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On October 21st, 2023 I went to the Freshwater Community Centre to see one of the small concerts that I occasionally find on offer there. I believe this was my third time seeing a show there and it was by far the best.
Just like the last couple of times I was there, the musicians were hitherto completely unknown to me. My friend Maureen filled me in (somewhat) during the dark, stormy drive to the venue. “Glen Tilley is a guitar player and he works for the CBC in St. John’s,” she told me, “but I only know Bill Rose as a visual artist, and he’s fantastic.”
I just now took a peek online and yeah, when you google Bill Rose nothing at all comes up about music but wow, he makes some nifty art. Portraits made from painted pennies, blocks of colour that magically transform into cityscapes, celebrities, and cereal boxes, and all of it created using some sort of grid or quasi-pointillism style. But you know what? Bill Rose can really play the guitar too.
Clearly an aficionado of surf music, Bill also steered his all-clean, reverb-drenched Stratocaster through a few jazzy neighbourhoods, lots of ’50’s-style chordal-based solos, as well as a beautiful open-A based Cuban instrumental that riveted me.
But here’s the thing. Bill looked almost exactly like my late friend Bradm. Tall and lanky with a big bushy beard, jeans hiked up high and kept there with a belt, and he was even wearing Converse hi-top sneakers, just like Bradm always did. If he had long scraggly hair and wore a t-shirt tucked into his pants I would’ve been forced to believe in reincarnation. And Bradm played guitar too, but not like Bill Rose did.
It was very distracting, with a thick dash of heartwarming melancholy.
While Bill Rose led a bunch of instrumental songs, it was the storytelling and placid singing of Glen Tilley (who was also a very solid rhythm guitar player) that made up the bulk of the show (though my eyes were pretty much locked on Bradm’s Doppelgänger throughout).
And a good show it was too. Two nice, long sets peppered with songs by John Prine, Ian Tyson, Ron Hynes, Randy Newman and so many other familiar names, but it wasn’t until the final song of the evening that I heard something I recognized* (Runaway by Del Shannon). After the encore I thanked both musicians for delivering such a great pile of music, but really I was looking to find out the title of that Cuban song (Havana’s Midnight by The Mavericks) which I am going to learn how to play as soon as I type this final word**.
*Oops, that’s not true. I also recognized Walk, Don’t Run by The Ventures – everyone knows that one whether they can name it or not – and I Still Miss Someone by Johnny Cash, which I learned for a gig a year earlier.
**edit to add: I did indeed learn it and I still play it all the time.
Todd Man Out 