Rose's Cantina

Second excerpt from my book Distressed Pavement, To Ottawa With Love, due out this fall. The Saturday after the Earth swallowed Madawaska Joe whole, his fellow musicians and friends gathered at Irene’s for a celebration of his life and legend.    The Mayor was there to accept good wishes after the city quietly paid for his funeral and paid out a tidy sum that would take care of Joe’s ex-wife who had threatened to sue. Manon Giroux hadn’t laid eyes on her husband of thirty years in more than a decade, not since they buried Joe’s eldest son after he succumbed to a heroin habit. But here she was, not shy to come forward to claim the $100,000.   “I deserve that money for what he put me through,” she told Irene as she dug into a feed of hot wings at Joe’s wake. “He was a son-of-a-bitch, and I don’t care he’s gone.”   Many in the crowd were not aware that Joe was even married. He wasn’t of course,  married , except on paper. Joe had been a terrible husband who often l...

photos courtesy of Deb Doucette In 1995, Jed Rached had a dream. He wanted to put together a band, but not any band. He envisioned a big hall filled with horns, keys, flaming guitars, and ear-rattling percussion. Sitting quietly onstage with a couple of sidemen wailing the same old blues tunes over and over just wasn't his style. Jed Rached wasn't just a blues guy. He was a showman . He talked his idea over with a friend who worked at a local arts newspaper, The Xpress, who listened seriously. "All you have to do is arranged the gig," the friend said. "The musicians will follow." So Jed set a date and called up a couple of well known bands, The Hammerheads and the Black Boot Trio. They agreed to let Jed and his band, Rocket Rached and the Fat City Four, warm up for them. It was all arranged. Trouble was, the band in his head had never played in front of an audience before. So he called in a favour at Barrymore's , Ottawa's legendary ...

For the past two weeks, I've been thinking about Gord Rhodes, a man best described as a visionary and legend of the Ottawa music scene. In recent months, Gord has been spit polishing his collection of rock and roll memorabilia and posting the pictures on his Original Barrymore's Facebook site. I was trying to get hold of him to say that Scott and I wanted to help him put together a documentary. We wanted to interview him about the grand old days of Barrymore's. Never heard from him. Today, I heard the news, oh boy. Gord had entered the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in the sky. God bless him. I  knew Gord back in the last 70s, when I was a little girl reporter who covered the music scene for the Ottawa Citizen . I got to know him and his business partner, the brawny, colorful Sonny Thomson when they ran Barrymore's and brought some of the greatest acts to the former strip club. Nobody knew how they got B.B. King, or U2 to come to the shabby theatre. I was j...