Where I Belong

by Alan Doyle

  Of course, there were all sorts of lessons First Attempt failed to learn. Like most young bands, we had no idea what we were good at and what we were not. We’d play a John Cougar song and do a good job of it. Then we’d follow it with a failed attempt at Zeppelin’s very complicated “Stairway to Heaven” or “Subdivisions” by Rush.

  Brian Foley on drums as I attempt to light St. Kevin’s gymnasium ablaze with Uncle Leonard’s Strat. The small box blocking my right foot is a jury-rigged strobe light and foot switch. I would click it on and rock out to the high-tech FX during my killer solos. I’m serious.

  As most high school bands do, First Attempt fell by the wayside when we graduated. By this point, I was pretty much a full-time member of Uncle Ronnie’s band. But let me backtrack here and tell you how that all started.

  I’d been helping Uncle Ronnie and the guys in his band load and set up gear for a few years. He was aware of First Attempt, as he was constantly loaning us gear. All the while, as I helped them set up for parties and concerts, I did my best to not so subtly suggest I knew how to play most of their songs. Underage kids were not allowed to play in clubs, but some exceptions were made if they were accompanied by an adult and left the bar when not on stage. I had a faint hope that one day I might get the nod to sub in.

  My high school graduation. I’m grinning because I’m thinking about how all the girls are going to fall for my massively thick and manly moustache.

  One Sunday in the spring of 1984, Uncle Ronnie came to our house after mass. He asked Dad to come out on the back step to talk to him. I watched through the door as they spoke for a minute or two. I couldn’t hear what was said, but Dad nodded before he came back in, Ronnie right behind him.

  “Ned can’t make the afternoon matinee gig up at the Squid Jigger,” Uncle Ronnie said. “It’s only a two-set show, but there’s fifty dollars in it for you if you want to play guitar.”

  A nod from Dad confirmed it. In retrospect, there was no way he was going to say no.

  “That would be friggin’ awesome,” I said.

  “Get your gear ready. Pick you up at one.”

  I spent the next two hours preparing. I restrung Uncle Leonard’s Strat and put fresh nine-volt batteries in my pedals. I stood in the mirror with the black and white electric guitar strung around my neck and lowered the strap as low as I could possibly get it and still reach the strings. I packed it up in its case laid it by the back door.

  By this time, Bern was home and had heard the news. “First pro gig, Al.”

  “Yeah. But it’s only a small thing.”

  “Oh no it’s not,” Bernie said. He was always smart like that.

  Ronnie and Aunt Patsy sat in the front seat of the station wagon while me and Uncle Leonard sat in the back as we drove down the Southern Shore. We were cruising past the bar circuit I’d heard so much about, past the Hayloft in the Goulds, and Darby’s in Witless Bay, then Hayden’s in Cape Broyle and finally to the Squid Jigger in Calvert. It was the coolest drive I’d had in my life.

  The Squid Jigger exists to this day and looks pretty much like it did around thirty years ago—a long, narrow building with a bar in one corner and a stage along one short side. When we walked in, there were two couples sat at tables and a few off-duty fishermen leaning against the bar, enjoying what appeared to be nothing like their first drinks of the day. Ronnie said a few hellos and I went to the stage and set up my gear. I plugged in my cable to the Peavey Deuce amp, connected the other end to the output of my Boss ODI distortion pedal. Then I ran another cable from the input to the output of the Strat. I was ready to go.

  Before I could look up and get nervous, Ronnie was on the stage behind the drum kit, and Leonard soon joined with Jerome Hart, the bass player. I must have had a panicked look on my face. They laughed when I asked, “Is there a set list?”

  “Don’t be so foolish,” Uncle Ronnie’s booming voice came from behind the kit. He leaned over past the floor tom and gave me a wink of assurance. “ ‘Move It On Over,’ in E. Here we go.”

  Then he swung his mic in place and addressed the crowd. “Welcome to the Squid Jigger, folks. We are the Sandelles!”

  Four clicks of the sticks and we were into the downbeat of the Hank Williams tune and I was a professional musician.

  After about a dozen songs, we took a quick break and I went outside because I was underage. The club owner followed me out.

  “What you doing out here?” she asked.

  “I thought I had to wait outside.”

  She waved me back in the bar and offered me a Pepsi. “No worries, honey. If a Mountie drives down the shore, my buddy in Trepassey will phone me. Sure, what’s one more Doyle from Petty Harbour in the bar anyway?”

  A while later, we played a quick second set and that was it. I tore down all the gear as Leonard and Ronnie and the grown-ups had a drink or two. By the time they turned around, I had the station wagon loaded and ready to roll.

  “Keep this up and you’ll be hired on full-time for sure,” Ronnie said as he squished two twenties and two fives in my hand, the first money I ever made playing music.

  He was right. In no time at all, I became a full-time member of the band. I was barely sixteen years old.

  It was an awesome band to apprentice in. Over the next five or six years, I played almost every kind of gig there was to get—weddings, nightclubs, fire-hall dances, concerts. A club date usually consisted of a set of Celtic jigs and reels, followed by a set of older country tunes, then fifties and sixties rock ’n’ roll. By the time the last set of more contemporary tunes was done, we’d have covered about five decades of music.

  The odd time I would play bass and a keyboard riff, but mostly I played guitar. Uncle Ronnie would play drums and sing. I would sing harmony and play rhythm guitar, with Uncle Leonard playing the solos. He’d give me a nod every now and again to play lead for twelve bars, but I was never very good at lead guitar. I’m still not.

  From my time in Uncle Ronnie’s band, I learned as much about music as I did about life in general, sometimes the hard way. Like bar fights. You know the kind from the old western movies, where the honky-tonk piano player keeps playing while guys get punched over round-topped tables and go flying through saloon doors and no one really gets hurt. In real bar fights, cops and ambulances are called, and men and women weep and wail. In real bar fights, handfuls of bloody hair are left on the floor, people get jagged glass stuck in their faces and people sometimes even lose an eye. Even the biggest biker dudes squeal in terror when they think they’ve just lost an eye. Bar fights are no fun.

  Not getting paid was no fun either. It happened with sketchy club owners from time to time, but I learned from the older gents how to make the most of it. The most fun I had while not getting paid happened in a club halfway down the Southern Shore and it wound up cementing my place in the gang. We’d played Friday and Saturday night and also did a short Sunday matinee. The owner, Dumpy, owed us over a thousand dollars—five hundred each for the two-night gigs, and around $250 for the afternoon one. But the matinee was so poorly attended that Dumpy did not want to pay us for it. Uncle Ronnie was trying to be reasonable.

  The New Sandelles, late 80s. From left to right: me with Uncle Leonard’s Strat, Uncle Ronnie, David Stack, Al Hearn. Here, I’m thinking, “Girls are really gonna dig this shirt buttoned right up and how it highlights my Karate Kid guitar strap.

  “Dumpy, b’y, you gotta pay us. We drove down the shore.”

  “No f—ing way. Ye never even played a full set today. I’m not paying for a full show,” Dumpy argued.

  “We didn’t play because there’s no one here to listen to us.”

  Dumpy was adamant. “Not gonna happen.”

  As a compromise, he offered to pay eleven hundred and that was it. We could load our stuff and get out and lock the door behind us. He slammed the cash on the bar and walked out the door.

  Uncle Ronnie and the gang were not impressed. They were pissed, very much so. But there was
also a gleam in their eyes. Club Owner Rule No. 1: Never leave a pissed-off bunch of musicians who you just ripped off alone in your bar.

  Without saying a word, Uncle Ronnie went right for the beer cooler and took two two-fours of beer. Another musician, Al, took two forty-ounce bottles of rum and a few bags of chips. We loaded all our gear and our extra stuff into the station wagon.

  Once we were done, the two older fellas in the band looked at each other. One said, “We’re not full yet.”

  He and Ronnie walked back into the bar. Ronnie went for the dartboard and scorekeeper, while Al took two dandy bar stools with rounded high backs. By the time we got all our booty in the car, it was just about stuffed, and we were all quite content. But the icing on the cake was to come.

  Al turned to me and asked, “You got any quarters?”

  “What?”

  “I said, you got any quarters?”

  I fished into my pocket and gave him four quarters. When he went back into the bar, I followed him. He put two quarters in each of the two pool tables. When the balls came flowing down, he grabbed the eight ball from each table and walked back out the door. Once outside, he stood on the high bank next to the club and threw one of the eight balls as far as he could down into the thick brush. He handed me the second one and paused for my response. I knew what I had to do. I hurled that ball as far as I could into the same bramble. I turned around to see Uncle Ronnie standing there with a proud grin on his face.

  “Welcome to the band,” he said, and we all piled into our getaway car and raced down the shore.

  All in all, I figure I played a couple of hundred gigs with Uncle Ronnie’s band, almost all of them before I was twenty. I’ll be forever grateful to them for having me along at such a young age and giving me such a head start. I learned how to keep a strong rhythm and play a solid backup, even though it would take a few years of standing in pub corners singing fifty or sixty tunes a night before I could sing lead properly.

  And that’s exactly where I was headed. During my first year of university at Memorial in St. John’s, I joined up with David Stack (another young recruit to Uncle Ronnie’s band), and with Greg and Brian from First Attempt. Together, we made a country-rock outfit we called High Tide. We played a few of the old Uncle Ronnie haunts, but that scene was dying right along with the inshore cod fishery.

  A few of us moved into a four-bedroom rental house halfway between the university and downtown—7 Suez Street in St. John’s. We immediately dubbed it Château de Suez. I lived in that house with a revolving cast of housemates for the next six years. My brother, Bernie, and my oldest friend, Perry, were some of my earliest roommates, and so was Greg Hawco.

  He had been playing percussion in a trio with a guitarist and a singer. The singer fella, Jim, had a regular weekend gig in the bar of a dingy hotel in the older part of St. John’s. Greg and the guitarist were quitting, and Jim wanted a new partner to do the hotel matinee and a few other gigs.

  David Stack, Greg Hawco (on drums), me and Brian Foley, playing a New Year’s Eve concert around 1990. Again, I was a chick magnet, what with me playing this far up the guitar neck and wearing my cool leather suspenders.

  Me and Perry in the kitchen at the Château de Suez. Perry for sure thought his awesome string tie was going to get him girls.

  “Why are you guys quitting if Jim is booking you steady gigs?” I asked Greg.

  Greg’s response was simple. “Because he’s crazy.”

  He was crazy, too, but often in the best kind of way. Jim was a couple of years my senior and had completed a science degree at Memorial University. He was working towards a master’s in biochemistry. On Greg’s recommendation, I went to see him play one Saturday evening.

  It was well known around town that the dingy hotel he played in was really a brothel of sorts, offering half-day and hourly room rates. The bar attached to the hotel had tall booths with curtains that closed. Older gals wearing a little too much makeup sat on bar stools by themselves until old fellas chatted them up and offered them a drink. Then they disappeared for twenty minutes or so. The gal would return to the bar. The old fella would not.

  When I visited the establishment, Jim was singing “Taxi,” by Harry Chapin. About twenty or so people sat around the bar and at tables. Jim was not a tall fella, but he made up for his diminutive stature with a giant personality. He had his head bent back, eyes closed, wailing at the top of his lungs. I swear he thought he was at Madison Square Garden singing an encore. I could see the veins in his neck bulging, he sang so hard. When he got to the quiet last verse, I thought he was going to cry. Then he launched into “Cat’s in the Cradle” and got the crowd clapping to the last chorus. Jim’s energy was incredible. He gave 110 percent with every syllable he sang.

  Once he was done his set, he left the stage and walked right up to me at the bar.

  It turned out Jim knew about me and that I played guitar. He was a very smart and charming fellow, and a great salesman, especially when it came to talking up the number of gigs we could get together.

  “Dude, you wail on the guitar and I’ll sing the shite out of the songs. I’ll get us booked from here to Corner Brook and back. Tons of money. You’ll need an extra pocket for the cash and an extra pickle for all the snapper.”

  I was game for anything and I suggested we get together for a jam and see what came of it. His response should have told me something about him.

  “Jam? F—k that. Be here tomorrow at six thirty.”

  And just like that, I was booked for my first pub-singing gig in St. John’s.

  The next day, I met Jim in the hotel lobby. There were no hellos or small talk of any kind. There was no discussion of music or pay. His bright, beady eyes curved down the side of his face almost far enough to reach the corners of his massive smile reaching up.

  “What a pile of skin here today,” he said and disappeared into the bowels of the hotel while I figured out how to set up my gear next to Jim’s. About fifteen minutes later, Jim reappeared and said, “Let’s get ’er going.”

  “Is there a set list?” I asked.

  “Set lists are for pansies.”

  With that, Jim picked up his guitar and started strumming a G chord followed by a C and a D in what sounded loosely like the intro to the Eagles’ “Take It Easy,” but it could have been anything.

  “Welcome to the Captain’s Quarter Hotel. I’m Jim Benson and this is my long-time sidekick, Alan Doyle. Take it away, Alan!”

  Then he stood back from the mic while I awkwardly noodled some lead stuff on guitar. After catching the terrified and puzzled look on my face, he leaned in to me and said, “My throat’s as sore as a boil t’day. You sing this one, will ya?”

  “Sing what?” I was scared half to death, but he did not answer, just kept strumming and winking at the crowd.

  What was I supposed to do? I turned to the mic and started singing the opening lyrics of “Take It Easy.” I glanced at Jim, who had a massive grin on his face.

  “Oh, good one,” he said, and it was only then that I realized he’d had no idea what song he was starting or what I was about to sing.

  All I could think was, “Greg was right. This guy is f—king crazy.”

  And off we went. We played for an hour and a bit. Jim would sing a few and I’d play lead guitar, then we’d switch. He could play guitar quite well and knew hundreds of songs. His singing voice was not always best suited for the tunes he picked, and he often sang tunes in keys that were too low or too high for him. But somehow, he got away with it. Perhaps it was the intensity and the volume of his singing and playing. I thought he would push his right hand through the sound hole, that’s how hard he strummed. He barely needed a microphone at all.

  We finished the first set and were about to take a short break. Rose, the bartender who I’m not sure you’d call a young woman but who nevertheless wore a tight dress with a plunging neckline and a ton of shiny red lipstick, said, “You wanna come to the back room and get what you came f
or, Jimmy?”

  Jim did not say a word. He just followed her behind the dirty red-velvet drapes. A few people nearby came up to me and said they liked my singing, which was really nice of them. And I think they meant it. Up until that point, I’d never thought of myself as a singer, not like my brother or Uncle Ronnie. They were lead singers. I thought I was going to be Eddie Van Halen, not David Lee Roth.

  After a while, Jim came out of the back room with two fifty-dollar bills. He handed one to me and stuffed the other one in his pocket.

  Then he shouted back at Rose, “I’ve got a chem exam tomorrow, Rose. Alan will finish up the last set.”

  “What!” I said, shocked.

  “You’ve got it covered. Chuck my guitar and stuff in the closet when you’re done, will ya? And don’t screw any of the young ones. They says they’ll do you for free but then some big prick’ll come looking for money. See ya.”

  And he put on his beer league hockey jacket and walked out the door.

  What just happened? I wondered. Did I really have to do the last set by myself?

  Rose appeared at my side. “Don’t worry, honey. You’ve got a lovely voice. Sing a few of them Eagles songs again. They were nice.” I felt her hand slide around my waist. Her arms were almost completely around me when she laid a rum and Coke in front of me and walked back to her stool.

  My knees were wobbly. I necked the rum and Coke and walked back up to the stage and picked up my guitar. “Any requests?” I asked the dozen or so people who were left in the room.