Cigar Box Banjo Read online

  Let’s take the purely practical, physical aspect. I had this sessile, squamous tumour settling on my left lung. It made perfect sense to me that bellowing for three or four hours a night would be a good way of irritating the thing. Who knew, maybe the tumour would decide to take up residence elsewhere, to disappear into the ether.

  So that was the notion behind the Porkbelly Futures Health Tour, the name we gave our forthcoming trip to the Maritimes. We took not only our musical equipment but a juicer, a blender, and a very elaborate espresso maker. That last wasn’t technically part of the Health Tour paraphernalia, but Chas, our stalwart bass player, had lately developed an affection for extremely fine coffee. He’d previously possessed an affection for merely fine coffee, but an encounter with a certain cup of joe had ratcheted this up a notch; thus the gleaming chrome espresso maker. The juicer and blender were there to be wielded by Rebecca Campbell, who, following the holistic nutritionist’s commandments, was going to supply me with a steady diet of mulched vegetative matter. We climbed into our van, the equipment packed with molecule-crunching density into a horse trailer, and headed toward the Atlantic Ocean.

  Marty and Chas did most of the driving, assisted by a GPS unit that spoke to us in various accents, the most annoying of which was Australian; we tended to select Australian (“Stop, yer gawing the wrong why!”) so that we could tell it to fuck off. Rebecca likes to travel in an old-fashioned manner, that is, with a paper map unfolded on her lap. She would study the blue highways and search for routes that the Australian would never consider. Rebecca is younger than the rest of us by more than a decade, but she is the veteran. She has been on countless tours, and she is always eager to see parts of the country she has not seen before. (There are very few parts of the country she hasn’t seen before, and those take some getting to.) Stuart Laughton’s favoured posture was hunched forward beside a window, a pair of binoculars at the ready. “There is,” he’d announce, “a golden eagle nesting in that tree.” We travelled in such manner for a couple of days, and then we reached Fredericton, and the home of Wayne Walsh, at which point the Health Tour pretty much went off the rails.

  Meeting us at Wayne’s were our booking agent/manager Bob and his wife, Joanne. A few words about Bob. He has been many things in his life—labour negotiator, radio and television producer, public relations consultant—and he is a long-standing friend of Marty’s and mine, as well as an unflagging booster. He is wildly enthusiastic about my novels and our songs, and when I say “wildly enthusiastic,” I mean it literally. Bobby punctuates his speech with exaggerated motions, suddenly ripping a large set of knuckles through the air, usually taking out the set of chinaware left to you by your great-grandmother. During his bouts of wild enthusiasm, his voice rises ever higher in pitch, and words start jostling and bumping each other in their eagerness to get out of his mouth. Often they cancel each other out, and for very long moments you’ll hear nothing but extended dipthongs, draped and flapping like sheets drying on the line. It’s hard to resist such enthusiasm, so when Bobby suggested that he act as our manager, we all agreed.

  Bobby did not select, as a model for managerial style, Brian Epstein, the sophisticate who guided the Beatles to stardom. Rather, he seemed to invoke the spirit of Colonel Tom Parker, the former dog catcher and pet cemetery proprietor who oversaw the careers of Tom Mix, Minnie Pearl, and, most famously, Elvis Aaron Presley. Bobby deals not only in grand visions but in minutiae. He has ideas about how we should dress, how we should conduct ourselves onstage, the order in which we should play our songs, etcetera, etcetera. We, of course, resist any and all attempts on his part to be a Svengali. The one advantage of middle age, I think, is that it gives one the right to look potential Svengalis in the eye and say, “Piss off.” After all, if one could be moulded, one would have been moulded long ago, when there might have been some point to it. So, in our affectionate way, we tell Bobby to piss off. We do allow him to deal with certain minutiae, things like where we should be and how we should get there and when. He attends to this stuff with a spectacular disregard for numerical values, seeming to feel that any number between one and ten is just about the same (so that we arrive for sound checks at six o’clock, when the sound man expected us at five o’clock) and also that any sequence of three numbers will identify the required highway. He also ignores the fact that Canada is the second biggest country in the world; he calculates the distance between most cities as “about five hours,” even when they’re in separate provinces, even when there’s a third province in between ’em.

  Bobby had lined up eight or nine gigs for us in the Maritimes, and he—as always—weighed our prospects with cautious optimism, calculating that somewhere between, oh, fifty and a hundred people might show up at each venue. What with merchandise sales—we had our two CDs and some very large t-shirts, which appeal exclusively to very large men—this would make the scheme semi-profitable. (We count as “semi-profitable” any enterprise that does not immediately render us street people.) Usually, Bobby was insufficiently cautious. We tended to draw not “crowds,” but rather “clutches,” disparate individuals who sat as far away as possible from one another, making the empty seats all the more apparent.

  Anyway, as I was saying, the Health Tour got derailed at Wayne’s house. There was something of a lobster feed, in which we exhibited the decorum of ravenous bull sharks. Huge quantities of wine were consumed, along with all manner of other liquor, although Rebecca—bless her heart—did steam me up some spinach. Porkbelly Futures, as an entity, enjoys its food. Indeed, our traditional after-concert activity has long been something I call “the Massive Caloric Intake.” We enjoy these most at Boston Pizza, because the menu is the same regardless of the city. We order spicy Caesars (doubles, please!), chicken wings, riblets, nachos, and, oh yeah, while we’re at it, let’s have a little pizza!

  This time around, as it turned out, Bobby’s calculations were on the low side. People showed up at the venues on the Health Tour. Part of the reason for this, I must admit, is that I had decided to be vocal about my predicament. As I was lying in the hospital after the pleurodesis, a reporter from the Toronto Star, Greg Quill, communicated though various sources that he wanted to speak to me. Greg is a newspaperman I respect. As a music critic, he has helped the career (such as it is) of Porkbelly Futures. Moreover, he’d had a distinguished career in his native Australia as a singer-songwriter with the band Country Radio. So I was well disposed toward Greg; I felt I could trust him. Like anyone, my first inclination was to clam up about the whole death deal. For hundreds of years, people have been tight-lipped about terminal illness, probably for no better reason than that by speaking about the Dark Thing you may risk attracting its attention.

  But what the hell, I thought. I agreed.

  When the call came, I picked up my mobile phone and wandered out into the hallways wearing two Johnny gowns, one forward, the other a’rear, to conduct the interview. What I hadn’t anticipated was how upset Greg would be. My manner—off hand, matter of fact, and humorous—was designed as much to cheer Quill up as anything else. (Still, you must ever remember, the tumour hates laughter. It hates laughter, and it loves fear.)

  When I was released from the hospital a couple of days later, another reporter wanted to talk to me. Again, I tried to be light-hearted. In a desire for exactness here, I should explain I am often, even usually, light-hearted. When I am discussing little pockets of emotion with intimates, this is likely very irritating. When I’m discussing my impending demise, I think it’s more palatable.

  Then the radio stations called—I had no idea—and again, I was, um, puckishly forthright. The informative content of what I said was that, well, I had plans. We had the Health Tour upcoming, and I assured the listeners that we would be there.

  So when Porkbelly Futures rolled out to the East Coast, the venues—small venues, true—were quite full. The gig that stands out most in my mind was in a town called Mount Stewart, Prince Edward Island. For one thing, we’d ha
d to take a ferry there, and nothing makes you feel so connected to the Maritimes as a ferry ride. The gig was at a restaurant, and early in the evening the dining room was jam-packed with diners. My stomach lurched, because this restaurant, the Trailside Inn, served the best chowder we’d ever had, and there have been too many times in my life when music competed with good food, and music lost the battle. But when we started playing, the diners cradled their silverware and folded their hands together attentively. They listened and smiled, and when we announced the audience participation portion of the evening, they participated.

  “How fortunate we were,” one gentleman said to me afterwards, “those of us who got to hear you.”

  But how fortunate I was, I reflected, to have been heard. I felt much, much better by the end of the evening than I had at the beginning. Some months earlier, I had happened upon the podcast of a talk delivered by Andrew Solomon, author of the award-winning book The Noonday Demon, in which he recounted a ceremony he’d taken part in in rural Africa, a ceremony designed to alleviate his depression. This ceremony—it included, I recall from listening, live rams and dead chickens— did Mr. Solomon a lot of good. The entire village showed up to cheer him on, even though by the end he was naked and bedaubed with dried blood. Solomon asked a villager about some Western doctors who had once been there and had since disappeared. “Oh, they had a lot of strange ideas,” recalled the local. “Do you know what they did if someone was feeling sad? They’d take them into a small room without windows and make them talk about sad things.” The Western doctors made the afflicted go through all this alone. There was no notion of getting out the village, having everyone show up to witness both the ordeal and the deliverance.

  WOODY POINT is on the west coast of Newfoundland, north of Corner Brook. It’s located in Gros Morne National Park, but as you look around, you have absolutely no idea where you’re situated on the planet. You could be on the Irish coast, you could be cruising Scandinavian fjords. Gros Morne itself is a huge red rock, the name meaning something along the lines of “the Great Loneliness.” Near it lie the Tablelands, one of a handful of places where the mantle has pushed its way through the crust. The Tablelands are so riddled with minerals that they refuse to support almost all plant life. So not only are you unclear about where on the planet you’re situated, you’re not entirely sure you’re even on the Third Stone from the Sun.

  I had been invited to the Woody Point Festival, held each August, by Stephen Brunt, one of Canada’s great sportswriters. (One of Canada’s great writers, really, his bailiwick being sports.) Stephen had been invited to the region himself a decade earlier. He fell resolutely in love with it, and now summers there with his wife and children. Six years ago, he and Alison Gzowski started the festival.

  One thing Stephen and I have in common is a love of angling. Indeed, I would say that Brunt and I are amongst the most besotted of a very besotted tribe. Our enthusiasm is unrivalled. Our enthusiasm is certainly unrivalled by our talent, which is why I was disappointed when the one morning Stephen and I could arrange for fly-fishing brought gale-force winds. We were standing in the ocean, and there was very little that could hang up my backcast. Indeed, my backcast was straightening out very nicely. But you know, after all I’ve been through, I would be better looking at the bright side. So this paragraph is just my way of saying thanks to Brunt.

  This wasn’t a Porkbelly Futures gig. I had received the invitation to Woody Point as Paul Quarrington, novelist and non-fiction writer. But I knew that it was a music and literary festival, so I took my guitar with me and announced from the stage my intention to tell a story (recite from memory, which is to say, perform the thing) whilst accompanying myself on the guitar. Yes, at the same time.

  If you want to see “getting out the village” in action, there is no better place to start than Woody Point, Newfoundland. For one thing, the actual village gets out. There are perhaps four hundred residents, and the festival events are standing room only. The venue is the Woody Point Heritage Theatre, which was formerly the Lord Nelson Orange Lodge. The reappointing was done by Charlie Payne, who is as fine a button accordion player as I’ve ever heard.

  I’m not sure I buy this entirely, but I’ve heard that there is a type of traditional Newfoundland song called a “come-all-ye.” The name apparently stems from the fact that so many songs begin with the entreaty, “Come all ye” whatever, lovely ladies or grizzled fishermen. The call often seems specifically for musicians: “Come all ye fiddlers and accordionists and flautists and, oh yeah, we could use a guitar or two.” Every night at Woody Point, after a few literary offerings, the musicians would herd themselves onstage. Someone would toss out the title of a tune; someone else might suggest another. These guys weren’t bickering. Often they were seeking a good pairing. “Aunt Martha’s Sheep,” for instance, might go nicely with “Pat Murphy’s Meadow.” Thereupon would follow a musical discussion about the prospective songs. The musicians would name the fiddlers they had first heard play the songs. They would mention a little descent to the relative minor that had hitherto been unexampled. Whereas with blues or jazz, one guy might snap out a tempo to start, the Newfoundland musicians looked at each other briefly—“You all right then? Everyone got a beer?”—and then launched themselves with reinforced-steel-toed synchronicity.

  Some of the musicians I encountered at Woody Point included the aforementioned Charlie Payne, Sandy Morris, Duane Andrews, and Des Walsh. Duane Andrews was interesting, as his personal style was very European, heavily influenced by Django Reinhardt. But like many a musician from the Island, he was comfortable sticking a violin under his chin and asking, “Where did you learn ‘Concerning Charlie Horse’?” Des Walsh is something of a renaissance man, a writer and a musician. He was grand fun and someone I liked very much. Des tipped me off to one of the great advantages of Newfoundland culture. I am not good at remembering names. I’m not even going to bring up the lame “I’m good with faces” corollary, which to my mind only serves to illustrate how bad you are with names. I.e., here is a face you’ve seen before (perhaps you were even married to the face, maybe even for years), yet the memory banks offer up nothing by way of label or identification. Well, Des pointed out that his usual greeting is “Hello, my son.” “Excellent!” I enthused, and I immediately introduced “Hello, my son” into my limited repertoire of hails. “Hello, my son.” “Hello, my son.”

  “Hold on,” I asked Des. “What if it’s a woman I want to be saying hello to?”

  “Hello, my love.”

  “Excellent.”

  WOODY POINT is built on a little crest overlooking Bonne Bay, so the walk from my lovely B&B necessitated a certain amount of upward mobility, usually carting a guitar case. This necessitated a lot of huff, puff, and rest. Likewise at the B&B itself. The staircase from the ground floor to the guest rooms seemed to be a riser or two too long, and when I sum-mited I immediately went into the bathroom to sit down and catch my breath. Being me, I usually had other business to conduct. Still, this was worrying, because I knew the really hard work lay ahead.

  Let me catch you up in this way. Here’s what my doctors demanded, over and over again: “You’re going where? ”

  “Well, we board the ship in Kuujjuaq. But then we’re heading for some places that are pretty remote.”

  What my doctors and I were discussing was another of my plans, something billed as the Walrus Arts Float, a voyage down the east coast of Labrador and the west coast of Newfoundland (with a stop scheduled at my new favourite place, Woody Point). Passengers with an artistic bent would be encouraged by various invited guests to write, paint, and make music on the cruise. The ship was flying the colours, at least figuratively, of Walrus magazine and its publisher, Shelley Ambrose.

  Various medical objections were raised. For example, my condition made me susceptible to hypercoagulation, which meant that, for example, on the plane to Nunavut I could develop a blood clot and then subsequently throw an embolism and then subsequently die.
But I was adamant about my desire to go on the trip.2

  Much fun was had aboard the Clipper Adventurer. I was there mainly as a musician,3 and most nights I would play in the forward lounge, part of a group consisting of myself, singer-songwriter/rocker Tom Barlow, fiddler/button accordionist Daniel Payne, and David, a man who emerged from the crowd of passengers, sat down behind the piano, and began playing with practised dexterity, singing along in a piercing falsetto. We were augmented frequently by Dave Marshak, also a member of the onboard artists’ collective Drawn Onward. As a group of musicians, we were distinguished— this is just me talking, but still—by the diversity of our backgrounds and training. David was a choirmaster, so he was used to pulling at the roots of things and adding the appropriate musical tendrils. Barlow not only wrote great songs, but he knew thousands, and once we’d discovered our mutual favourites—“Blinded by the Light” was one, with the line “wracked up like a deuce” or whatever the hell it is—so we quickly had the basis of an evening’s entertainment. I favoured sweet soul music, encouraging the crowd to respond to me—“If you don’t know me by now . . .”—then trying to throw them off with my hectoring Teddy Pendergrass vocalizations. And there was Daniel Obediah Payne, hailing from Cow Head, Newfoundland. Tall, flaming-haired, and genetically fearsome (you could imagine him, or some ancestor, hacking off heads with practised ease), Daniel played the button accordion and the fiddle, as I said, but often the most beautiful sounds he produced occurred when he laid those instruments aside and sang a cappella. Over the course of the ten-day cruise, I tried to learn from Daniel as many traditional songs as I could. I had limited success.

  At one point Daniel called for “Queen Anne’s Lace.”

  “Do I know that one?” I asked.

  “Well,” he answered, “you played it a few nights back.”