Or maybe it was the fact that I'd finally made it there, after 23 years.
Anyway, it was worth the wait to get to Fat Albert's.
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Fat Albert's is Toronto's longest running open stage. It started in 1967, when draft dodgers were arriving in Toronto and students were turning the Rochdale university residence across the street into a counter-cultural civic embarassment. I was born in 1963, so I was too young to appreciate all that, and I arrived in Toronto in the fall of 1981.
My plan, back then, was to stuff my pages upon pages of introspective song lyrics (along with my guitar of course) into a psychic bottom drawer, to go to college and pursue a respectable career in broadcasting. Songs being what they are however, they didn't conform so easily to that plan, and they kept on being written, jamming the psychic drawer but good. Mostly, I didn't tell anybody about those songs. (My writer friend Warren, who is reading, was an exception. He will remember "Rainfall on Runnymede", a song that has particular resonance in light of my recent subway experience.)
Around that time, I started hearing about Fat Albert's, the open mic in the church basement on Bloor Street West.
I didn't go.
But I remember a time that I almost went. I found the church (Bloor Street United, at Spadina and Bloor) and walked casually past the door a couple of times, the way you might casually walk past the house of somebody you have a crush on. I didn't summon the nerve to go in.
Why not? I was terrified. I thought, simultaneously, that I was both too good for it and not nearly good enough. At that time, I was, literally, embarrassed to be seen in public carrying my guitar. For me it carried a feeling of shame, not unlike the shame I felt as a young teenager afraid to be seen with my parents. I produced demo cassettes of my songs at home, but couldn't play them for anyone. I wanted to meet other singers, yet felt I wouldn't fit in with them, that I'd be considered too straight, too nerdy, too...terrified.
So...best to avoid that church basement door.
Eventually I stepped through other such doors, at the Cafe at the Centre in Cabbagetown, at The Free Times Cafe, at Groovy Mondays, at The Renaissance Cafe. And even though I celebrated the inclusiveness and generosity and encouragement that could be found on such stages (and inspired my song Stage) I couldn't bring myself to go to the particular place I'd so steadfastly avoided at the time in my life when I might have benefitted from it most, as a shy 18 year-old singer-songwriter, thousands of miles away from home.
I didn't go.
But I remember a time that I almost went. I found the church (Bloor Street United, at Spadina and Bloor) and walked casually past the door a couple of times, the way you might casually walk past the house of somebody you have a crush on. I didn't summon the nerve to go in.
Why not? I was terrified. I thought, simultaneously, that I was both too good for it and not nearly good enough. At that time, I was, literally, embarrassed to be seen in public carrying my guitar. For me it carried a feeling of shame, not unlike the shame I felt as a young teenager afraid to be seen with my parents. I produced demo cassettes of my songs at home, but couldn't play them for anyone. I wanted to meet other singers, yet felt I wouldn't fit in with them, that I'd be considered too straight, too nerdy, too...terrified.
So...best to avoid that church basement door.
Eventually I stepped through other such doors, at the Cafe at the Centre in Cabbagetown, at The Free Times Cafe, at Groovy Mondays, at The Renaissance Cafe. And even though I celebrated the inclusiveness and generosity and encouragement that could be found on such stages (and inspired my song Stage) I couldn't bring myself to go to the particular place I'd so steadfastly avoided at the time in my life when I might have benefitted from it most, as a shy 18 year-old singer-songwriter, thousands of miles away from home.
By this time, I was out of the closet as a performer and I had built up a bit of confidence. So why didn't I go now? Well, now that I had my eye on an actual "music career" (lights! CDs! reviews!) I told myself I was somehow "past" that basement door. I reasoned that open mics were a merely stop along the way, not a destination...a career stage to move past, and the more quickly the better. (Needless to say, I viewed subway busking in pretty much the same light, which was to say, a dim one.)
It took my friend Sam Larkin, a songwriting friend whom I might have met twenty years ago if I'd had the courage to walk in the doors, to finally get me to Fat Albert's. He was doing a feature performance with his new band, The Boxcutters. Sam has been a big inspiration to me, both as a songwriter and a thinker (which will make his website all the more fascinating to you) so I wasn't about to miss his feature set. (To read more about Sam, and other performers who frequented the early days at Fat's, check out this blog.)
It took my friend Sam Larkin, a songwriting friend whom I might have met twenty years ago if I'd had the courage to walk in the doors, to finally get me to Fat Albert's. He was doing a feature performance with his new band, The Boxcutters. Sam has been a big inspiration to me, both as a songwriter and a thinker (which will make his website all the more fascinating to you) so I wasn't about to miss his feature set. (To read more about Sam, and other performers who frequented the early days at Fat's, check out this blog.)
Driving along Cecil Street just after 7 o'clock last night, I missed the Steelworkers Union Hall at first and drove past it, turning left along a side street. There was one parking spot available, directly behind a white 1990 Honda Civic wagon which looked exactly the same as mine right down to the rust.
It was my first sign that I was in the right place.
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