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On May 13th, 2023 i departed for Town at the unheard-of late hour of 7:30pm. In between bouts of using guitar practise as an excuse to put off gardening and using gardening to put off practising guitar I was killing time flipping off the internet when I came across a show announcement from The Ship, one of St. John’s most iconic off-George live music venues. The listing caught my eye because it featured a picture of a beautiful Tele and because it was titled “Tele-bration: a Celebration of the Iconic Fender Telecaster”. I checked the fine print and saw that country-twang guitar-slinging local hero Craig Young was heading the lineup along with a pair of other guitar players and, presumably, a band. The ad said that the show would feature Tele-driven songs, including material from “Eric Clapton, Mark Knopfler, Albert Lee, Jimmy Page, Robbie Robertson, and more…”
Never mind that I’m no huge fan of Clapton, or that Jimmy Page famously played a Les Paul, or that Mark Knopfler is probably best known as a Strat player, and Robbie Robertson is “Tele-driven”? These were mere details. The meat and potatoes was that the show was dedicated to my personal instrument of choice and more particularly it featured one of my favourite local musicians (by “local” I mean: on the island of Newfoundland) so the last-minute decision to drive to St. John’s was an easy one, and as an added bonus m’lady readily agreed to come along.
(This was our second spur-of-the-moment trip into Town in a week [the previous Sunday we had driven in for an afternoon of live jazz at Bannerman Brewery]. This was a direct result of our newest acquisition: a fully electric car. Once we could drive without polluting the air or paying for gas* we started driving a whole lot more. Which was part of the plan, really.)
I’m surprised that this was our first time setting foot in The Ship, but it was. I was quite sure that I had been to the iconic St. John’s venue before and m’lady thought the same, but as soon as we walked inside we knew that we hadn’t. The place was much smaller than I’d imagined it, with a dozen tables facing a corner stage and a bar tucked away to the right.
I was also surprised that the soundguy was blaring the Grateful Dead’s siriusxm channel through the PA when we walked in, allowing us to pick up the end of Friend of the Devil from Chicago ’77 that we had been listening to in the car. I’m glad we had good music to listen to. The show had been advertised as running from 9pm-11:45 and having witnessed several Newfoundland shows that started bang-on time we’d arrived before nine o’clock, only to have the show not begin until about 10:30 or so. But like I say, dude was cranking the Dead’s final-ever show at the Auditorium Theatre so it was easy to be patient. I was wearing my GD hoodie and everything.
Eventually we saw Craig show up with his guitar on his back. A half-hour later another guitar player (Chad Murphy) arrived in similar fashion, then the drummer and the bass player, and finally the third guitarist (Chris LeDrew). We could see them get together for a little pow-wow just through the kitchen doors before they stepped on stage and started the show with Lay Down Sally, which is about as good of a Clapton co-write as you’re gonna find (does Clapton have sole writing credit on anything?). It was immediately clear that yeah, these three Tele-punchers could play.
Chris on stage right would have been the undeniable focus had he been playing with pretty much anyone else. But as slick as he was, he was clearly overshadowed by the monstrous Craig Young in the middle and this Chad Murphy guy on Craig’s left.
Craig was already a hotshot player when he moved to Nashville for more than a decade and solidified his country pickin’ chops. Since returning to Newfoundland he finds himself on any gig that requires a genuinely jaw-dropping guitarist and he was indeed jaw-dropping again at this show, from his first rapid-fire open-string b9-riddled solo in the aforementioned Lay Down Sally all the way to his brilliant, shimmering, and very tasty solo that ate up most of the night-ending Sultans of Swing.
Gawd, Craig is just sooo good. Fine singer too, taking lead vocals on songs like Honky Tonk Blues by Hank Williams or Set Me Up off the first Dire Straits record. But I gotta say, I wasn’t prepared to have my attention so absorbed by someone else on the stage. In this case that someone else was Chad Murphy.
Like, what a player. So fluid, so relaxed, so creative. This Murphy guy just tore it up on every song. He played slide on one or two and I was further impressed when he played the Dire Straits tunes without a pick, just like Mark Knopfler does. And the guy is a great singer too.
During the first set Craig was tearing through a mind-bending solo from one of the several Albert Lee songs that they played (or was this when they played Chet Atkins’ version of Orange Blossom Special? Regardless…) and Chad was holding down a machine-gun rhythm part behind him when suddenly Chad leapt in and doubled the solo for about five seconds before slipping effortlessly back into the rhythm part. But the bit that stands out in my mind is how Murphy’s eyes turned sideways and locked in with Craig’s eyes as he did it, not even glancing down at his impossibly blurred fingers during the entire foray.
Dude was good, man.
When they closed the first set with Country Boy at Heart they announced that it was the end of the Tele-bration, and that the second set would be mostly rock covers. With the late start and a long, slow drive home awaiting I asked m’lady if she wanted to stick around. “Of course!” she exclaimed, without a moment’s hesitation. No problem with me.
And though the second set wasn’t as breathlessly astounding as the first set, it was still great. La Grange, Don’t Let Me Down, I Know a Little…all of it super-solid and all of it riddled with delicious guitar work.
Oh, did I mention that the bass player and the drummer were both really, really great? The bass player took just one single solo in the night and it was drop-dead fantastic. Even Craig was impressed, raising his eyebrows and staring him down the whole time. And man, the drummer! Snappy and solid and pretty much perfect all-around. Was his name Mike Bruschi? I think he’s a lefty but he plays a right-handed kit. Anyways, if not for my extreme guitar bias being hung out to dry by Craig and Chad (and to be fair: Chris, especially his vocals and pedal steel playing) I would have been expounding on the rhythm section for this entire missive.
But distracted I was, and blissfully so. It was so great to be genuinely enthralled by local live music in a cool little bar; it had been a while. I suspect it won’t be so long before the next time.
*Yes, electricity does cost money, but only a small fraction in comparison to gas. I was surprised to discover that EV’s are significantly more efficient in stop-and-start situations than they are when driving on the highway but even still, a 250kms return trip along the Trans-Canada Highway from my house to St. John’s only costs about $8 in electricity compared to $40+ in our old gas-powered Ford Escape, not to mention oil (EV’s don’t use oil). And get this: There are tons of free EV Level 2 charging stations out there. Yes, I said “free”. In fact, there’s a charging station with two free chargers right on Duckworth Street just a couple of hundred metres up from The Ship. And not only does it offer free charging, the two spots are reserved for electric vehicles only; no gas guzzlers allowed, so the spots are always available, even when Duckworth Street is totally blocked. On this night we parked there and by the time the show was over our Chevy Bolt was 100% fully charged up. Saved us $4.
Todd Man Out 