CLIPS AND COMMENTARY FROM CANADA'S BEST KNOWN UNDISCOVERED OLD WHITE BLUESMAN

Monday, March 18, 1991

Those lights don’t make me nervous

Back at Albert’s Hall, Danny Marks had invited me to do some of my own tunes on Stormy Monday. But when he came around to my table he said there were a lot of people waiting to go on and since I had already been on the show with Blue Willow, it wasn’t fair to put me on again. But he put my name at the bottom of the list and even though it was my inclination to leave right then and there, I stuck around till the bitter end, and was rewarded for my persistence. He called me up to the stage saying I would nag him to death if he didn’t. I played my “TV Blues” and he got a kick out of it and invited me to come back for the taping.

The next Monday, I came back to play. As the song goes “Those lights don’t make me nervous, I can really take the heat. . .”, but I was getting a little anxious by the time Danny called me to the stage. The talent that night was pretty hot, even the harp player (and I don’t mean harmonica, or even a Celtic Harp. This was a lady playing the blues on an orchestral harp). Anyway, I had this bright idea that I would get some audience participation at the end of my song. Ever try to get participation from a blues-jam audience? I saw the TV director for Rogers at a party a few weeks later and he said “Sorry, we weren’t able to use your song. . . it sort of fell apart in the middle”. Oh well. I saw my appearance with Blue Willow from the previous week and the production values are fine. Interesting to note that the night we were on TV was the first Friday night we didn’t have a gig. We got fired because some regular at the club (probably one with a big tab) complained that he was sick of hearing the same songs.