Ron Nigrini
Story continued
I returned to Canada in the summer of 1972 and was invited to join a band that had a steady gig at the old Arlington Hotel in Collingwood, Ontario. The town's shipbuilding days were drawing to a close and the resort/vacation industry was beginning to lay claim to the land and economy of the region. We provided the music. The band had two names: if you approached the hotel from the west, the marquee read "Nightly Entertainment" and from the east you were going to see "Entertainment Nightly." Our leader was a former United States Marine from Alabama who settled on a farm on Blue Mountain and grew things. Her name was Sara Ellen Dunlop and she played congas and had a voice, body and soul that could have launched the lake freighter being built at the end of Hurontario Street. She worked a room like Ronnie Hawkins did, though I think Sara could have wrestled Ronnie to the ground on any given night. Like the Hawk and his bands, Sara made us all better players - not to mention the fact that we worked 6 nights a week with a Saturday matinee for a year. Country Scene: the boys in the band at the farm on a beautiful Sunday in spring, each in turn being bounced, jerked and dragged around the garden by a churning monster of a roto-tiller. We didn't break much ground but we had Sara in stitches. She finally waved us away, took over the machine and finished turning the earth.
Settling back in Toronto in October '73, I was now a husband and father hunting work in the the bars and the twilight of the coffeehouse scene in southern Ontario. One bone chilling lonesome day, Ken Harris and I sought the comfort and inspiration of Jesse Winchester and his songs at the Colonial Tavern. I remember discussing with Ken the music business (now there's an oxymoron). Sitting at the next table is the soon-to-be-music-mogul Tom Williams. Being the ever alert type of mogul, Tom can't help overhearing the conversation, and because it's Saturday afternoon and because he has had six bloody marys and because he is leaning too far backwards in his chair straining to hear the conversation, Tom falls into my lap. After the guffaws and apologies, he tells me he is forming Attic Records with Al Mair and would like to hear my songs. I send him a tape. He listens. I sign.
With great excitement in the early spring, I arrived at Thunder Sound to begin the first sessions of bed tracks for the album. While everyone was setting up and tuning I was still looking for my guitar. We sent a cab back to my house to get it. When the sessions wrapped, I remember heading north with my family to a piece of paradise land and cutting Balsam poles to pitch the tipi and living with too much hope and too many ideals that summer of '74 when "Letters" was released as a single to Canadian radio. And back in the city, I was driving up Spadina Rd. and heard the opening bars of "Lost In Colorado" on the truck radio and pulled over to the curb in front of the Victory Burlesque Theatre to listen, and heard the DJ come on after the song and say, "That was Ron Nigrini and he was lost in Colorado......You can tell that's his real name 'cause who'd wanna change his name to Ron Nigrini."
And I remember Al and Tom presenting me with tape after
tape of songs to consider recording for that all important 'hit' and their
growing frustration as I refused bad song after bad song, and Al telling
me to go see the new Robert Altman film 'Nashville' and checking out the
song Keith Carradine wrote and performed - "I'm Easy." There
it was. It was a big hit in 1976 and there followed the tours and festivals
and media hype. I particularly remember one live radio interview that
ended like this:
HOST: "And your lyrics aren't too intelligent."
RON: "You mean intellectual."
HOST: "Anyways..."
RON: "You mean anyway."
HOST: "Thanks a lot."
RON: "Thanks a lot is right."
The years after the Attic days were just plain busy trying to make a living as a working musician in Toronto's clubs and backrooms, with some work as a studio singer, although, according to one recent cyber report I "...disappeared from the recording studio entirely and drifted for years as a soloist in seedy bars south of the border." I have no recollection of that, but I do recall, with some measure of disbelief, finding myself in Los Angeles in 1979 with a manager and money to do a demo - a deadly combination. And I remember approaching the studio in Hollywood and holding open the glass door for a tall and beautiful woman, suddenly realizing it was Cher as she wafted by within two clumsy feet of my dreams. I watched transfixed as she walked into the street and around the front of her Aston-Martin, opened the door with a barely perceptible glance in my direction, climbed in and drove away as I turned and walked into the second glass door. But I did have my guitar.
I also remember touring up the coast of California to Oregon and Washington with Cecilio and Kapono's band, nine musicians living dangerously in an R.V. for a month, driving through cotton fog and sickness and truck stops stocked with growling chili dogs and all manner of vending machine malevolence. We played in Tahoe, gambled in Reno, threw up in Portland, and sucked in Seattle. We were not a healthy lot. Ah, the road. One heartwarming memory: Driving up a mountain road through the night of a snowstorm and coming upon a car on its side, an elderly couple shivering on the road, the band jumping out of the R.V. with blankets and flares and a bottle of Wild Turkey, and all of us heaving to turn the car back on its wheels, and the grateful couple thanking each one of us and promising to give all musicians the benifit of the doubt in the future. They got into their car and drove back home as we headed to our next gig.
And I remember catching a bad bug near the end of the tour and flying to Calgary to tape a half-hour T.V. special called "Roll Your Own," and John Peterson, the director, picking me up at the airport and driving me to the hospital where I was diagnosed with walking pneumonia. And I didn't feel like walking but sleeping in the dressing room between takes of songs unusually phrased in and around the shortness and pain of my breath. The next day I flew back to the warmth of L.A. (another oxymoron) to finish the tour at the Golden Bear and the Sweetwater Cafe, and recover my health at Carl and Lisa's house - a house and home I remember fondly. My time in California came to a close in 1980.
to be continued...
