The church setting was mostly an aesthetic choice for me, though more deeply meaningful to Kitty. I took very seriously the idea of making a promise before God, but I didn’t care whether we did it in a field or church or somebody’s backyard. It was beautiful, but I wasn’t attached to the place. I was seeking a deep and mystical bonding with the beautiful woman I loved, which I got, but I also got something else, quite unexpected.
With Father Playfair’s guidance we repeated our vows, then exchanged rings. At that moment, when I held Kitty’s hand to place her ring, I became aware of a presence standing there with us—invisible to the eye but as solid and obvious as any of the people in the room. I felt bathed in the figure’s energy. I shivered and said to myself, “Well, I don’t know who or what this is, but we’re in a Christian church, so it’s got to be Jesus.” Who else would it be? He spoke no words, but the presence was real, male, and loving. In giving and seeking love, we enter a temple of spirit that we can’t see but we can feel, that we can’t touch but that nurtures us and makes us whole. The church where Kitty and I were married was a human construct built to accommodate and celebrate the possibility of a relationship with God. But I don’t think it was about the building. It is the opening, the baring of souls to each other and therefore to the Divine, that allows these communications to occur. I will say, though, that we seemed to be in the right place at the right time, doing right by God in his house, and that might have helped.
He came from the mountain
To walk among the wounded
They couldn’t see him
But the snow did melt whenever he passed by
He came behind winter
His face was like the sun
They wouldn’t see it
But he sang on the bank and made the waters run
In his world we wait
In his hands our fate
Keep on climbing
We shall see his gate
In good time
He came to the lowlands
He said we must have faces
So we could see like him
Before our wings would ever come to fly
In his world we wait
In his hands our fate
Keep on climbing
We shall see his gate
In good time
“HE CAME FROM THE MOUNTAIN,” 1971
To listen to a sample of this song visit b.hc.com/s/17.
7
I never really planned on singing my own songs for a living. My preference for a covert life, having my thoughts unchallenged, allowing my imagination to run where it would was a way to make the best of a slippery world fraught with physical and psychic peril. Everything was possible, but not in a good way. I could talk. I could laugh with people, but with an ego and no self-confidence, it was hard to get very close to anyone without feeling threatened. At times the loneliness was unbearable, the need to be held unmet, even on the rare occasions when I was held. Yet the ego demanded its due, and although I couldn’t look the feeling in the eye, I really wanted the approval that might be coaxed from an audience. That was enough to let me perform onstage, despite the fear and loathing that went along with it.
I started singing my songs because they were made to be heard, and it was obvious that no one else was going to sing them. Once away from the collaborative atmosphere of The Children, I thought I would write the songs and other artists would sing them. “Here’s something Judy Collins could do,” I’d think, or any of the singers I respected who were not committed to performing only their own material. I had no means of accessing such people, so of course none of them did.
Sometimes attention is just fine. Shortly after surviving the shock of hearing my first album playing in all those stores, I was down on Yonge Street in search of jazz records at Sam the Record Man. (My memory of this event is aided by the December 1996 issue of Gavin’s Woodpile, a remarkably dedicated monthly zine, now a website, published by one Daniel Keebler.) At Sam’s, a young cashier named Barry Wright watched as a teenager approached me for my autograph. I was with my dog, Aroo, and Wright suggested that we give the girl Aroo’s autograph too, which we did, using a stamp pad. I enjoyed the fact that Wright, without intending to, implied that the guy she thought so important might not be any more interesting than his dog.
I was in that record store taking a break from recording my second album, High Winds White Sky, which came out in 1971, as did my third album, Sunwheel Dance. A lot of the songs on my first three records issued straight out of my head—fantasies and visions—rather than arising from what I was seeing in front of me. These records represent one of a couple of album “trilogies” that I’ve put out, though that’s not how I intended them at the time. The early albums were in small part reactionary: I was leaving behind years of questionable rock bands, clearing out the decadent psychedelia that was itself a reaction to institutional decadence, and painting something deeper and more lasting. I was looking for purity in nature, for connections behind things. There is some Christian influence to be found on the records, but just as often the mystic influence was Buddhist or something from occult lore. The Buddhists are great technicians of the sacred, to use Thomas Merton’s term. I first encountered this in the Beat writers, then through Alan Watts, Chögyam Trungpa, and the Sutras themselves. There was also a mystic quality to the vast unspoiled landscapes of the Canadian north and west, which I got to watch unravel under the banner of “progress” during the seventies.
Along the way I tried to comport myself in a way implied by 1 Corinthians 13, that lovely and quite clear admonition:
And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing.
Love suffers long and is kind; love does not envy; love does not parade itself, is not puffed up
does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil
does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth
Bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
And now abide faith, hope, love, these three; but the greatest of these is love.
Who, among believers in any worthy ideal, can disdain these words, can fail to grasp them in their heart? Well, plenty of people, unfortunately, as we know—many of them ideologues professing various faiths, including Christian. An honest reading of this and other beautiful passages in the Bible speaks to a humanity dedicated to serving all creation through active benevolence, through love. Really, these are the Bible’s juiciest bits.
Sunwheel Dance is a snapshot of my mind-set during that decade. Despite my tendency toward a dark view, the songs from that era are full of sunlight. It was a period when I was searching for clues about existence but largely ignorant of my own inner workings. Sunlight was a metaphor. I felt optimistic—at least to the extent that it seemed everything would unfold as it must, within and without—and this optimism was a window that allowed light into the lyrics.
I had few close friends during the seventies, as I’d pretty much abandoned the rock coterie I used to hang with in Toronto and before, and I didn’t reach out much after that. Kitty kept a few folks close, but it was really just the two of us most of the time. We spent half the year on the road and the colder half in Ottawa or Toronto, with a scattering of friends in both places. We spent time with Fox Watson when he came to Canada, but eventually he went back south and disappeared off the radar, resurfacing later as a social worker in Appalachia. Murray McLauchlan and his then wife, Patty, who subsequently became known as Marguerite, were frequent companions in Toronto. Murray was also managed by Bernie and recorded for True North. It was largely Murray who introduced me to the Toronto scene when I reappeared there as myself, the singer-songwriter. Eric and Marty Nagler of the Toronto Folklore Centre were good friends for a while, till they broke up and we drifted apart. Kitty’s childhood friend Ann Tenor had married an ec
centrically gifted player of ragtime guitar named Mose Scarlett, and we stayed often at their place when visiting Toronto. Mose’s rich baritone voice delivers blues or standard tunes with conviction and authenticity. “Musical Friends” (b.hc.com/s/18), on the first album, was written mostly about gatherings at his apartment in the east end. Somewhere near the middle of the decade I became friends with Alan Whatmough in Ottawa. Alan played various instruments, including bass, and made his living as a piano technician. We shared an interest and a faith in non-dogmatic Christianity. It was through Alan that I discovered, in the course of our many conversations about faith, music, and humanity, the pleasure of having a male friend with similar interests.
With albums coming out and word spreading, so did offers for gigs well beyond the small coffeehouse circuit I had known. I’d have a performance in Montreal and then a week later I’d be in Ottawa. A month later it was Winnipeg, and a month after that, Saskatoon. The rigours! Each gig paid for the gas to the next, plus some food. Kitty and I camped in the truck, met locals, walked the mountains and plains, and attempted to merge our lives. It was just Kitty, Aroo and me, and the camper, for most of the first five years we were married—a simple, pleasant life.
Cloud pillars clinging like vines to the sky
Don’t cry
We’ll walk down the meadow with sunrise inside
So dry your eyes
The winds of all kingdoms meet where we stand
The grey forest people cast off their old clothes
Good-bye
Everything’s sleeping as winter draws near
So close your eyes
The mists of all twilights dance close at hand
The rust-coloured river is now slowing down
Going dry
Harvest has lifted the crown from the ground
But don’t you cry
The song of the seasons brings life to the land
“FALL,” 1971
To listen to a sample of this song visit b.hc.com/s/19.
During these early years my music found its way into the Canadian mainstream. Five songs from the first three albums made the top one hundred on Canadian song charts, four made the top thirty, and album sales kept pace. In 1970 I wrote and performed the title song and soundtrack for the acclaimed Don Shebib film Goin’ Down the Road, and that music won an award from the Canadian affiliate of the American performing rights organization BMI. Perhaps most unlikely was receiving the Juno Award (the Canadian equivalent of the American Grammy) for Canadian Folksinger of the Year for three consecutive years (1971–73).
I hope my expressions of gratitude for the awards themselves rang louder than the distaste I wore on my sleeve for the contest as a marketing tactic, a way of cashing in on whoever was popular at the time. I recoiled at the notion of competition. (Years later, when I started participating in shooting matches, I would come to understand that I am actually a very competitive person. But I don’t believe that applies to art.)
The first Juno Awards ceremony, in 1971, was small. It was very Canadian, not yet a media event. It was just the industry congratulating itself on what it was up to, which seemed legitimate—not very interesting, but okay. The vibe was good. Then in 1975 it became a TV show. I thought, “We don’t need to go in this direction as a nation. Surely we can think of our own way to honour Canadian artists without imitating the Oscars or the Grammys.” At that point the Junos became even more competitive. It was ugly enough in the first place to be designated “best” whatever—am I a “better” folksinger than X, Y, or Z, or are they better than I am? (I didn’t even consider myself a folksinger.) But the figurative elbowing offstage of my fellow musicians, or their elbowing-off of me, was not a place I wanted to go.
With the passage of time and the acquisition of a facade of maturity, I’ve mellowed with respect to these things. The “suits” are people too. The music world is not so sharply divided into us and them, and the idea of people celebrating their successes in whatever form seems okay. I’m not enthusiastic about the mostly commercial rationale for awards, but the cloud of effrontery is lined with a fuzzy, warm appreciation for the strokes.
At the end of 1972 I embarked on a solo cross-country Canadian tour that differed from my previous outings in one significant way: gone were the clubs and coffeehouses, which I was used to playing but which had become impractical. All of the shows on this tour would be in midsized theatres and concert halls. In November 1972 I managed to sell out Toronto’s twenty-seven-hundred-seat Massey Hall, followed by the prestigious National Arts Centre in Ottawa, with a capacity of twenty-four hundred. Typically there was ample driving time between shows, allowing Kitty and me to hang out, explore the back roads, and develop a feel for the spirit of the places we went.
My increasing notoriety produced another reaction. I began to be typecast as a “nature singer,” with write-ups heralding my position in the “back to the land” movement. I hated the feeling of being pinned down, and in any case the songs coming through me were beginning to change. My response was to cut my hair very short, like a punk, and make an album, Night Vision, with a band. It had drums, an electric bass, a Fender Rhodes. I played electric guitar on some songs. By design the overall timbre was urban rather than pastoral. We used the colours of jazz and blues with hints of rock. We played like a band. People seemed to like it.
I’ve been down to parliament, I’ve been in school
I’ve been in jail to learn the golden rule
I’ve been to the workhouse—served my time in those hallowed halls
The only thing I know is the blues got the world by the balls
I’ve been to the tundra and the mountain too
I’ve been in paris doing what the frenchmen do
I’ve been in boston where the buildings grow so tall
Everywhere you go the blues got the world by the balls
You can catch ’em from the preacher or from the pool shark
You can find ’em in the grammar of the socialite’s remark
Or down in the washroom you can read it on the wall
Everywhere you look the blues got the world by the balls
“THE BLUES GOT THE WORLD,” 1972
To listen to a sample of this song visit b.hc.com/s/20.
Night Vision came together in a backhanded fashion. I had a number of songs ready for vinyl but no plans to record. Then Harvey Glatt asked me to produce an album for songwriter and Children alumnus David Wiffen. The crew I put together to create a field for David’s rich baritone voice consisted of Dennis Pendrith on bass, Pat Godfrey on piano, and a drummer named John Savage. We learned the songs and were ready to go into the studio, but David was challenged by the recording experience, and not for the first time. (Challenged enough that he had to go into rehab.) So there I was, with this great band looking for a recording session. I talked with Bernie and we decided to make my album instead. What came out was Night Vision. (Later on I did produce Wiffen’s album Coast to Coast Fever, which turned out pretty well, in spite of my lack of expertise behind the console.)
Making Night Vision with a band turned out to be a great career move, except I was taken aback at the response. The album, especially the song “Mama Just Wants to Barrelhouse All Night Long,” got airplay across Canada. It was my first record to go “gold” in Canada (fifty thousand units sold), which led True North to release a later pressing of the disc on “gold” vinyl. The audience also changed, becoming louder and more exuberant—clapping along, even. I had come up through the coffeehouse scene, where the listening atmosphere was one of quiet reverence no matter who was playing—even if you whispered, someone would shush you—and this carried over into the concert halls when I first started playing bigger places. But because Night Vision was such a different album, more urban and rambunctious, audiences responded in kind. They were having a great time. I became alarmed, even offended.
I was up the road on easy street
Watching everybody stand around and cheat
Man comes up and says, “Move along
Back to the corner where you belong”
But mama just wants to barrelhouse all night long
Hear the city singing like a siren choir
Some fool tried to set this town on fire
TV preacher screams “come on along”
I feel like Fay Wray face to face with King Kong
But mama just wants to barrelhouse all night long
Sometimes I wonder what I am
I feel like I’m living in a hologram
It doesn’t seem to matter what’s right or wrong
Everybody’s grabbing and coming on strong
But mama just wants to barrelhouse all night long
“MAMA JUST WANTS TO BARRELHOUSE ALL NIGHT LONG,” 1973
To listen to a sample of this song visit b.hc.com/s/21.
I had no idea how to deal with the sudden growth in popularity, this triggering of wanton emotional responses from audiences. I recoiled. Things are getting out of hand. People want to dance at these shows. Oh my god, that’s not me. I can’t be responsible for inciting this sort of madness. It was an issue even before Night Vision. One night during a concert in Ottawa I played “Dialogue with the Devil,” from Sunwheel Dance. I was shocked when the audience applauded wildly at the end, and although I got a huge rush of energy from it, a personal power surge—I could own this town!—as soon as I got offstage, I started thinking that the whole experience was very wrong. Kitty and I talked about it. We came to the conclusion that it was wrong to want power over other people. I wasn’t supposed to have power; nobody is supposed to have power, at least not the sort of frivolous, selfish power that I could see myself accruing. (Kitty may have been steered partly by guilt in this. In her teens she discovered she could influence people’s actions through a kind of telepathy. She swore off that power, feeling it sinful.)
With Night Vision the same thing happened, only it was nationwide. I’d play and get whoops and claps and sing-alongs. Quiet! After shows, I felt hunted. I started to back off. Quick! Another reaction, Bruce!
Rumours of Glory Page 12