A Fine Night at the Split Crow..

After I left ZapYourPram, I journeyed to Halifax to spend the night before flying home.

I had a lovely dinner at Salty's and then wandered up to Granville Street, which is Halifax's version of a walking street.

About a block down I encountered the Split Crow. Bars like the Split Crow have always had a magnetic attraction to me, but the deal clincher was the music coming from the bar. Standing with their backs to the street side window were three lads in their late 30's to mid 40's, singing C, S, and N's "Southern Cross".

Now while I can't sing it from memory, and you probably wouldn't want to hear me, it has always ranked high on my list of folk-rock-vocals.

I got a Keith's, a place to sit, and sat back to enjoy the show, which was sensational.

These guys could sing, they could play, and they laughed and had fun. After a number of tunes, they asked for requests, and I called out for them to do a bunch of Canadian music! They asked where I was from, I responded Florida by way of Minnesota, and he asked, well then like whose tunes would you like to hear?

For those of my 6 readers who haven't given much thought to it, in my life, there have been lots of great Canadian singer-song writers, and so we were soon off on this great musical odyssey.

They sang tunes by Ian Tyson, by Neil Young, by Gordon Lightfoot, by the Guess Who, but the real show stopper was a tune by Stan Rogers.

I had never heard of Stan Rogers. But when they sang a Capella his song "Northwest Passage", i.e. lyrics below, it was an absolute show stopper. Their voices and the lyrics were haunting.

I had never heard of Rogers, and never heard this song, but I have to say, on a cool misty night in Halifax, in a warm cozy bar, with a cold beer in hand, it was one of those memorable nights, that I wished that I could have shared with the fine people in my life.

Here are the lyrics:

Chorus:
Ah, for just one time I would take the Northwest Passage
To find the hand of Franklin reaching for the Beaufort Sea;
Tracing one warm line through a land so wild and savage
And make a Northwest Passage to the sea.

Westward from the Davis Strait 'tis there 'twas said to lie
The sea route to the Orient for which so many died;
Seeking gold and glory, leaving weathered, broken bones
And a long-forgotten lonely cairn of stones.

Three centuries thereafter, I take passage overland
In the footsteps of brave Kelso, where his "sea of flowers" began
Watching cities rise before me, then behind me sink again
This tardiest explorer, driving hard across the plain.

And through the night, behind the wheel, the mileage clicking west
I think upon Mackenzie, David Thompson and the rest
Who cracked the mountain ramparts and did show a path for me
To race the roaring Fraser to the sea.

How then am I so different from the first men through this way?
Like them, I left a settled life, I threw it all away.
To seek a Northwest Passage at the call of many men
To find there but the road back home again.

Comments

[Peter Rukavina]

If you think Stan is great, try his brother Garnet. He tours in the U.S. a lot; I'm sure he'll hit Florida sooner or later.

[Alan McLeod]

I was going to do exactly as Ruk just did Buzz. Garnet is magic. He also was in Stan's band - fiddle, guitar and voice. If you ever make it back to Halifax, time it so McGuinty is playing the Lower Deck and sing along with the audience's version of Stan's "Barrett's Privateers" before they kick into "Farewell to Nova Scotia". One of the great things about growing up in Halifax was bars where much of the entertainment was your own singing the local Nova Scotian folk music with whoever was packing the place with you - navy guys, university students, businessmen, whoever.