HOMETOWN INSPIRATION
VEtErAn musICIAn FInDs HIs musE rIGHt In HIs own nEIGHBourHooD
“I came to Ottawa when I was 12 or 13. Moved around a lot before that. It took me a long time to kind of own this town and feel like this was where I came from, but now I have that feeling.
“I’ve been playing music for about 45 years, but about a year ago I wrote a song and thought, ‘The world-music band I’m playing in, The Main Street Market Band, can’t play this song; this is a solo song, kind of a countryfolk song.’ So I started playing it for people, and it felt good; it felt like the right song for me at the time. And it was the first time that I’d written something about my own community, my own neighbourhood.
“It was a song about the Great Fire of 1870, and it really clicked for me, writing a historical song like that. And I thought I’d write some more like that, and they just popped out. The next one was about the building of the Rideau Canal, and I realized that
I’ve read about this canal — I’ve walked by it every day — and it’s got these stories that are amazing. It took them two days in 1826 to get from Entrance Bay to Dow’s Lake — just surveying the land — because it was a swamp.
And I made a decision early on that I wanted to write songs about Ottawa and the Ottawa Valley, whether they were historical or current day, whether they were old history — the old stories — or whether they were songs about a bouncer at the Chaudière — more recent kind of folklore.
“I found that writing about my own community was something I could connect to. And in the process of writing these songs, I started thinking that there’s a whole project of songs — a CD — so I’ve been working towards probably twice the number of songs that I’d need for a CD, hoping that that will be done in early winter, and in the interim I’m getting out and playing these songs as much as I can, and getting audience feedback, which is great.
“I wrote this song about Gerry Barber, this bouncer at the Chaudière Club in the ’70s and ’80s, and the reaction was overwhelming. The stories I heard from people and the emails
I was getting — from people in the Northwest Territories, even — and people sharing the video everywhere. And I started noticing that it was being shared by people with the last name of Barber, and it turned out they was all Barber family members — descendants or siblings of Gerry Barber, and I’ve had several conversations with his son, his daughter, other cousins, grandkids. That meant a lot to me, to get that kind of reaction. It was really touching.
“I also wrote a song about the fentanyl crisis. And one about how I dislike that the media often calls the federal government ‘Ottawa.’ You turn on the radio and you hear Ottawa this and Ottawa that, but that’s not Ottawa, so I wrote The Ottawa Song, about all the things I love about Ottawa — kind of like Hank Snow’s I’ve Been Everywhere.
“I have another song about the Syrian refugee crisis and connecting that to my grandparents and their arrival in Canada 100 years ago. And I wrote a song about my neighbourhood — I learned recently that the first airplane in Ottawa landed just a few blocks from my house, on Slattery’s Fields, which is now the hydro station on Riverdale.
“I’m really looking forward to recording these songs and putting them out on CD, because they have an energy to them, and I love getting out and playing them. It’s funny, I’ve been playing in bands for so long, and all of a sudden finding this spot where I can connect to the song and tell the story. Often in a band, you have a lot of things going on and that story gets lost. But when you’re by yourself with a guitar and you tell a story and engage with people, that’s a real powerful experience.
“There’s something, especially in the days of the internet, about telling that local story, about our own lives, our own past, our own history, that people respond to, that they connect with. It’s personal. We’re so used to looking elsewhere for our stories, but we’ve got these amazing stories ourselves that need to be told.”
It felt like the right song for me at the time. And it was the first time that I’d written something about my own community, my own neighbourhood.