You either love it or hate it–but the Yukon and it’s people have a knack of making folks feel so comfortable it’s hard to leave
Dateline: September, 1999….
I was asleep in my hotel room, somewhere in small-town Alberta when the phone rang. I answered,
“What do you want!?” It was Monson, our booking agent. “What are you doing, Gary?”
“Well, I was sleeping, but it’s okay, I had to get up to answer the ‘——-‘ phone! What do you want?”
“Do you want to take the boys up to Whitehorse to open a club for a month?
Now I am awake! I sat bolt upright in bed and said, “Hell yeah Wayne, when does this happen?”.
Wayne replied, “Sometime in mid-October.? Oh, and they want you to be a five-piece, so you’ll have to add someone for this gig. How much are you going to charge?”
“Okay. I don’t know…. It’ll be a minimum of $150 per night each, plus five rooms, all the expenses paid there and back, then your commission’s on top. Let me make a few phone calls and I’ll get back to you.”
I’d been to Whitehorse ten years earlier to play the Kopper King for a month in January, back when they had that big brass hood over the open fire. I had fallen in love with the place.
Our pianist back then was Earl, and he introduced me to his really good friends, Roly and Marg. I can absolutely say that Roly and Marg are my two longest-tenured friends in the Yukon. We had an awesome month and I couldn’t wait to go back.
Ten years later, I was excited, but little did I know how much my life was about to change.
I didn’t have the luxury of Google, the internet or a cell phone back then. It was cheaper to go buy a roll of quarters and stand plugging them into a payphone than to pay long distance rates from my hotel room, so that’s what I did.
I remembered from looking at my paper map and my previous trip a decade ago that (I think) we stopped for gas in Fort Saint John, Fort Nelson and Watson Lake. I called the gas stations in those places to find out current prices and went back to my room to do the math.
I called Monson back. “Hey Wayne, it’ll be $4,250 a week, plus GST. That covers your 15 points”.
“Done”, he said.
“Don’t forget the five rooms on the contract, Wayne!” He had a bit of a history of forgetting things like that at times.
“And I want you to book us into Fort Saint John and Fort Nelson on the way up to break up the drive and costs”. He did. “Oh, and don’t bother booking us out on the way back, we’ll be ready to get back home. Just find us a nice cool three-nighter the following week so we can get some rest and then relax at a nice gig”.
He booked us into Wild Bill’s in Banff, owned by my great friend, Swanny, who always had free drinks, a great band house and free lift tickets for wherever we wanted to ski. Perfect!
I never made it to Wild Bill’s.
We arrived at our newly-renovated gig at the 202 in Whitehorse on Sunday, November 7, only to find it was still full of tradespeople working around the clock to finish drywall, painting, you name it. There was no way that we would be on stage the next night for the grand opening! Their brand-new house PA system was still in boxes covered by tarps on the dance floor.
My meeting with the owner was rather disappointing. He still wanted us to play for a full month once the club was ready, and he would give us free rooms while we waited, but no pay or food. It would probably be a week of waiting.
“Would we mind hanging his new PA from the ceiling and getting all the lights set up?”
I had no idea how we would all be able to afford to eat for a week. In the end, Tippy Mah turned out to be a true gentleman to us, and treated us very well.
I loaded my gear and luggage into my room in the old annex on the side of the hotel, went out front and jumped into a waiting cab. “Is there any live music in town on a Sunday, preferably a jam?”
“Yep!” “Great! Take me to the jam please”. The 5th Avenue driver put it back in park and said, “Get out and walk, it’s at the Capital, three blocks that way”, as he pointed down 2nd.
I had one of the best nights that I’d had in a very long time. I met and jammed with Mr. Vein, met other musicians and folks who were staff at our club and other places. All these people are still great friends to this day.
The next morning … err, early afternoon … I found my new living-room for the next four to five years, some seedy country bar across the street called the TNT and met a bunch more incredibly cool people. By the end of the day I had a temporary job cooking at the Regina Restaurant and had been shuttled around to see the sights: the Taku, Roadhouse, Best Western, the 98, Airport Chalet, Joe’s Freepour….
Man! My new friends could really drink! But they were amazing people and so welcoming, with open arms. I truly felt at home.
To be continued….
