Posted by 
On June 24th, 2017 I had a somewhat torturous choice to make, as the Ottawa Jazz Festival was presenting two simultaneous shows that I was very interested in attending. Ladies and gentlemen, in this corner (aka inside the NAC theatre) stood a supergroup of knockout jazz musicians performing under the moniker Hudson, a group that featured guitar great John Scofield alongside bandleader and keyboard improviser extraordinaire John Medeski, the inimitable Jack DeJohnette on drums, and newcomer (to me, at least) Larry Grenadier on bass. To say that this would be one of the best musical shows of the 2017 jazzfest was a slam-dunk of a statement; the lineup was just too heavy to go wrong. These guys would undoubtedly deliver a show that was nothing short of drop-dead fantastic.
And standing in the other corner, weighing in at forty years past his prime, ladies and gentlemen I give you…Kenny Rogers.
Yeah, Kenny Rogers. You’ll never guess which show all my friends were going to.
Why would I even have to pause for a moment when given the option between some of the biggest names in jazz and the laid-back king of plastic surgery? Because I have an unhealthy servitude towards nostalgia, that’s why.
When I was a kid my grandparents had a boarder living upstairs named Violet (my grandfather only and exclusively referred to her as “Dogsh*t”, and I’ve heard he occasionally even used the term affectionately). Violet was so omnipresent that it was only as an adult that I figured out that she wasn’t actually a relative of ours, but that said I never knew much about her other than the fact that she worked at the hospital and that she was quite into a group called The First Edition; she had all of their 8-tracks.
The First Edition was fronted by Kenny Rogers; it was them that released Ruby, Don’t Take Your Love to Town and Reuben James, among others. At the time I was much too young to adequately select who was supposed to be feeding me my musical influences so when Mr. Rogers left The First Edition and went solo in 1976 I was already actively following his career. Maybe more than I should have been.
And then when those incredible story-songs like The Gambler and Coward of the County came out – basically full-feature films compacted into four-minute pop songs – the dozen-year-old-me was hooked. By this time my asthetic was primed and ready to accept everything from the super-melodic to the super-cheesy: Lucille, Don’t Fall In Love With a Dreamer, Lady, Daytime Friends, You Decorated My Life, We’ve Got Tonight, She Believes in Me, Islands in the Stream…I got so sucked in that I felt like Kenny Rogers was a grey-bearded American John Lennon or something.
So really, at jazzfest there was no choice to make. Only the question as to whether or not my true musical leanings would win out over decades of thickly steeped child-like nostalgia. They didn’t, and so I stood alone in the crowded field and watched as Kenny Rogers did what he spent his life doing.
And you know, it was a pretty good show. I barely thought about the concert I was missing. Though I sure heard about it at the Late Night Tent, where the Lemon Bucket Orchestra served as a sonic backdrop to an unending lineup of friends asking me where I had been for the Hudson concert before gasping with astonishment (and sadness?) when they found out the truth and telling me in no uncertain terms about the show-of-shows that I had missed.
And they were right, of course. But you know what I didn’t miss?
Kenny freakin’ Rogers.
Todd Man Out 