Monday, March 2, 2009

A Stan Rogers Story

I spent a lot of time with Stan Rogers. We were not friends, but I had many encounters with him and he enriched my life. He helped me learn to sing better and I loved singing with Stan and always did in the forty or fifty shows I attended. It was always easier to get a harmony going with him as an audience member than with most other performers I encountered. I was a fan.

He encouraged people to sing along with him and seemed to love it when the room was enveloped in a rich set of vocal harmonies all linked to his rich baritone voice. For those who don't know about Stan, he was a productive and much loved singer-songwriter with a Canadian East Coast flavour in his music. He always played with his younger brother Garnet Rogers. Now they have a festival named after him in Nova Scotia, which is where his family originated as I understand it, though Stan lived in Hamilton, Ontario.

I first met Stan in the center of the road in front of the Carden Street Cafe in Guelph, Ontario when the cafe was at its previous location on the corner. This was in 1978 when I worked for the summer in Guelph between English Studies at the University of Waterloo and Chinese Studies at the University of Toronto. He was flying wind-up wooden airplanes with his brother Garnet in the middle of the intersection while folk walked by wondering, "Why aren't those men at work and why are they acting like children?" It was a bright and sunny Spring day in Southern Ontario.

My friend Hilary Stead owned the cafe at that time and we renovated it in order to get a liquor license. It was about that time that Stan showed up to perform again in one of his favourite venues, to which he returned again and again. Hilary knew how to care for musicians and having beer in the house was a benefit that appealed to Stan's refined sensibilities. :) She also made excellent recordings of the galaxy of roots music stars who paraded through to enjoy her wonderful personality, great and faithful audiences, and delicious healthy menu.

I learned most of Stan's songs by singing them with him in many places. I was present for a couple evenings when Stan's record Between the Breaks - Live at the Groaning Board was recorded live. I saw him at Harbourfront and at the Bathurst Church Theatre, the Transac Club of Toronto on Brunswick several times, at festivals and elsewhere. The last time I saw him play was at the Mariposa Folk Festival when I was a volunteer there. I had a conversation with him in the entertainers' tent while he supped back a cold one with the sun glowing on his high and prominent forehead. He had just finished an energetic set in the hot sun.

Hi Stan, so I just got back from a year in China.” Stan never seemed much interested in what others were doing. “So what's that to me?” he asked. “Well as a matter of fact it does relate to you. After I'd been in Taipei for about a month I was still unemployed and running out of money, which had discouraged me and I was on the verge of depression as I walk along the hallway in the student residence where I was lodging.”

As I slowly shuffled my feet towards my room I heard something coming through a door and it sounded like your music. I drew closer and pushed my ear against the door. 'Rise again. Rise again. No matter what you've lost, be it a home, a love, a friend, like the Mary Ellen Carter rise again.' I knocked on the door and was greeted by a smiling young Chinese Canadian scholar from Montreal who was in Taiwan learning Mandarin Chinese.

He invited me in and we quickly became friends and compatriots...all thanks to your song. LOL” I laughed. “What the hell were those commies doing with my music?” he fumed. “This was a Canadian kid from Montreal in Taiwan, which is NOT communist.” I said. “Oh.” was all he replied as he sat back laughing and sweating in the heat of the summer sun. “Also,” I added, “your song lifted my spirit and helped me to go on. Thanks Stan.” He sneered and returned to his beer.

I should mention that this young man named Nathan knocked on my door a couple of days later with a newcomer to Taipei at his side who was looking for a good cup of coffee, which I always had available.

When he was a young doctor this 82 year old East German psychiatrist named Dr. Irvine had been a junior colleague of Dr. Sigmund Freud and Dr. Carl Jung, the inventors of modern psychiatry. He had arrived that day after a months long tour of Mainland China where he showed his film about diagnosis and treatment at thirteen of the most important psychiatric teaching hospitals in Mainland China [PROC].

Dr. Irvine and I became close friends over the next few months in that alien world of China. He introduced me to the medical and academic discipline he invented, which is called Ethno-psychiatry. This is the study of special psychiatric disorders that are characteristic of ethnic groups. His original research had been in Africa where he spent sixteen years and learned to speak Swahili fluently, along with a dozen other difficult languages in which he was perfectly fluent. He had come to Taipei to learn Mandarin. We had much fun together and drank lots of coffee. This was a spin-off from Stan's music in my life.

Later, back in Canada in the Fall of the next year I was dating the woman I married. I had been telling her about Stan [and Garnet] and singing his songs to her and playing his recordings...including a lengthy cassette tape from the Carden Street Cafe loaned to me by Hillary. I was excited for her that she was about to encounter an interesting Canadian musician – a singer-songwriter who stood among our best.

I remember how I planned to take her to the Transac Club of Toronto where I'd seen Stan play several times years before and before I went to China. I visualized how the evening would go again and again as I picked her up from her class at York University. Then I took her for a walk around the core of the City of Toronto. We walked in the bright sunshine along Dundas Street West past the Art Gallery of Ontario. Nearby there, by chance it seemed, I looked up on a scaffolding where some bricklayers were re-pointing a store front at a busy intersection. There among the workers was a childhood friend of mine from Northern Ontario.

We greeted each other with smiles and when Bruce asked what we were doing, I told him how Tamara was about to see a performance by a Canadian music icon for the first time. When I told him it was Stan Rogers, he said that he had just heard on the radio that Stan had died in a plane fire in the USA on his way home from a festival in Texas. I didn't believe him and thought that this was not possible. I even argued with him a little and headed anxiously towards the Transac Club where we learned the sad truth. The concert was canceled and Stan Rogers was dead.

I learned most of Stan's songs singing them with him and Garnet and audiences in many places. He taught me his songs, taught me something about being a singer, a song-writer and a Canadian; and he taught us all a little about gratitude and hope. He was a bad tempered scoundrel at times and pushy in his manner. But he was also a gifted Canadian who has contributed more to our national culture than many artists who do not capture the spirit and imaginations of Canadians as Stan did.

This man was one of the people who helped to shape my life with my welcoming and willing consent and agreement. Though I was never a member of his intimate inner circle, I did have enough of a relationship with Stan to be able to miss him still. He was one of us. I can recommend Stan Rogers songs and music to all Canadians and those who have the same spirit of Liberty, adventure and creativity in their hearts that Stan embodied and sang out from every stage that would have him.

We still sing his songs in pubs, clubs, festivals, homes and elsewhere across the nation and around the world. We are beneficiaries of his work, his craft, his gifts and sacrifices.

Thanks again Stan!



Jake Willis copyright - February 28, 2009.
Guelph, Ontario, Canada

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