My first songs at age 17 reveal a young man’s tender heart and plaintive voice captured with an inexpensive gut string guitar, a restless soul and a Roberts 802 reel-to-reel tape recorder. The story of these, my ‘baby’ efforts as a young writer of songs, will always resonate as a special moment in time. It was the early 1970’s when family lived at the corner of Churchill & Spring in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, Canada. My artist friend, Johnny MacGillivray, pencil sketched me saying, “here’s your 1st album cover”.
And so it is.
It was also the era of Jack MacAndrew and Gene Maclellan, The Troubadours, Larry Mercey and my introduction to the business of music publishing. The beginning of my nascent career aspirations as a recording artist. In essence, the first chapter in a story of a life blessed with talent and opportunity encouraged by those who heard in me the promise and potential for a long run journey.
I am the firstborn of talented parents who sang and acted in local musical theatre. Singing and performing ran deep in the bloodline and playing guitar came naturally for me too from the very first chords I strummed at 13. It wasn’t long before I was singing and playing an electric guitar in bands.The Sunn [1969] and The East Coast Sound [1968] were two of the best young groups of their day. I loved singing and playing in both bands. The Sunn played ‘hard rock/R&B’ while The East Coast Sound played top-40 ‘pop/rock’. We were damn good for young kids and we played every week-end for two years adhering to a strong work ethic in our practices and performances which were solid beyond our tender years. Rockin’ the hot radio hits in those bands was a blast but my ’67 Fender Mustang soon gave way to singing and playing acoustic guitar alone in my room as I forged a personal vision as a singer/songwriter in the genres of Gordon Lightfoot, John Prine, Kris Kristofferson & Cat Stevens.
My weekly performances at a local coffeehouse in the fall of 1970 brought me to the attention of Charlottetown Summer Festival Theatre Producer Jack MacAndrew. Jack asked me to be part of a new music troupe he was putting together to perform for the next summer season at the Confederation Centre of the Arts. We were called The Troubadours and we were a solid hit for two consecutive seasons, 1971 & 1972.
Jack MacAndrew also played a very important role in my life and music business focus beyond The Troubadours. In the fall of ’72 he booked me to open a Maritimes tour with popular top-40 early 70’s hit makers, The Poppy Family, which was fun and successful. Jack later secured me a university tour across Canada in July ’75 and in August of that same year he spotlighted me on a co-billed, high profile concert at Confederation Centre with rising young star Gino Vanelli. Later in Toronto, when Jack was Chief of Variety Programming for the CBC, he booked me on The Tommy Hunter Show. He also bought me a good quality guitar which I could not afford to purchase at the time. Jack MacAndrew created every opportunity for me as a young upstart. No one ever did as much to promote me in those days. He managed Gene MacLellan and helped me and many others acheive goals towards artistic success.
I will always be indebted to Jack MacAndrew for his kindness and faith in me and for his guidance in helping me to overcome real difficulties in my life through those hard early years. It was essential support and it ensured that I got my shot as a professional.
Management from Jack MacAndrew was essential in providing opportunities and steady guiding support. Kindness towards me by Jack’s wonderful wife, Barbara and others was important as well. I was also fortunate to know and interact personally with the late Gene MacLellan both as a friend and as a songwriter.
Gene lived on the Island when Jack was managing his affairs through Gene’s breakout success as a writer. Gene had written Anne Murray’s big 70’s hit songs “Snowbird” and “Put Your Hand In The Hand”, both of which became major hits of the decade as many stars, including Elvis, scored big with Gene’s songs.
Gene was withdrawn and reclusive by times, but he was a friendly guy, very giving in his nature. He always encouraged my talents. He even loaned me the tape recorder I used to record my first songs. So, my thanks Gene. If it wasn’t for the cool Roberts 802 reel-to-reel tape recorder you loaned me, the songs on Early Sketches/Churchill & Spring might never have been captured for posterity. My ‘baby’ songs for sure, my first efforts, but they’re preserved because of your kind generosity.
A TIDAL WAVE OF MARITIME TALENT
By Barbara MacAndrew
A new tidal wave of Maritime talent is breaking over Canada’s music business.
The stardom trail broken by Maritimers Anne Murray, Gene MacLellan, Catherine MacKinnon, Stompin’ Tom Connors, Ken Tobias and John Allan Cameron is now being travelled by a fresh group of easterners.
Frank Trainor, Shirley Eikhard, Tom Gallant, Ryan’s Fancy, The Haggart Brothers, Kenzie McNeil, Bruce Murray, and Gary Weeks are all reaping national and international radio, stage, TV and recording reputations.
Frank Trainor’s first single “Thursday Morning, Five O’clock Rain” B/W “Here Comes Another Lonely Day” is selling well and showing unusual popularity on both A and B record sides. The handsome twenty-year-old has written 55 songs, four of which have been recorded by Canadian gold winners “The Mercey Brothers”.
Last summer Frank Trainor completed a demanding Canadian university concert tour. The young composer-entertainer emerged a polished performer with self confidence honed in many halls amid diverse audiences. Last August in concert at the Confed Centre as front act for superstar Gino Vanelli, Trainor delighted the capacity audience with his mix of thoughtful and bouncy ballads.
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A chance encounter in my hometown in the late summer of 1971 proved to be the watershed moment of my young life as a songwriter. Introduced to Larry Mercey of The Mercey Brothers after a Saturday matinee the band performed at a popular bar, I asked if I could strum a chord on his vintage Martin D-28 acoustic guitar. He said I could. So, I picked it up and played some chords and sang a few lines of 2 new songs I’d just written. When he asked me whose songs they were, I told him I had written them both.
He immediately produced his busines card and looking at me intently said, “my name is Larry Mercey and I think you’re going to write something someday that’s going to sell big”. By 1973 The Mercey Brothers were topping the charts with one of my new songs and my pro songwriting career was born. The Mercey Brothers recorded several of my songs in the 70’s. “Our Lovin’ Times” became one of the group’s most popular hits and highest charting singles of their career appearing on The Best of The Mercey Brothers. My first single as an artist was recorded and published through The Mercey Brothers studio. It was “Thursday Morning 5 O’Clock Rain”.
Listen to the studio produced record version of “Thursday Morning 5 O’Clock Rain” in the audio player above. Songs From The Rock is a compilation of 20 of my earliest acoustic guitar/vocal songs recorded live-to-tape with a few overdubs on some tracks. The track list includes a 1973 acoustic version of Thursday Morning 5 O’Clock Rain which I actually wrote on a rainy Thursday morning at 5am.
The Mercey Brothers were very influential and important to my early development as a songwriter teaching me many things about the music publishing business and about being a true professional. I have great personal memories of Larry, Lloyd & Ray from their MBS studio, as well as the famed Grenada Lounge in my hometown, The George Hamilton IV Show & The Tommy Hunter Show.
In 1973 The Mercey Brothers single of my song “Our Lovin’ Times” was a national top 10 hit at country music radio. The first 6 months of ’73 I had lived and worked in Ann Arbor, Michigan, with a side trip by Greyhound one week-end to Lower Broadway in Nashville, Tennessee. Upon returning back to Ontario and catching up with The Mercey Brothers in Elmira, I quickly settled in to a job and an apartment in nearby Kitchener so as to be able to spend time with them in the studio writing and recording. After a few months and time in Ottawa, I returned to my hometown in ’74 to set to work preparing for my eventual big move to Toronto at the end of ’75. I’m glad I waited because on May 19, 1975 Johnny Cash, June Carter and Carl Perkins performed a show in my town and I not only went to their show, I tried racing their bus back to their hotel after the show so I could meet Johnny Cash and personally present him with a copy of The Mercey Brothers RCA Victor hit single of my song.
I’d be proud pointing out the songwriter’s name between the brackets under the title on the label.
Despite running flat out beside the bus for blocks, it soon sped ahead and made it back to their hotel several minutes before I caught up to it parked in front of a hotel I knew well. I had worked there as a busboy in the dining room when I was 15. I walked into the lobby and stood at the front desk area across from the dining room which was closed for the night. I noticed the door wasn’t shut tight, but slightly ajar, which suggested it had been open but not shut completely. As I stood there, a guy who looked like a musician emerged from the dining room and paid his coffee bill at the front desk. I asked him if he was with the Cash show. He said that he was. I then asked him if Johnny Cash was in the dining room and if so, if it might be ok to give him my record.
He said, “son…you go right over to that door and walk right in…Johnny Cash is in there with June and Carl”.
June Carter Cash and Carl Perkins were facing me at the door as I walked in and they both looked at me and smiled warmly, waving me to “come in, come in”. Johnny had his back to the door facing them and he turned around as I approached their table to see who it was they were welcoming so warmly. I swear I heard him say, “Hello, I’m Johnny Cash. This is my wife June and my good friend, the legendary rockabilly cat, Carl Perkins”. Just the four of us seated around a big circular table in that dining room. Accorded privacy to enjoy their post show coffee in the hotel dining room alone, they graciously included me in that “circle be unbroken” family of love. We talked for over an hour on songwriting, Nashville and more and of course they were all impressed seeing my name between the brackets as the songwriter on the RCA Victor hit record I had presented to Johnny. I was one of them as they saw it and June invited me to come and stay with them in Nashville. It’s the greatest music memory of my life meeting and enjoying the company of these three towering rockabilly/country music legends so beloved and revered the world over.
Elvis, The Beatles and Bob Dylan would be impressed. Kris Kristofferson, whose impact as a writer raised the bar for an entire generation of songwriters in Nashville, would also be impressed. Kris Kristofferson idolized Johnny Cash.
Years later, as a staff songwriter with the very same Nashville music publishing company that Kristofferson had made famous, I came to appreciate this precious memory even more. It helped me keep the chilly wind off my guitar down on music city row.
The Sojourner
Stranded at a standstill on the edge of blue and sky
The Sojourner, my spirit, whispered “fly”
Beyond this Desolation where Eternal voices cry
Down the highway where the dreamers go to die
My vagrant’s desperation for a better place to be
Set its course to trust the dream and drive in me
I got the hell out young, alive, still holdin’ 17
Charlotte’s suitcase held a poor boy’s elegy
It was on a Thursday morning, ever grateful for that day
At 5 AM I wrote my heart and soul away
My hope was now a ticket on a never ending train
A brand new guitar and some songs about the rain
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Richard Manuel’s mother sat beside me for awhile
“You in a band”? she asked, I said, “no ma’am I’m not”
“I’m just going to Toronto where I hope they’ll dig my style”
My sense of purpose caused her face to smile a lot
“My son is in a band” she said, “you may have heard of them”
“What’s their name”? I asked, “they’re The Band” she said
“The Band…?..you’re kidding me…your son is in THE BAND..?”
“That’s right”, she said “he’s in The Band” and so her tale began
I can’t remember where we stopped, the station she called home
It must have been in Stratford, might as well have been in Rome
I only knew, as rounders do, a long and lonesome time
Would pass until I’d find her in my verses and in rhyme
This train’s a conflagration now, a fire burning free
It sparks the restless soul that bears the life and death of me
So listen, hear my wheels race beyond this dreary grey
Of shadows, long dead habits and the dust of yesterday
These tracks are harder, tougher now, much colder than the clay
I’ll ride them on until the dawn when sleep might come my way
Stealthy devils, dead-end proud, all hungry for the grave
Invite me to be hungry too, but further on, I pray
No one lives who doesn’t die in suffering and pain
Charlotte’s bitter torments were just shackles on my brain
So true compassion justly now requires of a need
To say at last I suffered her because I had to bleed
And suffering and blood just means that nothing will remain
That hasn’t been transformed upon this sky bound mystery train
We’re crossing now, the station up ahead is bathed in Light
The Band is playin’ “The Shape I’m In” & everything’s just right
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