite a few folks, and a nice family atmosphere.  So when they asked us to do a second show at a smaller stage in the back we didn’t hesitate.  We set up on the back porch of the main house, with a good view of the numerous market stands, and the designated donkey areas to the right.  We start our second set, play our way through a couple of tunes, and get ready to do a little ballad I wrote called ‘Ear Of The Beholder’.  Now, this is a mellow Bossa Nova kind of tune that has been played with many folks in different styles across Canada.  It’s been done with Celtic band riverrun in Irish pubs in Toronto, at the Caledon Folk Festival’s ‘Axe Murder’ guitar workshop with Jason Fowler, with Don Ross at Eaglewood ... but today we’re doing it as a cello/guitar duo, or so it seems.

After the announcement, as we start the plaintive intro people get quiet and listen.  Then the Bossa groove starts, and, in plain view from our stage, on the meadow to our right a donkey starts humping a donkesse.  A fabulous sight.  Alyssa tries to get through her part without breaking up, and the audience, following our glances, catches on to the unexpected visual enhancement of our tune.  There goes the neighbourhood.

I’ve read people wrote to Pat Metheny their babies were conceived to the sounds of his classic ‘Are You Going With Me’.  Yeah, well...

Magic

(1981)  One summer when I was young I went to the Basque country.  These folk are hospitable, if somewhat reserved towards strangers; they are heartily Catholic, live between France and Spain, and have fought for their independence for 200 years, using means generally acceptable or not.  I visited the town of San Sebastian, and, short on money, I stayed at a cave on a local mountain.  Apparently this was a well-frequented place.  One night, after waiting until the park on the mountain closed, I went to go sleep there.  A gentle human being had left a palette in the cave, which I had put my sleeping bag on.  As I felt my way towards it in the dark, touching the palette with my foot, I heard a hefty grunt.  This Spanish hobo had made camp there, and was quite annoyed at my appearance. – Eventually we got into talking, and, gesturing our way through our communication, I learned the cave was his by right of having slept there for ten years.  I bought my own place to sleep (on the ground), and some peace of mind that night with frequent donations of very dry cigarette tobacco I had brought along from Denmark, where I had been earlier, and I got the lowdown on San Sebastian, and those punks who frequented the beach at night.

Actually, in need of a shower the next evening I went for a swim, hiding my clothes under a rock near the beach.  As I came back out of the water, four guys approached me in the dusk.  Como esta? – Esta playa, they said, es periculoso.  There was a shipping of something coming in that night, and they told me in no uncertain terms to get the hell out of there.  But they didn’t whack me, even if they could have easily, so I got a soft spot for them.

The next day I’m exploring the old town.  Around noon I’m scouting for a cheap helping of bread and chorizo, so I peek inside some restaurants when I hear an unearthly sound in the air.  Following it, I get to a cathedral.  I go inside, and there’s a local choir practicing with an organist.  I hear women in grief chanting Bach with a Hispanic twist, and all hunger’s forgotten.  Quietly crying I sit on a bench and listen, overwhelmed by the beauty of their music.  Later I shall return to the cave, fed by some slices of coconut, and a Martini from a beach vendor.  I turned 18 today, and life is good.

A Can Of Whoopass

(1981)  Earlier on that summer I get to the Swedish town of Kiruna in Laponia.  On the train I meet a fellow German from a town not thirty kilometres away from mine, and we decide to hike the mountains together for a day or two.  Next morning we take a train to Riksgränsen, and after a couple of hours we spot a deserted station with two or three ramshackle houses left around it; the perfect place to begin a hike.  The train’s conductor tells us they’ll pick us up same place that evening or next afternoon, so off we go.  We see a lake down the valley, and plan a little swim, and maybe a walk around the lake later.

It takes us two hours to get down to the lake, which now appears considerably larger than before.  It is around 4 PM, and pretty hot, so by now that little swim is pleasantly anticipated.  As we get closer to the lake we notice the land gets a little swampy.  After a while the path we’ve been on disappears, and now we really have to watch our steps.  We are about forty meters from the lakeshore, when we hear a sound buzz behind us.

We turn around, and see a giant cloud of mosquitoes rise from the swamp and coming for us.  There’s no turning back, so we decide to make a run for the lake, take shelter in the water, and figure out how to avoid getting eaten alive.  So we race to the shore, throw off the backpacks, and I run head over heels into the shallow water.

It is so cold it takes my breath away.  I can’t move, and immediately my legs turn white and blue.  My comrade suffers the same fate, and now the mosquitoes have at us.  We turn around and, wildly swatting, very slowly walk out of the water.  There’s got to be some bug repellent somewhere.  I’m trembling from cold shock, and from I can’t even guess how many mosquito bites already.  We frantically empty our packs, and, naturally, right at the bottom I find a bottle of Muskol, a two-in-one, widely used weapons lube and bug oil.  We just shower ourselves with it, squeezing the last drop out of the bottle to cover our backs.  But it’s much too late; there’s so many of them, and they are in a feeding frenzy.  They will not be repelled.

Eventually we make it out of the swamp back up the hill.  We badly need a rest, but we have so many bites it is impossible to sit, let alone lie down.  A good three hours later, of which I don’t remember much, we reach the old station and hope to God we didn’t already miss the train.  A while later it does come, they pick us up, and soundly beaten into oblivion we ride back to Kiruna.  We get the wagon to ourselves quickly, as we smell to high heavens of sweat and bug oil.  Our clothes stick to our bodies, and the sensation of backrest through cotton to the skin of my back is just exquisite. – “So, you’re not from around here, are you?” the conductor asks.

After another hour’s walk we make it from Kiruna station to the youth hostel we stayed at before.  They are completely booked, but seeing the state we’re in they take mercy on us, and put up a couple of cots in the hallway.  They’re out of hot water for a shower, though, so this evening’s feature performance comes to an end with all-together unprintable wails, and German expletives. – More dead than alive next morning we go for breakfast, and I peruse the map hanging on the dining room’s wall.  That lake, it turns out, is called Torneträsk.  It is entirely fed by water from surrounding glaciers, and it is 71 km long.

I’ve been over that manly thing of not asking for directions ever since.