Here’s this lovely man who played the hell out of my piano one night while Darcy McFadyen and I danced buck naked.
It was 1991 (I think) and we were working on a concert series with my group ‘The Angels of Montenegro’. Luckily I had located a young and enthusiastic assistant, because I had to write 30 minutes of string music, 30 minutes of brass music, 30 minutes of woodwind music…all in a few weeks, get it rehearsed and get it on stage in this series of concerts culminating in a finale concert in which the whole shooting match would be on stage at the El Mocambo on a Friday night.
On top of all that, we did arrangements of each of the orchestral components to play with our regular repertoire. So each week, in fact, it was our repertoire with strings and a string set…next week our repertoire with horns and a new original set of horn music….
See what I mean? A lot of work. I needed a lot of help.
So dear Darcy sat with me all night, night after night and we wrote charts. I sang the parts and Darcy wrote them down. You really have to concentrate to keep all this straight in your head when you don’t know how to write it down. Sometimes at 4 AM Darcy started to flag so I would try to caffeinate him or somehow create engagement.
While working on woodwind pieces one night I needed to come up with two new ones sitting there and was cranking my brain case, priming the pump, looking high and low for a way in.
Darcy was young and enthusiastic and saw me as a mentor. Everything was an initiatic rite so we had fun with initiatic rites and played them up to an extreme bumptious degree.
Because, of course, after all that work and a grand finale concert, we had to have a party. And because it sounded like a profound emotional challenge for a weedy music major and surely an initiatic rite, Darcy responded enthusiastically and perked up and we sat up and pumped out some more charts.
Wow, engagement devices, methods to inspirit the troops. Wonder what Caesar did to get those guys to bridge the Rhine in ten days.
We got the charts together, presented all that new music. The finale was pretty special—a total blowout. Now it’s the next night I am preparing a turkey dinner for 50 people.
It’s early in the evening and Darcy has a concerned look on his face. He’s wondering if I have forgotten about the important initiatic rite.
Yikes. I immediately realized that I would have to make good on this so I started dancing into the living room while flinging my clothing down to the ground. Darcy followed suit, well, you know what I mean.
So now we are naked dancing and people are showing up. And when there are two naked people at a party it kind of perks up the action for everyone else standing around.
And then Professor Piano showed up. About ten people stood around the piano as he boogie woogied.
And we danced. the end.
Professor Piano had a strange death in which he was wrongly identified and buried by another family.
There must be a lot of these stories floating around out there.
Here we are, five days from the end of the campaign.
What am I doing trying to get money to do a Sam Larkin song?
It’s a labour of love you see. I, like a lot of people, was an admirer of Sam. I admired his songs, his craftsmanship, his passion, and the many kindnesses he showed to everyone who showed up at Fat Alberts across the years.
I particularly noticed the magic ‘Mirabeau Bridge’ worked on an audience. If you went to Fat Alberts in the 80s you heard it every week, sometimes two or three times.
And the chorus exerted a special magic on people hearing it for the first time. If you are a Sam Larkin lover, would you do me a favour? Would you go to the crowdfunding page, read the description. Get a feel for what we are trying to do.
There are a couple of little gifts there, including an interview of Sam by Murray McLaughlan, where Sam pulls Murray’s chain with great hilarity.
people to step up and plunk down some dollars, as many wonderful people have done already.
Do what you can and thank you.
a daze saying Sam, gone?
For two days I was hoping it was a joke.
dreaming I could somehow someday nail.
nuggets of gold from way down there.
And his way of playing them, total immersion.
lover at 4 AM to tears of joy and thanks.
no idea what it means to be a Song Junkie.
the rest of the straight people in their lives.
durable institution for over for forty years.
I got to the party in about 1981.
heard him play it at least 100 times.
place in the heart of everyone.
maybe not. Maybe not at all too grand.
it’s a belated revelation. With Sam? Forget about it.
in the Old Man and the Sea.
wafts in the air like a stink.
know exactly who that man is and always was.
a song in November”, and that meant everything.
and it’s a very good year.
lived and a song well sung.
so loud I can’t hear a word you are saying.
without him ever having to say a word.
and open it in the world beyond.
In the nowhere air will be your song”.
I hear you, Sam. I hear you.
So I’m making a record. Do people still say that?
session just like Sonny Boy Williamson would do.
lay down a vocal on the tune “Dark as a Dungeon”.
and then cool again again.
Ah, my folk singin’ days.
and I decided to go to the Mardi Gras in New Orleans.
on before a big change I was about to undertake… called marriage.
That was in August 1993.