Rainbow co-founder dead at 72
A big man of boundless enthusiasms, Ronnie Knowles was still hatching plans when he died Saturday from heart failure at his home in Cochrane, Alta.
He was 72, but his life seemed to defy time and other conventions: There was no other way to pack so much into one career. At various times in his life, he owned a Caribbean dive shop, a murder mystery dinner theatre, a newspaper, a sailing business, a football camp, a pizza restaurant, an Irish pub, and most famously, a blues bar.
He launched the Rainbow Bistro, Ottawa’s foundational blues bar, with partner Danny Sivyer in November 1984.
“He was larger than life: He was big and brash and full of ideas,” says Sivyer, who continues to operate the ByWard Market landmark.
Knowles’s longtime friend Connor Grimes says the Rainbow begat the Bluesfest.
“He really changed the face of the Ottawa music scene: No Rainbow, no Bluesfest,” says Grimes, a former member of the Bluesfest board of directors.
“You couldn’t have a better friend,” adds Grimes. “Ronnie was outgoing, generous and always had great stories. He lived a hell of a life.”
Charles Ronald Knowles was born in Ottawa on Jan. 14, 1947. Since his father was an air force pilot, the family moved often. They lived in the U.S., England and France.
Knowles studied and played football at St. Mary’s University before enrolling in political science at Louisiana State University, where he became involved in student politics as an anti-Vietnam War activist.
It was at LSU — his mother was from Louisiana — that he first dabbled in the music business. He booked singer Don MacLean for an LSU event months before his song American Pie made him a superstar in 1971; he also brought Arlo Guthrie and Ted Nugent to campus.
After college, Knowles worked as a roadie before returning to Ottawa, where he tended bar, painted houses and learned to bobsleigh. The national team then trained in Ottawa since it was close to the Olympic run in Lake Placid, N.Y. — Canada had yet to build one — and Knowles had the right build for a crewman. He spent the next few years training and travelling the world with the national bobsleigh team.
“When you get to the bottom, you’re fairly happy,” Knowles once said of the harrowing sport.
In 1977, a friend in New Orleans sold him a boat business, which led him to the purchase of a scuba diving resort in Honduras. (He would eventually run into trouble with the Honduran government, which banned foreigners from owning beachfront property.)
Knowles, who had dual Canadian-American citizenship, lived in New Orleans while managing the businesses. In 1981, Danny Sivyer stayed in Knowles’s Roatan resort on his honeymoon, then visited him in New Orleans. During a night of drinking, Knowles and Sivyer decided to launch a business.
“He said, ‘When I come back to Ottawa, we’ll open a bar together,’” remembers Sivyer.
In 1984, Knowles returned home and went in search of a bar location in the ByWard Market. He found an empty warehouse above the Café Crêpe de France at the corner of Murray Street and Parent Avenue.
As it happened, Sivyer had looked at the same space a few years earlier — and loved it. “I said, ‘This must be karma,’” says Sivyer. “We went back the next day and signed a 10-year lease.”
After three months of renovations, the Rainbow Bistro opened on Nov. 28, 1984. The bar featured a raised stage, a dance floor and an upper mezzanine that overlooked the stage, which offered Ottawa a raucous return to live music after so many years of canned disco.
Knowles used his contacts in New Orleans and Chicago to book acts such as John Hammond Jr., Koko Taylor, Albert King and Albert Collins. Canadian acts such as Blue Rodeo, Junkhouse, The Tragically Hip, Colin James and k.d. lang also graced the Rainbow stage.
Many Rainbow performers also appeared at Bluesfest, which was first staged at Major’s Hill Park in 1994. “Basically, the musicians just walked back and forth from the Rainbow,” Sivyer says.
Knowles wasn’t one to sit still and enjoy his success. He launched a local newspaper, The Market Journal, that lasted just eight issues and cost him a small fortune.
He really changed the face of the Ottawa music scene: No Rainbow, no Bluesfest. You couldn’t have a better friend. … He lived a hell of a life.
“I’ve always tried things,” he told an interviewer in 1988. “That was one and it didn’t work out.”
He sold his shares in the Rainbow, and in the early 1990s, he moved to coastal Mississippi, where he launched a murder mystery dinner theatre business while also working as a blackjack dealer at a Biloxi casino.
Knowles was at his home in Waveland, Miss., when Hurricane Katrina approached the Gulf Coast in August 2005. His partner, Susan Calvert, was with him.
“He refused to leave: He felt he was safe there,” remembers Calvert, who left as the storm approached.
Waveland took a direct hit from Katrina, which brought a nine-metre storm surge that engulfed the small town, killing 25 people. Convinced he was going to die, Knowles wrote letters to his loved ones, saying goodbye, while huddled with his two dogs.
He subsisted mostly on licorice, and would later be diagnosed with PTSD.
After the experience, he moved to Cochrane, Alta., to live with Calvert. He worked at a dogsledding firm, then bought a pizza parlour and a pub in Cochrane.
In recent years, Knowles suffered a series of health challenges, including prostate cancer and heart trouble. He suffered a fatal heart attack on Saturday while watching his beloved LSU football team earn a place in the national championship game.
He was planning a fundraising event for a local dog rescue shelter before he died.
“He had such a kind heart,” Calvert says.
“He was very passionate, very outgoing, very talkative. People used to say, ‘You have to let Ronnie talk before you can have a conversation with him.’” aduffy@postmedia.com