Gracey

Earlier this week I learned that my friend, Joe Gracey, lost his battle with cancer and I wept. It was not entirely unexpected. It was his third strike. I had wished him happy birthday on Monday and on Wednesday he was gone. I scrolled through his birthday wishes on Facebook. They went straight from belated wishes on Tuesday evening to condolences on Wednesday. You should read the article linked HERE before going on. It is from September as Joe was going through his last rounds of treatment in Houston.

I first encountered Joe around 1998. His wife, Kimmie Rhodes, had just released her compilation album, “Jackalopes, Moons and Angels”, on their own label. I reached out to Joe in order to get stock for Village Records and over the course of several emails made the arrangements and developed a rapport. I knew nothing about Joe’s background at all. I remember mentioning this to my friend, Jack, who quickly filled me in. If you read the attached article you will see that he was instrumental in promoting what would become known as “progressive country” when he was a deejay at KOKE in Austin. Later he was the first talent coordinator for the PBS program “Live From Austin City Limits”. I don’t know if Austin would be the music center it is without Gracey, and perhaps South By Southwest might not have come to be. I also learned the he was the producer of my favourite Willie Nelson album, “Spirit”, in 1996. Had I known all these things I might have been a bit intimidated to even approach him.

Later that summer Toni and I went to Twangfest 2 in St. Louis. It was three consecutive nights of music with five bands playing one hour sets each night at Off Broadway. Kimmie Rhodes was on the lineup for the final night and Joe was along playing bass in her band. Kimmie was doing a short set instore at Vintage Vinyl that afternoon. It was a great set of four songs or so. Afterwards we met Joe face to face for the first time. He had his ever present Magic Slate®. You know the little kid’s toy that you write on with a stylus and then peel up the plastic sheet to erase your scribbles and write again on the freshen “slate”. They always have some cartoon character at the top. I still remember that day it was Batman and Robin. He scribbled furiously and flipped the sheet in the blink of an eye. He gave me another box of Kimmie’s CDs to take back to Kansas City for the store. Later we reconnected at the show. After their great set the crowd gathered around the couple. Everyone in the room knew Joe and he knew them. Things settled down for the remaining two sets and suddenly Joe came over to where I was seated and sidled up next to me. He pulled out his slate and we jotted notes silently back and forth the rest of the evening while the music played. We were laughing and joking without disturbing anyone around us.

We stayed in touch over the years with the email chatter increasing whenever there was a new release from Kimmie. But it was always more than just business. He would always interject some extra bit. Sometimes it would be a chilli recipe. Cooking was a huge passion. We would also discuss our love for wine, our common desire to one day retire to France, and our shared knowledge that there was only one car on the road that was worth owning, the Miata. We both loved our Mazdas. Driving them with the top down was like nothing else that was a place where disabilities did not exist for the moment.

He also shared stories. My favourite involved Stevie Ray Vaughan. Joe was producing SRV’s first album (which to this day remains unreleased) in his Electric Graceyland Recording Studio. I don’t recall the exact details but at some point Stevie disappeared for a few days. I think there were some drugs or other intoxicants involved. Up to this point he was dressing much the same as his fellow Austin musicians and pretty much blending in with the scene. However, when he resurfaced he had “become” the Stevie Ray Vaughan we eventually came to know, the hat and all the draping clothing, buckles and bangles. I don’t believe any explanation was ever offered. It almost seems like one of those fantastic superhero origin stories complete with the costume.
Out next meeting took place in London 2008. We had tickets to see Emmylou Harris the Hammersmith Odeon. When I found out that Kimmie was the opening act I immediately fired off an email to Joe to see if we could hook up. Their schedule was extremely tight but we were able to arrange to get together backstage after the concert. It took a little while but we finally managed to get to the meet and greet area. I looked around but no Gracey to be seen. I tracked down their road manager and she told me he was down in lobby looking for us! She quickly found him and we finally had our reunion half way across the world. We were there ostensibly to meet Emmylou but all I cared about then was reconnecting with Joe and Kimmie. Again the worn Magic Slate was getting a big workout. We were comparing notes on our UK travels. I told him about our following week when we would be renting a car and driving in Northern Scotland. Joe was giving me tips on how to maneuver through the roundabouts. I can still see his crazy diagram on his slate with the curved arrows going off every which way.

There we were: the guy who couldn’t talk and the guy who couldn’t walk, betrayed by our bodies, living some great adventures and interacting. This was all due to the worlds opened up to both of us by the internet and email. But even before that Joe had given me the inspiration to get out and not be embarrassed and self conscious about not being able to do all the things that were once taken for granted. He never let his illnesses define him. There are workarounds. It would so much easier to give up, stay in the comfort zone, stop pushing the envelope, and cave in to the frustrations of no longer doing things like everyone else. I think of all the experiences I have had the last few years and I could have easily missed out on all of them if I had not had Gracey’s example to get me to the right frame of mind to successfully ignore what I can’t do and to focus on what I can do.

ADDENDUM:
The KOKE FM studios were renamed the “Joe Gracey Memorial Broadcast Radio Studios” Thursday, August 2, 2012.

Grandpa's 1936 Indian

This is a photo I took at Boxhill in Surrey UK. Part of the song takes place here. It is still a biker hangout and lover's lane.

One of my favourite songs is Richard Thompson’s “1952 Vincent Black Lightning”. It is a tragic romance story song that revolves around the singer’s love for both his redheaded girlfriend and also that of his motorcycle. Whenever I hear the song I think of my Canadian grandparents for a couple of different reasons. They first met in the 1930s when she asked him to give her a ride on his motorcycle. The characters in the song, James and Molly, met in a similar way when she gets a ride on his Vincent motorcycle. The song contains a line about the superiority of the Vincent over other makes, Nortons, Indians, or Greeves, won’t do. Grandpa’s motorcycle was an Indian and he would often fondly reminisce about it thirty or forty years later.

The week before his wedding my grandfather had a minor accident with his bike. Nothing serious, he was dinged up but no broken bones and nothing so bad as to postpone his marriage. However, his new bride insisted that he get rid of the Indian immediately. The motorcycle must have been hard for Grandpa to part with. I am sure it was his first vehicle and it surely represented some incredible freedom for a young man in the midst of the Great Depression. He managed to hold a job the whole time and he was helping to support his mother and younger siblings since his father had abandoned the family. Somehow he still managed to put away enough to buy the Indian. However, it must not have been the most practical mode of transportation in Montreal winters.

In the late 1960s Grandpa bought a brand new 307 Camaro and drove it for twenty years. I guess he never completely got over his love for sporty machines.

This is not a photo of his bike but it is a restoration of one from that era.

Grigsbys' Visit

This is our lunchtime view of Niagara Falls from the restaurant.

Keith and Barb at a restaurant just off Yonge Street after a long day of sightseeing.
They look like they are ready for more.

That is the Holiday Inn on the right and our apartment building on the left.
Temporarily we were neighbours once again.

Wow! Here it is November and I am just now getting around to writing about our visitors from September! No excuses.

Barb and Keith were great neighbours from our Lake Quivira days. They have been practically members of our extended Lavery family for a very long time. Barb went to Bishop Miege High School with my youngest aunt, Theresa Boydston, and they have maintained their friendship over the years. In addition Barb and Keith lived a couple of doors over from my Uncle Frank and Aunt Ann for a very long time and were frequently included in many family parties. They moved to Quivira a couple of years after we did and Keith and I immediately started golfing together on a weekly basis. It worked out well as we both had pretty high handicaps but we shared a tremendous enthusiasm for playing. We were also both flexible enough to call each other up at the last minute and arrange to be teeing up on the course in thirty minutes or so.

The Grigsbys stayed at the Holiday Inn immediately to the east of our building. This was incredibly handy for our daily excursions. Keith could still get his morning jogging in and still be ready to roll when the rest of us got our acts together. Barb and Toni had put their heads together for an extremely full itinerary for the week. It was a nice mix of places we had been to before and others that we had not experienced yet.

We were lucky to have dry weather that was just a touch on the warm side so we wound up going on foot the whole time. A walking tour of the University of Toronto campus was first. From there we went on up to Bloor and the Royal Ontario Museum or ROM. We spent most of the day there and hardly saw half of the exhibits. Since we were in the area I suggested that Barb, who is a librarian at the Johnson County Central Resource Library that we go a couple of blocks over to see the Toronto Reference Library. Barb managed to get a behind doors tour and learned that this is the second busiest reference library in the world. When she was asked to guess the busiest library Barb did not hesitate to say Hong Kong and of course she was correct as she has also been to that location.

We rented a car one day and returned to Niagara Falls. Although Toni had been there just a few weeks earlier she was just as entranced as the rest of the group. Again, on the way back we detoured to Niagara on the Lake where we had drinks at the Cork Winebar and later for dinner went to The Shaw Café where Keith and I both had fish and chips. We agreed it was the best either of us ever tasted. You should check the link to see how beautiful this place is.

We spent most of another day returning to Toronto Islands to see the cottages and to finally check out The Rectory Café on Wards Island where we enjoyed the back patio setting.

No trip would be complete without the big splurge dining experience. For us this time it was Canoe. We had heard great things about it and we knew the view would be spectacular as it is situated some 50+ floors up at the top of one the downtown bank buildings. From there you can see most of the western end of Lake Ontario and the CN Tower looks like you could just reach out and touch it.

More photos: HERE

It was over four years ago that Toni and I shared our long term plan with the Grigsbys. That was our plan of selling our house and moving to Canada. They were the very first people we told about it so it only seems fitting that they should also be our first visitors from the States and in a way complete the circle.

Our Streetcar

There are lots of streetcars in Toronto but this, the Queen Street or the 501, is ours. It is located just two streets to our north and I can see it from my office window. It is clunky, funky, antiquated, and slow but it works...most of the time.

This video and a few others are linked HERE.

Paul Kelly M-Z

The stage is set for night two.

I forgot to mention something from the first night. We exchanged email addresses with a couple of people around us. One guy was jotting down the setlist as Paul played the songs and agreed to send them to me. Another woman who we let squeeze between our barstools was taking photos and agreed to send those to us as well. When I got home that night I read the introduction from the book. It describes how the A to Z shows came about and how the audience reacted and behaved. What he described was exactly what we just witnessed…including the exchanging of email addresses!!

When we arrived at The Dakota Tavern for night two we jumped right up to the queue and found that we were right behind Loren, the woman with the camera the night before. Then up from behind came Jim, the man taking down the setlist from Friday. We had plenty of conversation to pass the time waiting for the door to open. It felt just like a party. Someone pointed behind the queue to the intersection of Dundas and Ossington and we all turned to see Paul Kelly scurrying away to beat the traffic light by himself. Something that is probably a little more difficult for him in Australia.

Our seats this night were nearly the same as before, just a couple spots closer to the back putting our vantage just bit to the side of the stage. Again we were excited and again we were not disappointed. This is not surprising since nearly every one of these songs is a ‘hit’ in our household. Two nights totalling around sixty songs, most of which are emotionally charged, left us feeling like we had been through a couple of marathons. We loved every minute and we are already looking forward to another chance to see him again in the future.





Meet Me In The Middle Of The Air (solo, a capella, single note from the piano for pitch)

Midnight Rain

No You

Nukkanya

Oldest Story in the Book

Other People's Houses

Pretty Place

The Ballad of Queenie and Rover

Randwick Bells

Saturday Night and Sunday Morning

The Song of the Old Rake

INTERMISSION

Sweet Guy

Sydney From a 747

They Thought I Was Asleep

Thoughts in the Middle of the Night

To Her Door

Until Death Do Them Part

"V" -- "I have not written a V song, so Dan will entertain you"

When I First Met Your Ma

Wintercoat

X (rated) Outta My Head

You Can Put Your Shoes Under My Bed (solo, piano and harmonica; "This piano is more out of tune tonight than it was yesterday")

You're 39, You're Beautiful, and You're Mine

Zoe

ENCORES:

You Can't Take It With You

You're So Fine

Your Little Sister (Is A Big Girl Now)

From Little Things Big Things Grow

SECOND ENCORE

Summer Rain

Paul Kelly A-L

We were told the doors would open at six for the seven o’clock show. We got there about a half hour early and there were only five or six people ahead of us in the queue standing in the light rain. It was a friendly lot and we all exchanged Paul Kelly stories while we waited. Finally the doors opened right on time. Since we had been to the venue a couple of times before we knew exactly where we wanted to sit and had prearranged our game plan to get our favourite spot. While I paid the admission at the door Toni scurried down the stairs and straight to the bar securing our vantage point while others sort of floundered among the tables and chairs.

Now you may be wondering why we so intent on getting to both of these shows on back to back nights. Kelly has been putting on what he calls “A-Z” concerts for a few years now. They are career retrospectives in which he performs songs from his large catalogue in alphabetical order. At least one song for each letter. No songs are repeated on the two nights and they are performed semi-acoustic as a duo, Paul and his nephew Dan Kelly, playing all the guitars, harmonica, and piano. His goal is to perform the songs as close to the original demo form as possible.

As we waited for the show to start we quickly struck up conversations with people on either side of us at the bar. One of them had travelled from Ann Arbor and was meeting people from Montreal and West Virginia. Another couple had come in from Kingston, Ontario. Later, during the intermission I met a young woman who was obviously Australian. I knew she couldn’t have travelled that far. It turned out she had just moved to Toronto four months earlier. She had seen Paul Kelly perform this series a few times before moving however it was at arenas and she paid $70 per ticket!

As soon as Paul took the stage it was clear we were in for something special. For one thing they did not oversell it and there was no one standing in front of us. The stage was really just a six inch raised platform and Kelly was no more than fifteen feet from us. The sound was perfect for the room. The best part of the setting was the audience. They were all in rapt attention. No one was speaking at all as if were in church. All this enhanced the power of the performance and the songs, all of which we all knew intimately. I cannot think of another concert where I felt like I was so in tune with the artist and the audience. It was truly a communal event.

To the side of the stage was a pile white cards with large black letter on each. He started the show with “A” on a big easel and when he moved to “B” he would change the card on the easel. On a couple of occasions he forgot to move to the next letter the audience would remind him politely between songs. We even got an extra “K” song out of the deal. He is not one to break his contract.

We bought a copy of his book, “How To Make Gravy”. It is a companion book to this concert series. In it he describes how he came to write all the songs along with snapshots of his life and career. After the show Paul came out and spent time with everyone and he signed our book, “To Bill and Toni, Kansas City Here I Come, Paul Kelly”.

All the way home in the cab we were reveling in all the great songs we had just heard and pinching ourselves when we realized that we would be back the next night to do it all over again.

Adelaide

Anastasia Changes Her Mind (a capella, solo, with hamonica breaks)

Before Too Long

Blues For Skip (haunting work from Dan)

Careless

Coma

Deeper Water (beyond great)

Down To My Soul

Dumb Things

Every Fucking City

Everything's Turning To White

Foggy Fields of France

INTERMISSION

From St. Kilda to Kings Cross

Gift That Keeps On Giving (brilliant)

God Told Me To

Hard Love

How To Make Gravy (stupendous)

I Can't Believe We Were Married

If I Could Start Today Again (could have heard a pin drop)

I Wasted Time

I Was Hoping You'd Say That (PK at ancient upright piano)

Just About To Break

Keep On Coming Back

Keep On Driving

Look So Fine, Feel So Low

ENCORE: King of Fools (yes, out of sequence, alpha-wise)

Little Decisions

Leaps and Bounds

Paul Kelly intro

I stumbled on to Paul Kelly quite by accident. In early 1987 I received a CD in the mail from one of the record labels. It contained one song each from several new artists who were scheduled to have new albums that year. Right from the start there was one song that jumped out and grabbed me. It was Kelly’s song, “Before Too Long”. To me it was reminiscent of the acoustic style of The Beatles middle period, my favourite era (think of a mash up of some songs from "Help!"). When his Gossip CD came out I was ready and I devoured it as I did with all of his subsequent albums over the years. I have never been disappointed and Paul Kelly is right at the top of my ‘desert island’ list.

In 1988 Paul Kelly and The Messengers were the opening act at an outdoor concert at Smithville Lake in support of their second US release, Under The Sun. They would never play Kansas City again. As an Australian band it was simply too costly to tour America extensively and their efforts only garnered them a limited cult fan base. Future tours got smaller and smaller hitting only the largest North American cities.

About a month ago I got an email from his new manager, John Porter. I met John in New York last year when he was managing Carrie Rodriguez. His email included Paul Kelly’s itinerary. He was hitting five cities for two nights each. L.A., Vancouver, Chicago, New York, and…Toronto! I couldn’t believe it. He was scheduled for a Friday and Saturday and only charging $15. I immediately called the venue, The Dakota Tavern, and was devastated to find that both shows were sold out! What a rollercoaster. I quickly wrote John to see if he could get me on the guest list for Saturday night. He was encouraging but couldn’t be certain for three or four days. I called the venue back and put my name on the waiting list for Friday. I was assured that it was hopeless and my only chance would be to stop by the day of the show and hope for some no shows.

By the time Friday rolled around we were still undecided on our plan of action. We had received a commitment that we were on the guest list for Saturday. It was a bit cool out and raining steadily so we were starting to lose our enthusiasm for standing in line for what was probably a fruitless venture. After much discussion that morning we were leaning toward blowing it off. Five minutes later the phone rang and it was the venue. They had some cancellations and would we want them? We were in!

to be continued...

South Of The Border

Toni got to get up close to the Falls

When Toni took this photo I was about half way across the Rainbow Bridge
America and the American Falls are on the right

When we moved from New York City to Toronto we shipped a few large boxes to ourselves using FedEx. It was a bit pricey but manageable. We had the contents list pre-approved by customs when we made our earlier apartment hunting trip. The documents were attached to the boxes as instructed and they were supposed to fly right through and be delivered to our new apartment. That did not happen and FedEx held the boxes for a week. They wanted me to come out to the depot, pick up the documents, take the papers to customs for approval and then back to FedEx in order to get my packages released for delivery. This would have racked up well over $100 in cab fares. After about four days of phone calls I was finally able to speak with a person who understood the situation and that the documents had already been stamped approved.

We still had a few more boxes in storage in Kansas City. These contained non-essential possessions, mostly photo albums and sentimental items. Wishing to avoid another potential problem with FedEx I found another option. I figured there must be a way to ship them almost to Canada and thereby eliminating the customs problem. Sure enough I found that in every border town there is some business willing to accept and store packages for Canadians and they can be picked up and brought back by car. We set up an account with one of these services in Niagara, just across the US border. By shipping to this American address and not into Canada we paid just a fraction on the shipping and the US depot only charged $23 to receive and store the boxes for up to 15 days or 30 days for just a bit more. Toni had never seen Niagara Falls and neither of us had been to the town of Niagara On The Lake so we thought we could make it into a mini vacation at the same time.

Once we confirmed the boxes were delivered we rented a car. Monday morning I went about a mile to the agency to pick it up. I can’t fully describe the odd feeling of suddenly being behind the wheel of a car and driving the streets that I know so well but only ever as a pedestrian on the sidewalk or in the crosswalks. All the landmarks were in the same places but the vantage points were way off. Even traffic lights looked different. Everything was incredibly familiar yet strange at once. I picked Toni up at the apartment door and we were on the Gardiner Expressway in minutes and on our little adventure.

Once we were out of Toronto proper it looked like any highway in North America other than the highway names. Queens this and Kings that and Winston Churchill something. The British Commonwealth influence still looms large here. As we approached the border the signs for Niagara Falls came more frequently. At the same time the signage shortened the name to simply “The Falls” and finally just “Falls”. Coming into town you instantly get that familiar feel of a resort/tourist location. I noticed some changes right off with the “Times Square” influence. A giant Hershey store right next to the obligatory Hard Rock Café for instance. Then you turn the corner and there are the Falls. It is not a gradual buildup. It is just BOOM and there they are. You see the whole thing at once as if you just pulled a blindfold off. I won’t try to describe them. I simply don’t have the words.

Now the mission part of the trip really kicked in. I had no time to stop and enjoy the view. I pulled into an area marked for buses only and dropped Toni off. We didn’t see any reason for her to go with me across the border and back. We picked an arbitrary time of an hour and a half later for me to pick her back up; a quick kiss and I was off. I should mention that neither of us have cell phones anymore so there wouldn’t be a chance to adjust our meeting place or time. We were locked in and committed.

I looked off to the distance and could see that the Rainbow Bridge leading to the border was backed up with traffic that appeared to be hardly moving if at all. I felt my US passport in my front shirt pocket, fastened the seatbelt and headed to America. I followed the circuitous signs through town to get to the bridge. When I got to the right place the traffic was backed up for blocks behind me and I needed to somehow merge over a lane to the left rather quickly. I spotted a three foot gap between two cars and suddenly just whipped the front corner of my car into that spot without thinking about it. The back car couldn’t proceed and I was in the correct lane. It is like putting your foot in a door that someone is trying to close. As I straightened into the lane and started the long crawl across the bridge I realized that I had picked up this maneuver from the NYC cab drivers. I had observed it a hundred times but never used it or even knew it was in my bag of tricks.

After thirty minutes of inching across the bridge I finally was “greeted” by the border patrolman. I was careful not to keep my passports together so I was sure to give him the US one. He was rather brusque and intimidating. He started firing off question in a staccato machine gun style faster than I could possibly even answer. Where do you live? Where are you going? What is your purpose? How long will you be? What kind of work do you do? Why do you live in Canada? Boom, boom, boom. I stayed right with the interrogation although I knew I up against a pro. He even started asking questions a second time. I realized he wasn’t even waiting for the answers nor did care about them particularly. He was observing me and my reactions trying to trip me up. I can see how difficult it would be to stick to a made up story. He checked the trunk and finally waved me through. I couldn’t be upset with him at all since he is the first line of defence keeping bad guys from doing their thing.

Picking up the boxes was pretty uneventful. They were very nice and even loaded the boxes in the backseat of my car. Five minutes later I was at the Canadian border again. I had switched out my passports again to keep things simple. This direction there was no waiting at all. In fact there more open lanes than occupied. I was asked a few questions and told to pull over to a stall to be checked out. Another agent came out and asked to see the trunk. He didn’t bother with the three large boxes in plain view practically begging to be cut open. Satisfied with the trunk I was waved back into Canada.

Mission accomplished.

I zipped over to the meeting place and there was Toni and I was only about five minutes later than the appointed time. I thought about parking the car and taking in the view properly but we have plans to be back in less than a month so I figured that could wait.

On the way back we took a detour to the town of Niagara On The Lake. It is a bit out of the way in the middle of a large wine making area but it is well worth the time. Most of the buildings date to 1850s and older. Lush flowers line all of the streets and shop windows. I grabbed a quick bite and Toni had some local wine and we really got the vacation vibe. Despite it being a touristy spot we found the prices were actually much more reasonable than what we find in Toronto. We checked out the shops for a couple of hours and started back home. On the way out of town we came upon a small lookout point and saw the Toronto skyline from across the lake.

This is a typical restaurant in Niagara On The Lake at the corner of Queen and Victoria Streets

The Toronto skyline from about 45 miles away

MORE PHOTOS HERE