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About a week before May 28th, 2022 I was attending our neighbourhood Sunday afternoon drinking session when one of the attendees mentioned that a singer named Sherry Ryan was going to be playing in Freshwater the following weekend and perhaps m’lady and I should go. On my next duck home to refill my boots I did a quick youtube search and listened to a song. It sounded like female-fronted new country to me and aside from some slippery slickery pedal steel playing I wasn’t very interested. Sure, if she was going to have a band with her – and especially that pedal steel player – I’d be almost excited about the show, but as it was I felt like even sitting on the fence was being optimistic.
However m’lady had other ideas and without listening to a note she went to the gas station in Carbonear and bought us a couple of tickets. Then she suggested we kick off the evening with dinner at Route 66 along the way and just like that a night was planned.
It was our first time at Route 66, a small ’50’s-themed diner-ish restaurant on Carbonear’s main drag. The food was okay and the service was sub-par, as it is at most places we go to in Newfoundland. A quick summary: M’lady ordered a Jack & Coke and the waiter came back saying they were out of JD, would she like a Wiser’s instead? Wiser’s isn’t bourbon*. She took it, I had a coffee. Our food took forever (we were one of just three tables occupied in the place) and my burger arrived a good six or seven minutes before her fish and chips. My fries were cold while her fish was piping hot, which tells me the cook didn’t start her meal until mine was done. When the food did arrive our drinks were empty but dude never refilled my coffee nor did he ask m’lady if she wanted another non-bourbon. Oh, and she also ordered hot wings off the starter menu but they arrived with her meal, and they were barbecue wings.
(The bar did have live music though, a lady playing acoustic guitar and singing cover songs by artists like John Prine, Tracy Chapman, and Lucinda Williams. She was quite good, and mercifully not playing along to “tracks”, an unfortunate habit I see all the time out here where the “live” music is often a guy strumming along to karaoke tapes. My gawd, I hate it so much.)
The service wasn’t a big deal though; we’re used to it. As a matter of fact we even have a phrase for the standard Newfoundland lack of attention to detail: we call it “fast & loose”. Care for another example? Just check out the intricate care that went into cutting the tickets to the show I’m about to tell you about. And if you cared to look a little closer you might also notice that there is no mention on the stub of where in Freshwater the show was taking place. Fast & loose.
Luckily towns around here are small. Like most communities, Freshwater only seems to have one road in and the same road out so we simply drove it until we found a building that had several cars parked outside. The strategy almost landed us at a small house party which probably would have been just fine but we ended up at the community centre, which turned out to be the right place.
Inside were about forty people sitting in folding chairs around folding tables facing a small stage. And on that stage was a…pedal steel guitar! As I joined our friends at one of the tables the steel player was warming up and he was great. Oh, I was so excited! Then right on time – which is curiously also the habit ’round these parts – Sherry Ryan started her set. She didn’t have her band with her but she had brought a heck of a sideman in Lucas Rose. He started and ended the night on mandolin and spent the whole middle on the pedal steel. The guy had a great tone and feel on the mando, he was a heck of a steel player, and his backup harmonies were awesome. I spent the evening locked on him.
Not that Sherry Ryan didn’t deserve attention. She was way, way, way better than I was expecting. She wrote very pleasant songs and sang them with a great voice. She had a good banter (though she had a habit of giving away the good parts of the song before she played it) and has obviously been doing this for a while. She did mostly original material with a Gillian Welch song and a couple of local tunes thrown in the mix. In all it was a really good night out.
And the crowd! Silent and attentive from the first note and lots of clapping and respect in all the right places; I give them full marks. Sure, Newfoundlanders might not churn out the greatest waiters in the world but in my experience they have the best audiences. The organizer got up between sets and announced a handful of other shows they had booked for the summer and they all sounded interesting; I was very pleased to add my name to their mailing list at the end of the night. Heck, now that I know where the place is…
A final note: though it’s a touch disappointing that the venue isn’t licensed (heck, even water and soda was only available at setbreak) it’s probably a good thing. That one road in and out of Freshwater is a narrow winding strip that hugs the rocky cliffs and just dares you to miss a turn. They were pretty fast & loose when it came to lighting or signage along those curves so it’s a sober road best travelled.
*Okay, okay…I know that Jack Daniel’s is officially “Tennessee whiskey” and that the word “bourbon” doesn’t appear anywhere on the bottle but c’mon, if someone wants JD they are essentially looking for bourbon, right?
Todd Man Out 