‘I’m trying to spread some positivity!’
Kitchener country musician pens odes to barbershops, pogey and scrubbing toes
“I’m thinking of taking a No. 2 to the old bean here,” Kevin Westphal is telling me over the phone from his Kitchener basement. “The old pumpkin.”
He’s talking about his hair, subject like many others to a severe case of COVID bedhead.
“No. 2 is more military,” he continues, using barbershop shorthand that has me grasping for Google.
“No. 1 is rookie, like how the NHL players used to shave it, or in the Canadian Armed Forces.”
He’s a social anthropologist, this heir to the legacy of Canada’s defiantly grassroots folk prophet, Stompin’ Tom Connors.
And what he’s been noticing in the seven weeks since the COVID lockdown shuttered most of our community is a lot of stinky people walking around looking like Charles Manson.
“There’s some pretty funky hygiene going on, some pretty bad haircuts and unibrows,” he laughs. “We look like we’re from the 1800s!”
As a country musician known for topical themes, his instinct was to write a song.
“No, it hasn’t been that long since they closed the shop,” he croons on “The Barbershop Song.” “I’m starting to look like Billy from ZZ Top.”
“If this goes on a few more weeks, hey, what will I do? I’m already lookin’ like Krusty the Clown, and it hasn’t been a month or two.”
His songs are witty, engaging and so catchy a five-year-old could sing them, which is likely why they’re catching fire on YouTube, or at least garnering positive response.
Most of all, they’re authentic.
“I try to keep it really simple,” he notes of his twangy populist anthems. “People seem to gravitate to that old country sound — three chords. I just write for the common man — and woman.”
If there’s one thing I pick up in our brief phone conversation — which echoes the one we had 20 years ago when Westphal penned his gouging-at-thepumps “Gas Song,” endorsed by Stompin’ Tom himself — it’s that this isn’t some ivory tower elitist tinkling fine china at afternoon tea parties.
“He embodies the earthy, proudly Canadian, potato-lovin’ spirit of Stompin’ Tom,” crows Sean Eisenporth, the Kitchener grade school pal who draws online graphics for his songs.
“He’s the Canadian Ray Stevens,
who in turn was the American Benny Hill. Their music was interwoven with naughty comedy, heavy on the innuendo.
I see him as more of a Jimmy Buffett character, an engagingly comic figure staking his turf not in Margaritaville but the rural burbs of Southwestern Ontario.
“Who the hell would do a song about Lucknow, Ontario?!” agrees Eisenporth about Westphal’s tribute to the Bruce County village in the middle of nowhere.
“An artistic genius, that’s who!”
With COVID-19, Westphal has hit a new artistic peak, with a series of quirky, two minute masterpieces that, with cartoonish aplomb, provide a cathartic outlet for pandemic anxiety.
“The Hygiene Song”: “Brush your teeth, shave your face, clean your ears, wash your hair, try some underarm deodorant, maybe change your underwear.”
“The Pogi Song”: “I didn’t pay my hydro, I’m behind with rent, my refrigerator’s empty and my savings are all spent.”
“Bored To Tears”: “I’m getting pretty good at sleeping and picking my nose, and staring at the walls and looking out windows.”
And, of course, “The Barbershop Song,” which racked up 2,200 hits in six days and includes references to Albert Einstein, Donald Trump and the Sasquatch.
“Westphal understands all the trials and tribulations that come with being a middle-class working Joe, because he is one,” confirms Eisenporth. “That’s how he’s able to connect with so many people through his music. There’s no faking that.
“The Canuck,” he notes, is also fiercely patriotic.
“We were talking on the phone the other day and he said with great passion, ‘I love Canada, man! It’s the greatest country there is, and I’m damned proud to be a Canadian!’
“I responded, ‘That’s fantastic, son! But we were talking about car insurance, remember?’”
I have to laugh because my experience with the man dubbed “Kevy Canuck” was exactly the same.
We were talking about the COVID-19 lockdown when he suddenly veered into a passionate soliloquy about his love for Canada and how his grandfather fought in the Second World War to make it what it is today — the greatest country in the world.
This, clearly, was not a scripted attempt to curry favour.
“People are so focused on writing about doing the twostep in Texas,” he noted, voice rising with emotion.
“I’m like ‘We don’t need any songs about doing the two-step in Texas. We need songs about doing the two-step in Palmerston!’ ”
Hold on, weren’t we talking about COVID-19?
“It’s the first time I’ve seen the country so united,” he enthuses, leaping back on track.
“It’s all about helping the people. It’s brought the country totally together. I’m sure right now you could leave the doors on your houses unlocked.”
If his music can play a small part in this resurgence in national pride, he’s happy to do his part.
“I didn’t set out to write COVID songs,” he insists. “But if I can cheer somebody up, I’ll do it. I’m trying to spread some positivity.”