The Yellow Door to celebrate 50th anniversary

On November 12, I’ll be in Montreal with a bunch of old friends to help the Yellow Door Coffee House celebrate its 50th anniversary. While it used to be conventional wisdom that the Yellow Door started up in 1967, Marc Nerenberg, who was around at the beginning and has kept folk music going at the Yellow Door in recent years, has traced the coffee house launch back to 1966 – which means the Yellow Door is, by far, Canada’s longest-running folk venue, and one of the last surviving folk venues of the 1960s anywhere.

I was 15 years old in 1969 when I started going to the Yellow Door. I went to a concert at the Back Door – a sister club to the Yellow Door that was open from 1969 to 1971 – where I heard about the Yellow Door and headed there the following weekend.

Back then, the Yellow Door was run by Chuck Baker and the format was to book lesser-known acts for three-night gigs from Monday to Wednesday and headliners for three nights from Thursday to Saturday. Sunday night was Hootenanny Night at the Yellow Door when performers – professionals and amateurs – put their names in the hat for chance to play three songs (or 15 minutes, whichever came first). As I recall, 12 performers got to play – in the order their names came out of the hat – on Hoot Nights.

In short order, I was a regular at the Yellow Door (and the Back Door) soaking up performances by almost everyone who played there. While some of them are largely forgotten, some became well known, and a few became legendary.

At some point in 1970 or ’71, I got involved in helping run the Yellow Door. I think Chuck just drafted me one night to work the coffee counter or sell tickets. I eventually did a lot of both, and then started to MC the occasional set. By 1972, I was MCing the Hoots every Sunday. Once in a while, when Chuck was away, I took over – even sleeping in his apartment on the Yellow Door’s top floor.

So, like so many performers who started out on the Yellow Door’s small stage, I got my start learning how to run folk clubs and concerts at the Yellow Door. In the fall of 1972, I started to produce folk music concerts at Dawson College and McGill University (while staying involved at the Yellow Door) and in the spring of 1974, I took over running another folk coffee house, the Golem, whose booking policy I modeled after the Back Door’s. And even though I’d moved on to the Golem, I was still around the Yellow Door a fair bit.

Perhaps my most memorable night at the Yellow Door was in the spring of 1972 when Jerry Jeff Walker and his guitarist (I recall his name being Travis something) happened to pass through town – I think they were en route from Ottawa to New York – and showed up at the Yellow Door on a Monday or Tuesday night. I was MCing that night and Jerry Jeff asked me if he could do a guest set. I told him that I’d have to clear it with the artist – his name was Merle Michaels, an American, I think, who was then living in Montreal and who I’ve not seen or heard of in the past 40 years. I asked Merle if it was OK for someone to do a guest set. “Sure,” he said, “Who?” At first he didn’t believe me when I said it was Jerry Jeff Walker. Anyway, after the show, maybe a dozen of us were on hand to hear Jerry Jeff play for about an hour-and-a-half without a break. He didn’t do “Mr. Bojangles” that night, but he did do “Stoney,” my request.

So, 50 years after the Yellow Door first opened as a folk music venue, and about 47 years after I first showed up at the basement coffee house, a bunch of us from the old days will join with today’s generation of Yellow Door performers to celebrate at a special 50th anniversary reunion concert, curated by Marc Nerenberg, on Saturday, November 12, 7:30 pm, at Petit Café Campus (57 Prince Arthur Street East in Montreal).

Among the old friends from my Yellow Door era who will perform are Bill Garrett & Sue Lothrop, Bill Russell, Chris Rawlings, Danny Greenspoon, Joel Zifkin, Kevin Head, Linda Morrison, Marc Nerenberg, Michael Jerome Browne, Noah Zacharin, Peter Paul Van Camp, Ronney Abramson, Russ Kelley, and an acoustic version of the Stephen Barry Band.

Among the younger performers from today’s generation of Yellow Door performers will be Bashu Naimi-Roy, the Chinese Kiwis, Corinna Rose, Gabrielle Marlena, Jesse Daniel Smith, Jitensha, Lauriel Lewis, Simon Banderob, and Thanya Iyer.

The MCs for the evening will be Chuck Baker, Marc Nerenberg, Mike Regenstreif (Hey, that’s me!) and Penny Rose.

Tickets for the anniversary concert are available on the Yellow Door website.

The anniversary weekend will also include several events at the Yellow Door itself (3625 Aylmer Street) including a Friday night Hootenanny, a free concert on Saturday afternoon and a brunch on Sunday. See the website for details.

Fifty years – half a century – imagine that. Congratulations to all who have played at the Yellow Door over the years – and especially to everyone who’s had a role in keeping it going against all odds for five full decades. It will be something to see everyone again.

Pictured: A drawing from the 1970s by Marc Nerenberg that is being used on 50th anniversary T-shirts; and Mike Regenstreif, Penny Rose and Jesse Winchester receiving the Yellow Door Award at the Yellow Door 35th Anniversary Concert, April 27, 2002 at Café Campus. (Photo: Judith Cezar)

Find me on Twitter. twitter.com/@mikeregenstreif

And on Facebook. facebook.com/mikeregenstreif

--Mike Regenstreif

Kevin Head – Live

KEVIN HEAD
Live 
kevinhead.ca

Kevin Head is one of those people I’ve known seemingly forever or, at least, since 1971 when we were both young pups on the Montreal folk scene – me helping Chuck Baker run the Yellow Door and getting my feet wet MCing the Sunday night hoots and Kevin playing those same hoots and doing his first weeknight gigs there.

In 1972, as a student at Dawson College, I started my first concert series. Kevin, a fellow student, was the opening act for Bruce Murdoch on the first concert I ever produced, 41 years ago. So we go back a long way.

After his Montreal years, Kevin spent a few years living and working in Nova Scotia and has since been based near Kingston, Ontario. Although he has remained a very active performer – primarily a regional performer around wherever he’s been living – Kevin’s recordings have been few and very far between. An LP, No Frills, came out in 1979 (Kate McGarrigle, who I was working with in those days, played on a couple of the songs) and a CD, Hear Them Callin’ (which got a lot of play on the Folk Roots/Folk Branches radio show) came out in 1995.

Live, recorded off the floor last October at Stonewater Pub in Gananoque, Ontario, is just Kevin’s third album. All 10 songs in the 40-minute set are originals – two reprised from earlier albums and eight others, written between 1971 and 2009, are commercially released for the first time. Kevin, who plays acoustic guitar and gets solid support from Cam Schaefer on keyboards, bassist Bob Arlidge, percussionist Jak Thrasher and harmony vocalist Vanessa Burnett, seems relaxed and engaging throughout the live show.

The most compelling song is “The Arrow,” about a fictional tragedy that unfolds in a family already devastated by the Canadian government’s sudden shutdown of the Avro Arrow military jet program in 1959.

Other highlights include “Thanks Hank,” written back in ’71, one of the best and most infectious tributes ever to Hank Williams (hearing it brought back lots of memories of Kevin doing it back in the day in Montreal); “Saturday Night in South Margaree,” which captures a magical night of music making on Cape Breton Island (although I wish there was a fiddle player sitting in on this number); “Laying It on the Line,” a story about an intense love relationship; and the show closing band workout “Backyard” (known as “Everyone Needs a Backyard” in earlier versions), one of those songs that plants an earworm in your brain that never quite goes away.

I hope it’s not so long a wait for Kevin’s fourth album.

Find me on Twitter. twitter.com/@mikeregenstreif

And on Facebook. facebook.com/mikeregenstreif

--Mike Regenstreif

Allan Fraser and Brian Blain to play the Yellow Door

Allan Fraser

I got an e-mail recently from Allan Fraser mentioning that he and Brian Blain would be doing a double bill together at the Yellow Door in Montreal on Saturday, April 16.

That note from Allan brought back a memory from some time in the early-1970s when I was running the Yellow Door for the night – as I occasionally did back then – when Chuck Baker was away. There was a problem and the performer who was supposed to play that night wasn’t able to so I had to find someone to take the stage. Through the back alley behind the Yellow Door was a little coach house that was occupied in those days by some folkies and there’d usually be someone or other there with a guitar. I dashed over, found Allan Fraser and Brian Blain, and had them on stage at the Yellow Door a few minutes later.

Brian Blain

Allan, of course, was the Fraser of Fraser & DeBolt, a popular duo on the Canadian folk scene back then. Brian was the producer of the second Fraser & DeBolt LP.

Allan – whose song, “Dance Hall Girls” is one of the great classics of the Montreal folk scene – has continued to write songs over the nearly four decades since then but doesn’t come out to play them very often.

Brian, a fine singer-songwriter who lives at the corner of Blues Street and Folk Avenue, is an accomplished performer who’s been based in Toronto for many years now. He was my guest on the radio show back in 2005.

The Yellow Door, all these years later, is still at 3625 Aylmer Street in the McGill Ghetto.

--Mike Regenstreif

This week in Folk Roots/Folk Branches history (September 1-7)

Folk Roots/Folk Branches with Mike Regenstreif was a Thursday tradition on CKUT in Montreal for nearly 14 years from February 3, 1994 until August 30, 2007. Folk Roots/Folk Branches continued as occasional features on CKUT and is now also a blog. Here’s the first instalment of “This week in Folk Roots/Folk Branches,” a weekly look back over the course of the next year at some of the most notable guests, features and moments in Folk Roots/Folk Branches history.

September 1, 1994: Extended feature- Doc Watson.
September 7, 1995: Extended feature- Kate Wolf.
September 4, 1997: Guest- Stephen Fearing.
September 3, 1998: Guest- Chuck Baker.
September 2, 1999: Guest- Mary McCaslin.
September 7, 2000: Guest- Odetta.
September 1, 2005: Guest- Utah Phillips.

Pictured: Utah Phillips and me at the 2005 Champlain Valley Folk Festival in Vermont. We had just recorded the interview to be heard the following September 1 and were about to go on stage together for a songwriters’ workshop I was hosting and Utah was participating in.

--Mike Regenstreif

Hello Darlin’ Productions

If you look on the ‘About Me’ not on the side of this blog, I mention that I produced most of Montreal’s folk-oriented concerts in the 1970s and ‘80s. It was a torch that I picked up from people like the late Sam Gesser, the late Gary Eisenkraft, Chuck Baker and a few others who produced concerts and ran folk clubs before me.

In this decade, that torch has been carried by the husband-and-wife team of Matt Large and Rebecca Anderson who founded Hello Darlin’ Productions and the Wintergreen Concert Series about seven or eight years ago. From the time Matt and Rebecca started, I’ve seen them follow the same kind of inspiration and motivation that guided Sam, Gary, Chuck and me back in the day. For all of us, and for Matt and Rebecca now, it was always about the love of the music, about giving the artists that make that music, and the audiences that appreciate it, the respect they deserve.

Matt and Rebecca have done a remarkable job of presenting folk-oriented music in Montreal, probably the hardest – for a lot of reasons that I won’t get into here – big city in North America in which to produce this kind of music. They’ve brought some of the world’s finest folk-oriented artists to Montreal stages and supported our own home-grown artists. I’m really proud of them and the job they’ve done and continue to do.

Matt and Rebecca have announced an incredible line-up of concerts for the coming months. You can see their up-to-date concert listings on the Hello Darlin’ website. I urge you to get out and support as many of those concerts as you can. They’re all worth it and I’ll be blogging more extensively about some of those concerts in the weeks and months to come.

--Mike Regenstreif