The Never-Ending Tour: Summer/September 2018

June 21: Burlington, private event

A musical acquaintance from 25 years ago wrote to me out of the blue. He’s now a financial advisor, and every year he hosts a client appreciation party of some kind. Sometimes it’s a Jays game, sometimes it’s a guest speaker. He invites me to come and give a talk and be interviewed by Moe Berg of the Pursuit of Happiness, who once produced my friend’s band. Unlike every other event I’m doing, he offers to pay me; he has a budget, and he doesn’t want to skimp a friend. After emails to other writers asking what they charge for this kind of thing, we agree on a fee and the date is on.

Moe Berg lives somewhat close to me, so we agree to carpool. We’ve never met before, and I didn’t interview him for the book; instead, I interviewed his guitarist, Kris Abbott, because she played in cover bands in Kingston at the same time the Hip was coming up. Because I was doing so many interviews, I figured I only had time to talk to one person in TPOH, so she was it. Which means hanging out with Moe leads to lots of other stories, one of which involves Gord Downie’s unique packing style for business trips (ask Moe).

When TPOH went on hiatus in the late ’90s, Moe started writing book reviews and published a collection of short stories (The Green Room, unrelated to the excellent punk horror film). At one point he thought the Hip deserved to have a book written about them; this was back when they were still at the top of their game, before the radio hits started dwindling. Moe approached Jake Gold about the idea. “No, this is how it’s going to work,” Jake apparently responded. “You’re not going to get a book deal. We’re going to get a book deal, take the money, and then hire you to write it. But we’re not doing that.” Needless to say, I found this particularly fascinating.

July 16: Guelph, Hillside Festival 

Lewis Melville, Jenny Mitchell

I’d resolved to take the summer off, with this one exception. I’ve been going to this festival for 28 years; I’ve only missed about three in that time. I’ve played in bands here, and for the last 20 years I’ve been an MC. They have a spoken-word stage, and it didn’t occur to me until almost too late to pitch them. I was squeezed in, and gratefully so. It’s a bit of an odd gig, reading in front of a field where people are scattered to find shade and may be listening or may be sleeping. Having been away from this tour for a month—which included a trip to the Czech Republic—I feel a bit off my game. But it goes well enough. I’m more thrilled to introduce Jeremy Dutcher, Cadence Weapon and Iskwé on stage, and to be blown away by Cecilia Doo-Kingué. And U.S. Girls gives one of the most thrilling performances I’ve ever seen at this festival—and I’ve seen hundreds.

Aug. 24: Goderich, Huron County Museum 

Nick Craine

Another afterthought gig. My old friend and bandmate Nick Craine has a cottage nearby, and invited my family. I asked if there was a bookstore in Goderich. There is: Fincher’s, where Nick held his own book launch recently for either the reissue of his Hard Core Logo graphic novel or his works-for-hire, 5-Minute Hockey Stories and 5-Minute Stories for Fearless Girls (I can’t remember which).

The guy at Fincher’s sets up an event at the Huron County Museum. It’s for 6.30pm on a Friday night in cottage country—which to me doesn’t seem ideal, but why not trust the local? It turns out my gut was right: five people show up. Which is really too bad, because though I was worried about having such a close friend interview me, Nick does an excellent job on par with Lana Gay or Will McGuirk or any other professional. The event is a bust, but I don’t really care coz I’m just there for a cottage weekend anyway.

Sept 23: Toronto, Word on the Street

Richard Crouse, Nicholas Jennings

After a spring and summer of mostly putting on events myself, this is my first experience feeling like an actual author who is part of a community. This long-running lit fest usually attracts every book nerd in town, and so I’m tickled to be at a discussion with my friend Nick Jennings, who, among other things, wrote the inspirational history of ’60s Toronto rock’n’roll, Before the Gold Rush. His latest book is Lightfoot, which leads to lots of Gord jokes on our panel (Nick claims his next book will be about Gordon Jump).

Nick Jennings, my hype man, no customers

The moderator is Vish Khanna, with whom I used to play in a band called the Neutron Stars. The three of us have about half an hour to converse on stage, which is weird considering that Nick and I spent twice that amount of time together on the air while promoting this event on Richard Crouse’s CFRB show earlier in the week. The discussion is good fun, if whirlwind, and about 30 people come out to see what we’re up to: not the best attendance, not the worst—though the festival itself seems to be devoid of the crowds I’ve usually seen here. Nick and I sit at a signing table afterwards. Nick gets most of the action. I do run into a guy I knew more than 20 years ago, with whom I worked at a magazine with fewer than 10 employees. He was fired, from both that gig and the next place we both happened to work. The conversation is awkward but pleasant enough. He doesn’t buy a book. Neither does anyone else.

Sept 26: Peterborough, The Garnet

Melanie Buddle

I arrive at the venue to find no poster outside, and the bartender seems to have no idea there’s any kind of event happening tonight. It’s not on the calendar. What the hell?! Is anyone going to come to this thing? I did do an interview on the morning drive show at The Wolf FM, and a piece ran in the Peterborough Examiner. I have two close friends in town, my roommates in second- and third-year university, who spread the word. One of them, Melanie Buddle, is principal of Trent University’s Gzowski College; she’ll be doing the on-stage interview tonight. We go out for dinner next door with Sandra Patrick, our other ex-roomie, who put on an event for me at her bike store in Lindsay in April.

Back at the Garnet, a tiny venue with limited seating, there are two tables of what appear to be rounders. They’re boisterous, clearly enjoying their beer, and I’m not entirely certain they’re here for a literary reading. Shortly before I’m scheduled to begin, I take the mic and make it clear just what is going to happen tonight, just as a heads up. To my pleasant surprise, both tables cheer loudly.

The room is quite full by the time I start—and by full, I mean there’s about 25 people there. The reading goes well, Melanie is great, and there are a couple of good audience questions. The bartender is the only person all year who correctly guesses ZZ Top as one of the three million-selling bands, other than the Hip, who stayed together for more than 30 years. (U2 and Radiohead are the others.)

No one, however, has any questions about Secret Path—which I thought would definitely be a topic in this town, located in between two reservations; Trent had the first Indigenous studies degree program in Canada in the 1970s, and a theatre on campus was named after Chanie Wenjack long before Gord Downie knew that name. I do, however, meet an Indigenous lady who tells me about her family’s struggle with cancer, and a guy who runs a program at the Nogojiwanong Friendship Centre; he invites me out to karaoke afterward, and I have to decline because I’m catching a train to Montreal first thing in the morning.

Also in the audience is someone from the Tragically Hits of Bobcaygeon, Ontario. He tells me about a surreal gig in the last year at which one of the Downie children showed up and (understandably) got very emotional. He brought the copy he was reading from the town’s library; I signed it before selling him one of his own.

I stay over with Melanie’s family; she generously drives me almost an hour away to the Cobourg train station in the morning. Old friends are the best friends.

Sept 27: Montreal, Librairie Drawn + Quarterly

Out of the blue, I get a text from my old friend Viv Taylor, who I hadn’t seen in 15 years; she now lives in rural Vermont, and is in Montreal for the weekend. We meet for dinner, at a gentrified diner closer to the venue, on the recommendation of Li’l Andy. Andy is an urban cowboy, a singer-songwriter, bon vivant, kind of the King of Kensington of the Plateau. He can’t make it to my gig, of course; there’s too much going on in this town tonight. Turns out that will be a common story.

Sean Michaels at the children's bookstore

Alas, turnout is not great. Maybe 10 people. I didn’t have super-high expectations: this is Quebec, after all, and I’m talking about an English-Canadian rock band. My friend Sean Michaels, the award-winning novelist who started out as (and continues to be) a prolific music blogger, is the host for the evening. He introduces me with a speech that’s way too flattering, even for my inflated ego. Our conversation is, naturally, delightful and curious. It also gets a bit inside baseball when he starts asking me about whether I used Word, Google Docs or Scrivener (answer: all three).

In the audience is a banker in a suit, who asks some good questions. We chat afterwards; he tells me he went to school with the band, and his family was close to Johnny Fay’s. He buys several copies of the book, and is dismayed when I can’t provide him with a shopping bag. As a workaround, he then proceeds to produce several elastic bands from up his sleeve; he always keeps several strapped to his wrist, “because you never know.” This VP at the Bank of Montreal then tells me he’s going to bike home, with the book wrapped around his handlebars.

Parc du Portugal, across from Leonard Cohen's house

The night is young, so Sean and I head out to see Wolf Parade at La Sala Rossa, where they’re playing four nights in a row during the festival. Wolf Parade, like Arcade Fire, were just breaking out when I lived in Montreal from 2003-06. I’ve seen them many, many times: in Montreal, in New York City, in Guelph, on Wolfe Island. I always liked them more than I loved them; though there was some undeniably great chemistry, the live shows were usually drunk and ramshackle. I thought the two principal songwriters worked better alone, in Handsome Furs and Sunset Rubdown. But here we all are, at least 12 years later, at a different point in our lives, a time when there’s no time to waste and you have to put up or shut up. Which is why it was so gratifying to see Wolf Parade exceed any expectations I ever had: they absolutely slay. The best I’ve ever seen them. Judging by the looks on their faces, they know it, too. And their gratitude is also obvious: for each other, for this audience, for the venue that gave them their first breaks. Whole lotta love in that room. These hearts: still on fire.

At the gig is one of my favourite writers (and filmmaker), Chandler Levack, who invites me to join her at the late-night King Khan gig up the street. The crowd is rockin’, the band is hoppin’, Chandler is delightful company, but even all that is not enough to justify this old man being up past 2 a.m.

I Bixi back to the tiny, perfect apartment that belongs to Lauren Sprengelmeyer of Little Scream, who graciously loaned it to me for the night. Earlier that night she’d played with her partner, Richard Reed Parry of Arcade Fire, at the debut of his new album, Quiet River of Dust. I took a pass on the gig, because knew I was going to the Toronto show in a few weeks’ time (and I ended up seeing the multimedia 360° spectacle at the SATosphere back here in Montreal in November). I’m looking forward to a deep slumber in a slightly claustrophobic loft bed; instead, I wake up to 6 a.m. construction. What they say is true: This city really doesn’t sleep.

Sept 28-29: Sault Ste. Marie

I meet Viv for breakfast at Chez José on Duluth, hands-down my favourite Montreal eatery back when I used to live on Bullion. I cab it out to the airport—I once missed a flight out of here once because I took public transportation—where I meet old friend Erin O’Connell for coffee before I head out of town. In 2002, when I came to Montreal to work at Brave New Waves for the second time, I called Erin and asked if I could crash on her couch—for a full month. Miraculously, she agreed; I still don’t know why. I ended up getting the job, indirectly because of her generosity. At the airport we talk a lot about family. She’s always had a lot of drama in hers. As I get older, I’m learning how much drama there is in mine.

I’m flying to the Soo for the funeral of my uncle, the man after whom I’m named, my mother’s youngest brother. I’ll spare you the messy details, but he died by suicide. Very few, other than my aunt, saw it coming. The Soo is not a big town, and his occupation was such that he touched a lot of people. I have very fond memories of him, his family and this town; when I was an adolescent, my family drove up here every Christmas, from dry and barren Toronto, to this winter wonderland.

Sheila Gruner at the Westside Café

At the airport, I’m met by Sheila Gruner, with whom I used to play in a band called Black Cabbage, from 1993-99. She’s a prof at Algoma University, but she’s also a killer violinist and one of the most insanely, naturally gifted musicians I’ve ever met—never mind had the privilege of playing with. I can probably count on two hands the number of times I’ve seen her since the band broke up 20 years ago, but she’s one of my favourite people. She takes me to the Westside Café, a frozen-in-time diner that feels like the perfect northern Ontario experience. She tells me that she worked with Edmund Metatawabin to put on the Great Moon Gathering in Fort Albany, where the Tragically Hip played a high school gym in the remote community. There were several local opening acts; she accompanied one of her Algoma students.

Sheila drives me to my aunt’s house, where I’m introduced to several extended family members I’ve never met before, and old friends of my uncle. Two guys drove up from Kitchener, where my mom and her brothers lived when they were teenagers. One of them tells me about how my uncle used to borrow my grandmother’s car and drive all his friends to Catholic Youth Dances in Waterloo—and then head to Toronto around 11 p.m. to hang out in Yorkville folk clubs, where they saw Joni Mitchell, Gordon Lightfoot, etc. They’d arrive back in Kitchener around 4 a.m., and my grandmother was none the wiser. This was even news to my 78-year-old mother.

Then the guy telling me this story asks me what I do. “I’m a writer.” He presses for details. I tell him I just put out a book about the Tragically Hip. “Oh really?” he says. “I’m Paul Langlois’s uncle.” He’s the brother of Paul’s mother. Canada: it’s a small country.

Dangerous and tasty Soo airport logo

At the funeral, I hang out with my cousins’ cousins (my uncle’s nephews by marriage), who both had music careers at one point. One asks me if I know a Toronto band called Public Animal. Do I? They were the house band at my book launch (which featured Tony Dekker of Great Lake Swimmers, who played in the Soo the night before). Turns out my cousin once played in a band with Public Animal drummer Ryan Gassi, who is also from the Soo. Canada: it’s a small country.

Shortly after making an emotional speech at the funeral, I have to split before it’s over to make my flight to Kingston. At the airport, by far the douchiest Toronto thing I do all tour is to ask my relative if he's sure he's dropping me off at the right terminal.

Sept 30: Kingston, Kingston Writers Festival

I arrive in Kingston the night before, too late to catch anything at the festival. I look forward to a good night’s sleep in the hotel, paid for by the festival. Except that the fire alarm goes off at 6 a.m., and everyone evacuates to the street. Restful! My event is at 11 a.m. After breakfast I take a walk, and stop at the gift shop by the water to buy a postcard; I plan to mail one from every tour stop to my son. The store is playing the Hip’s “At Transformation,” which seems just a bit too on-brand to be a coincidence while the biographer is there.

"Does the Kingston tourism board require you to play this?" I ask the teenage clerk. "Oh, no, this is my playlist; I'm a big fan," she said. "My mom grew up with Gord Downie."

Right before my talk, I catch the panel with Naben Ruthnum, author of Curry, and Ann Hui, author of the upcoming Chop Suey Nation; I was a big fan of her series in the Globe that forms the premise of the book, where she visited Chinese restaurateurs in small-town Canada and learned their stories. Both writers are fascinating and have lots to say; listening to them sharpens my mind before I have to get on a stage myself.

Mr. Show

My host is a local DJ at K-Rock known to the world only as Sideshow. He never does tell me his real name, so I insist on calling him “Mr. Show.” I read an excerpt about the band’s early days in Kingston. There are many knowing chuckles. I’m slightly terrified of how many people in the room probably know the band and their families. Mr. Show asks me about the infamous Rob Baker tweet that questioned the factual accuracy of the book. Against my better judgment, I repeat what I told the Montreal Gazette a week before: “I just wrote a book about what great guys they are and Rob Baker thinks it’s factually inaccurate.” Surprisingly, I am not mobbed.

In the signing lineup afterwards, a large fiftysomething man approaches and says, “You know, my friends and I were worried that someone not from Kingston was writing this book. But I gotta say, you got it right.” Whew!

Next: East Coast

Also in this series: Spring; Western Canada; Encores

FINAL NOTE: All photos here are by me or someone standing next to me. Apologies for any/all copy editing mistakes, especially when I stray in and out of never-ending present tense.