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On September 12th, 2023 I had the great, great pleasure of see the wonderful Daniel Lanois at the Fredericton Playhouse. It was more than just a concert; it was a release…a purge, a cleanse, a rapture.
It was opening night of the Harvest Festival, a well-stacked six-ish day-long annual musical event that I was attending for the very first time*. When the lineup was announced I suddenly decided the time was ripe to book a family visit in Moncton, coupled with a tidy two-day side trip to Fredericton. So I did.
When the plane landed for a planned fifteen-minute stopover in Deer Lake we were told that one of the tires had gone flat and we would be delayed while the mechanics replaced it. NASCAR they aren’t; it took three-and-a-half hours. Unfortunately, at some point during the delay my mother – who was visiting a friend before meeting me at the Moncton airport – suffered an aneurysm out-of-the-blue (which is probably par for the course when it comes to aneurysms). So when I finally emerged from the YQM terminal I was surprised to be met not by my mom, but by her partner Bill. We went straight to the hospital.
Mom was definitely not fine, but not dire enough for emergency surgery. I hunkered down at my brother’s house for the duration and went to see her in the hospital every day, staying long enough for my mother to insist that I take her car to Fredericton for the two nights as planned and leave her the hell alone, so I did.
Anything to keep mom happy.
And so it was with scattered emotions and a fragile psyche that I drove myself to Fredericton and checked in to a sad-sack Daze Inn at the top of the hill next to the Hilltop. I disappointed my stomach with a definitely not-deluxe hot chicken sandwich from the Deluxe next to the hotel and then drove myself down to the venue. Along the way I passed a Papa John’s that I’m sure used to be an independent pizza joint with a handful of tables and a sit-down Robotron video game. That’s where I fell in love when I was sixteen years old.
“Well,” I said to myself, “that room that I was renting must have been around here somewhere…” and then bam! There it was: Victoria Street. I’d moved there after staying the maximum allowable time at the homeless shelter behind the hospital (had that been four weeks or six?). I only lived on Victoria Street for what, maybe two months? I think it cost me $50 a week, maybe $60 to rent one of the bedrooms in an older lady’s house. I don’t remember how I got the money to pay her but I did, though when I left (suddenly and unannounced) to move to Ontario with my girl I ran out on what I suspect was a sizeable long-distance phone bill.
Oh, to have the past back within my grasp so I could right the many wrongs. But alas, I am left to merely write the wrongs.
I parked mom’s car directly behind the Fredericton Playhouse and discovered that they hadn’t even opened the doors yet, so I took a stroll down King Street, which in this case was also known as Memory Lane.
There was Tony’s Music Box, where I bought my first bass. It was a Yamaha RBX200, a $200 instrument that I played about 200 gigs on before it was stolen from a rehearsal space in Ottawa three years later (along with two more expensive basses and a pretty good amp too). There was the spot where a buddy convinced me almost forty years earlier that it was no big deal to walk across the newly-frozen St. John River to get to a party in Fredericton North. It makes my mind reel wondering how we didn’t die that night. And there was the old hospital, and behind it the homeless shelter I stayed at, which still seemed to be operating. I had gone from this homeless shelter to another one north of Toronto before ultimately living in a park in the middle of Newmarket with my girl and our cat. I can’t imagine how much my mother worried about me.
Gosh, that had been so long ago. I turned back towards the theatre and was shocked at how quickly I arrived at the door, my wandering mind suddenly thrust back into the 21st Century. Back to worrying about my mom.
Luckily I had a show to attend; I wasn’t at all in the right frame of mind for getting wrapped up in my own thoughts. I needed a distraction, and luckily the distraction on hand was none other than the wonderful, ethereal Daniel Lanois.
I hadn’t really thought about what sort of ensemble Dan was going to have with him but I must have assumed he was going to perform solo because when I took my seat and saw that there was a sideways-facing drum kit and a bass rig on stage my heart fluttered with the hopeful joy that my favourite drummer Brian Blade might be on the gig. He wasn’t, but I would have to wait another hour before I found out.
A trio calling themselves Pallmer opened the show, putting in a sold forty-five minutes of rather wonderful, ethereal music of their own before an enthusiastic and appreciative crowd. Pallmer featured a lead singer who also played stand-up ‘cello, a fellow to her left on subdued fiddling, and another guy to her right who kept very busy triggering marimba-like drum beats, samples, loops, and general Clockwork Orange-style subtleties and effects. He also ran his background vocals through a mass of filters that made him sound alternatively like a goat or a god. It was all a step or two above the Spa Channel and never in any way rockin’. And it was exactly what I wanted to be listening to while my scattered skandas tried to quietly sort themselves out.
Amazingly, this was Pallmer’s first ever gig; their first time performing this music beyond the confines of their basement rehearsal space. I’d say it was a pretty good start.
And speaking of good starts, when Lanois began his set he started it alone, just his voice and his gorgeous old black Les Paul standard. Both sounded perfect. Halfway through the song (Was it O Marie? I think so) Dan called for his sidemen to join him and somehow they elevated the song even higher.
He followed up with a trio of his biggest hits, all of them peppered with French lyrics: Jolie Louise, The Collection of Marie Claire, The Maker (“I was told before coming out that we should start with the French material, so my setlist is all messed up now”). All three players were riveted in the sonic moment that enveloped the stage so all of the songs veered far from the way they were originally recorded. The Maker didn’t even have that bass line in it. Heck, I thought that song couldn’t exist without that bass hook but Dan proved me wrong on this night.
Even though my seat was very close to the front, It was very much an eyes-closed sort of concert. But when I did open my eyes I was mystified by Dan’s guitar. Though he is famous (amongst Canadian guitar geeks at least) for playing a ’53 Les Paul Gold Top (a year and model that currently retails for upwards of $300,000US), there seemed to be something different about this black Les Paul he was playing, and not just the killer tone he was getting out of it.
Every few seconds Lanois seemed to be waving his right hand over the lower horn of the guitar, and this constant movement seemed to be doing something weird to the sound. I finally decided that it must be the odd infinitely-sustaining guitar that he’d loaned to the Edge for the recording of U2’s With or Without You but I just looked it up, and that guitar (of which there are only three in the world) was built out of a black Stratocaster, not a Les Paul.
But the guitar that Dan was playing was something, I’ll tell you that. I just can’t tell you exactly what. The entire concert was something. It was so fresh, so unique, so cleansing, so enriching.
And most importantly, it had been wonderfully distracting. As was the rest of my short time at the Harvest Festival.
Also rather important: my mom pulled through her difficulties without a scratch. After three weeks inside two different hospitals she came out of it totally, 100% fine. Hooray!
*No wonder: Although Fredericton is just a ninety-minute drive from where I grew up, the Harvest Festival’s inaugural year was the very same September that I left Moncton to go live in Ottawa.
Todd Man Out 