Kevin Quain
Kensington Market, Toronto
by Live Music Head
June 18, 2008
I'm at Graffittis Bar and Grill
on the first Saturday of the month in April of 2008.
Sipping my cranberry soda,
I spy with my little eye,
a disheveled looking Irish Mexican vampire
emerging from the back of the bar.
"What,
do they have a cot made up for you back there?" I ask.
"The dressing room is under repair
New tiles are being laid and fresh paint is going up,"
comes the reply.
But it's a lie.
This is not Carnegie Hall after all,
but the heart of Toronto's Kensington Market.
And deep, dark and mysterious enough
to fancy any vampire.
The singer-songwriter I've come here to see
is dressed entirely in black,
and the opening set has The Bells of Hell singing.
Kevin Quain is not as sleepy as his crumpled shirt may suggest.
In fact, You Old Devil fronts a full house in top form,
as I perch myself on a stool beside the Elvis bust.
"some shepherd you are,
make me lay down in strange places".
What I really want is Winter In Babylon.
Whenever I'm heartbroken, I look for Kevin Quain.
And having five gigs a week,
I'm sure to find him somewhere.
After the last heartbreak,
a friend came to my emotional rescue and brought me here,
to this same bar, to see this same man, who sang...
"damn you and the horse you rode in on".
In front of the big open summertime window,
seedy life passes by on Baldwin St.
And solid waste management trucks
pumping squeeky brakes to drown out the loveliest ballad.
But as they cart away boxes of rotting
sidewalk vegetables and fish heads,
Kevin regains the attention of his audience
with thoughts of reincarnation.
"Makes me tired to think of coming back
and doing it all over again", he sighs.
But if I could, I'd come back as a rat".
I think he means bat, no?
"Farewell to flesh and perfect strangers,
lock all your daughters away.
He's a bastard, the Thief of Dances",
and oh, how this song romances!
Did you know, with a banjo, Kevin Quain will
"play for all your unwanted house guests and in-laws"?
The King of Everything.
And the image of Jack Nicholsen comes to mind.
Not the Jack Nicholson of Hollywood fame,
but Toronto's own Jack Nicholsen,
sitting at a dressing table singing this song in the play,
Tequila Vampire Matinee.
You see, Mr Quain is also an award-winning playwright.
But tonight,
"life's a bitch and then you die"
is sung by the writer himself.
Away goes the banjo and out comes the jug,
but whatever happened to the hat?, I wonder.
"If you think I should never get a job,
put some good money in there", he tells his audience.
Or don't, if you'd rather I do.
Hell, take some money out,
and I'll turn to a life of crime!"
He won't need a cot back there, I thought,
he'll have one in jail.
As I imagine the jug leaving the Market
and taking a road trip down Kensington Ave,
Kevin sits at the piano and plays another tune.
And before the jug makes its way back,
I imagine it stopping by the Horeseshoe Tavern...
and making a few bucks before travelling
back up Augusta;
returning heavy, overflowing with
twenties, fifties and hundreds.
Quain will sing Let's Get Loaded
to his heavenly bank account, when in walks John.
"I won't bite… not unless you want me to".
The second set is almost completely lost on me now,
as my friend and I quietly catch up.
But the soundtrack to our conversation
doesn't go entirely unnoticed.
Born a Dog gets a few barks from the audience,
and Happy Home from the new release pulls me back in.
The comforting face of Horatio Caine
may be gracing the tv monitor
above the bartender's head,
but if I was a child,
I'd want Kevin to sing me a lullaby.
What will he sing next?, I wonder
If I Only Had a Brain?
No one does Oz quite like Kevin Quain.
But now we're in Vegas with...
"just one sliver of the moon
One little spotlight on me".
Quain deserves more than a little spotlight,
but there are Christmas lights on the piano.
Bad Weather Friends is the song, with
"six busty showgirls to carry my coffin".
I could listen to Kevin Quain sing and play all night long,
but as the set creeps to an end,
the entire audience is a sing-a-long...
"if you ever see dead men dancing so lightly..."
Winter in Babylon wasn't played on this night,
and there was no encore.
Kevin preferred to stop and be one of us.
Clinking glasses together in a toast...
to all the rats crawling beneath us,
to all the barflies in the house,
but most of all, to Kevin Quain,
my favourite Irish Mexican vampire of all.
www.kevinquain.com
www.graffitisbarandgrill.com/
