Ron Nigrini
Story
The first breath was taken around suppertime, 1948. I was slapped into crysong by the doctor and loved into existence by a man who played the cymbalom and a woman famous for her cabbage rolls and apple squares. I was blessed with the basics: love, food, music.
In 1965, I started strumming with my friends Don Heard and Ken Harris. We got caught in the spotlight big time in July 1967, playing before 10,000 as the opening act for the "Mamas and Papas" at Maple Leaf Gardens in Toronto. I remember the black limousine that drove into the backstage belly of the Gardens. I remember standing at attention on stage while the national anthem was played, and Cass Elliot smiling at us after our set and saying "Good show!" I remember our footsteps in the downtown streets killing time and winding down energy waiting for the early edition of the Globe and Mail, and standing on Yonge St. reading the review: "A local band that played without panache". And I remember going home and looking for "panache" in the dictionary.
In the fall of 1969, Tim Hardin whirled into his suite at the King Eddie and showed me a brooch he bought for his wife Susan Moore. It was a butterfly whose wings were set in rubies and diamonds. I remember playing "Rich Things" for him and the flight to New York and the limo at the airport and the hospital where I met Susan and watched awkwardly as Tim gave her his gift. I remember playing for his managers and Tim inscribing his newly published book of songs and poetry for me, and taking me to meet his sister and her husband in a walk up flat somewhere in the world that is New York City, and Tim leaving there and disappearing into that night, not to return. I remember hanging out for a few more days, standing at the corner of Bleeker and MacDougal and the flight home. Years later (1977?) I caught Tim at the El Mocambo and gave him an inscribed copy of my second album "Rich Things". He listened intently as I spoke of my memories of 1969. He thanked me, but it seemed to me that he had no recollection of our meeting.
A truly wonderful woman came to Toronto in the summer of 1970. I met her at the Electric Circus. Her name was Marilyn Lipsius, and along with some hundred other performers, I was auditioning for her agency out of New York. And so began the road and 2 years of music in America on the national coffee house circuit.
I remember playing at the Whole Coffeehouse in Minneapolis, my home, home on the road, where I heard Leo Kottke sing "Eight miles high" and Mississippi Fred McDowell sing his life. At the Tyrone Guthrie Theater I received the radiation of Taj Mahal's musical soul. Sheer magic! And on another night, Miles Davis opened up my head and climbed in with his band - Chick Corea, Keith Jarrett, Dave Liebman, Jack DeJohnette and Michael Henderson. I remember getting sideswiped by a pick-up in Merry's car, and a trip to the Colorado mountains with Michael, Annie and Lois singing and floating through Iowa and Nebraska in an old International Harvester Travelall until Lois kicked off the top of the fire extinguisher and the front seat started filling up with foam. On the return trip, I was at the wheel while they slept and I took the wrong road and drove us right into Last Chance looking for gas and help - neither of which we got. Back in Minneapolis, I remember a phone call from Montreal.
Then there was Texas, and me climbing out of a dormitory window at Wayland Baptist College to cruise the backroads in a pick-up truck, the cotton balls shining like ground stars in the night fields, an owl hunting just above the rim of land. I remember holding a rifle for the first time and blasting the neck off a beer bottle caught in the headlights, much to the whooping and boot stomping delight of the Texans who would not believe that I had never before held a gun. I remember Las Cruces, New Mexico and the Southern Cross and red clouds above white sands, and Townes and Jerry Jeff and the armadillo and the scorpion and the dry endless miles of the southern plains. I remember splitting sets with Ted Ortiz in El Paso and walking over the Rio Grande into a low slung Juarez night to drink and talk tequila at ten cents a shot, and staggering back into daylight throwing change into the long pole ballet of baskets waving in young hands under the bridge to America. And I remember a farewell dinner with lots of laughing and wine running down my face and into my mouth.
And I have to remember that sinking soul disturbance I felt in a Rhode Island bus depot, standing long-haired in patched Levis, battered black guitar case in hand, watching a group of guys my age, uniformed, cut clean and holding together while they awaited the beginning of their own tour of duty in the soul wrenching reality of another world called Viet Nam. And my first prayer was a selfish one - I thanked God I was born in Canada. I have to remember the shock of the War Measures Act, the horror of Kent State and Altamont, the rage of Russel Means and the American Indian Movement and the spiritual power and beauty of Black Elk and Martin Luther King Jr. I remember the world swirling, heaving and crying. And I remember freezing in North Dakota.
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