Heard any good Canadian stories lately?
That night in Toronto — April 18, 1992 — with its checkerboard floors, Gord Downie of the Tragically Hip stood onstage at the Horseshoe Tavern on Queen West and said, “Know any Canadian stories? Here’s one.”
And then, while much of the audience continued to chatter away in front of him, he and the band launched into what may have been the first public performance of “50 Mission Cap” — one of a series of songs they publicly unveiled that night from their then-forthcoming, now-legendary album “Fully Completely.”
That was seven years before Downie would make those checkerboard floor tiles themselves the subject of a Canadian story contained in a song lyric, at a time when he was still early in the process of becoming Canada’s most beloved musical storyteller. And it was just one of hundreds of seminal music moments witnessed in that room since its opening as a live music venue in 1947.
The Horseshoe, which Grant Lawrence of the Smugglers once called “Canada’s beating heart of rock ’n’ roll” celebrated its 75th anniversary this week with a series of concerts. The history of that stage, behind the unassuming facade of a building originally built in the 19th century to house a blacksmith, is hard to match for sheer importance and star power, spanning musical eras and genres, hosting stars and making them, and carrying on to this day.
There was the original country music era that saw early performances by Loretta Lynn, Willie Nelson, Hank Williams and Waylon Jennings, and which launched the career of Canadian troubadour Stompin’ Tom Connors (who once played nine straight weeks of sold out shows — three to four sets a night — and eventually recorded a live album there).
There was the punk and new wave era when bookers Gary Topp and Gary Cormier brought the Police to play for an empty room, and booked Talking Heads, MC5 and the Cramps, an era whose end was immortalized in the film “The Last Pogo“when a Teenage Head performance was shut down by police, leading to a riot.
After closing for a few years (and briefly becoming a strip club) it returned in the 1980s as the home of the “Queen Street Sound” that launched the careers of Blue Rodeo (whose record label was housed in the basement) and Leslie Spit Trio, then became a launching pad for the Hip, Barenaked Ladies, Rheostatics, Lowest of the Low, Northern Pikes, Sloan and Nickelback, among many dozens of others.
Along the way, the intimate 400capacity venue saw a surprise concert by the Rolling Stones (at which Dan Aykroyd worked the door and John Goodman tended bar), a live album recording by Jeff Healey Band, and free performances at Dave Bookman’s Nu Music Night Tuesdays by the Strokes, Thom Yorke of Radiohead, and the Foo Fighters.
What I’m saying is if you were looking for Canadian stories, or musical stories of many kinds, the Horseshoe was a good place to look.
“Along with the El Mocambo, the Horseshoe is really the most renowned music venue in Toronto for sure,” Toronto music journalist and historian Nicholas Jennings told me this week, reflecting on those stories. “It’s been through so many musical incarnations in terms of what it’s featured,” he said. “That venue just keeps moving with the times and with the stylistic changes. And that’s what’s kept it going, is that it’s evolved. Whereas other places might get stuck in a bit of a groove, the Horseshoe’s always got something fresh.”
Jennings is someone who thinks and cares a lot about the musical heritage of the city — he’s one of the driving forces behind Friar’s Music Museum now housed in the Shopper’s Drug Mart on Yonge south of Dundas, on the site where Friar’s Tavern was once home to jazz and early rock greats, and was one of the places where the Band got their start backing up Ronnie Hawkins.
It’s partly through Jennings’s work that I’ve learned through the years about the phenomenal history of live music in Toronto, when bars like the Colonial Tavern housed jazz and blues greats and the Minah Bird birthed a folk scene, and Friar’s and Le Coq d’Or were a psychedelic and blues rock proving ground and places like Calypso helped bring Caribbean music to North American prominence.
There used to be dozens — maybe hundreds — of these live music venues in Toronto, hosting legends and building them. When I wrote about Pete Traynor, builder of legendary amplifiers, I heard about how he got his start as a teenage bass player gigging three or four times a night at the dawn of the rock ’n’ roll era.
The city has changed, and the ways in which we listen to music have changed, and the way today’s most popular acts get their start has changed — the Weeknd, for example, grew to fame recording music in his Scarborough home well before ever playing live; Shawn Mendes got a record deal by racking up likes on social media clips, not by filling bars to build a fan base. Once, we’d revisit our year in music by letting ticket stubs remind us of crowded rooms blasted by speaker stacks; today we’re more likely to glance at our Spotify Wrapped recap of what our headphones were bringing us.
Still, Jennings points out the odd new concert venue still opens here, even as the beloved old ones seem to close by the year. BSMT 252 on Lansdowne Avenue, for instance, just opened in 2019.
But of those grand old houses of legends, there’s still Massey Hall, recently restored and reopened. There’s still Lee’s Palace, with a relatively shorter but still storied track record. There’s still the El Mocambo — or rather there’s the El Mocambo again, reopened after a long and gratuitously expensive renovation that has made it part museum of its own history, part state-of-theart recording and livestreaming space, part bar mitzvah and wedding venue, and (still) part concert venue.
And, hallelujah, there’s still the Horseshoe. Know any Canadian stories? This old tavern does. Long may it continue singing them.