Canada’s CONEY HATCH has a brand new 2LP (2 disc) anniversary edition of their classic debut album. The second LP in the set contains the band’s 1982 show at the famous Cleveland Agora, which, along with the added artwork, liner notes, and remastered sound, make this a great package for any 80s hard-rock fans. Dave Ketchum is a founding member of the band, and was a huge part of that debut album, driving classics like “Monkey Bars”, Devil’s Deck”, and the hit “Hey Operator”. The band is performing an acoustic show Friday, November 14 at the Redwood Theater, in Toronto. In this interview Dave talks about the band’s early days, working with Kim Mitchell, thoughts on the other ‘Hatch albums, what he did after he left the band and is up to these days, as well as the band’s upcoming show, and some of his influences and favorite drummers! This was a lot of fun. thanks Dave.
First, I want to talk about this release here (hold up new Coney Hatch anniversary LP), before we go back and talk about the album and the early days. This collects everything from that era that’s known to be out there, with the outtakes and the Cleveland show.
Right. It was Anthem Records idea to do an anniversary edition. It’s got lots of cool stuff in it. You know, they remastered the first album to today’s standards. And then someone found a copy of a show we did at the Agora in Cleveland, Ohio in 82. The cool thing about the Agora was that, because I don’t know whether you know this, but we did the show at noon. And the reason for that is it’s all mic’d up and everything else, and it went out on a radio station to over a million people. So it was kind of cool, because Rush was playing in town that night. So we did the show at noon, and then well, I don’t know about everybody else, I went back to bed for a couple hours. Then we went out and saw the Rush show in Cleveland that night, and went backstage. That’s the first time I got to meet the guys in Rush. It was pretty cool. And we joked that they played to 20-25,000 people at the arena, but we played to a million!
A lot went into the packaging, obviously. I’ve got the CD and the vinyl here. So, the colored vinyl, the gatefold and the inserts and that was all pretty cool. Did you guys have much say in all that, like, where you guys all kind of chipped in on that, or what?
Well, the pictures are mostly from Andy and Carl. They’re obviously all pictures I’ve seen before. Andy works very closely with Anthem, so he kind of had a lot to do with pushing the product through, having it made, and all that. I’ve known about it from the beginning, but I don’t think I personally did a whole lot for it, just kind of check-marked off things when ideas came up and stuff like that.
Did you save much over the years? Like from those days, did you save any like flyers or tapes or stuff like that?
I had a bunch of stuff from way back and it got lost in a house and it got filled with water in the basement, and I lost almost everything from the early days. So, it’s funny because through the years, Andy sent me some stuff, and fans have sent me things. A few years ago, I got a package in the mail and it had a bunch of the little singles. (walks over to collection to grab things) They sent me copies of the first few albums and then sent me a bunch of these little 45s, from the old days.
(*At this point Dave shows me some Coney Hatch promo singles from his collection)
I have a really cool Max Webster one. I don’t know how that got in my, in my collection (laughs).Well, actually, I do know how that got in my collection. Back in the early 80s, when we were with Anthem Records originally, when we were signed to them, and I lived in Toronto, at the time, I’d go down to Anthem Records; they had this closet in their downstairs, and they’d have copies of everything that they produced, all their bands. They’d keep them in there as extras for giveaways or whatever. And I’d go down there. So I have most of the Max Webster collection; I have a pretty good selection of the Rush catalog, and of course, some of the Coney stuff. But yeah.
I’ve got a couple of 12-inch singles. (I show Dave a few 12 inch singles and LPs, including a few he signed backstage at LuLu’s in 1994, and my Japanese edition of the first LP)
I want to go back to the earliest days of the band, you and Andy formed the band in 79 !?
Yep.
I have seen some gig listings that go all the way back to then. So, wondering what kind of shows were you guys started out playing, what you recall of those days as far as what you played, and the other guys in the band?
I had been playing in a band with a guy named Mark VanRemortel, guitar player-singer, that band broke up. And he had told me, “Oh, I got a guy I went to school with named Andy Curran. So, we got together and then they had another friend of theirs, whose name escapes me at the moment; and he also played guitar. We got together in… I want to say September of 79, and rehearsed a bit, and did some 8 x 10s – shots of the band, because that’s how you used to get gigs. Back in that day, you’d send out 8 x 10s. And then just before the first gig, the original guitar player, he decided that he didn’t want to go on the road; so he quit. I had played back in 75, with a band. Now I was still in high school then, but I played in this band, And the guitar player from that band, a guy named Eddie Godlewski; he was lead guitarist in that band. It was called ‘Back Alley’, I think.
Anyway, so I gave him a call and he came along, and technically, he would probably be the very first guitar player for Coney Hatch, for maybe the first, )I don’t know..) six months or something like that. And then he, he decided he was going to go. So we put an ad in the paper, in the Toronto Star, because again, they used to have a category for musicians and stuff like that back in those days. And that’s when we got Steve Shelski, who, of course, is on all the albums. We carried on like that for almost a year. Then Paul VanRemortel was going to go back to college or school or something, and that’s when we put another ad in, and that’s when we got Carl Dixon.
What sort of stuff did you play in those earliest days? And what of the original songs from the first album were the kind of the earliest ones that you remember?
Well, we were young, and we weren’t sure what direction the band was really going to go in. We played a lot of like ACDC, Bon Scott, ACDC stuff. But then we’d go and play like The Police. We used to do this great song called “Drugs In My Pocket” (The Monks). And we’d play some Cars. So I mean, we were all over the road, when it came to what we were doing musically.
But as things started to kind of carry on….and I should say that back in those days, you played six nights a week. We had a manager, and he would get us gigs. We played every week. I think in 1980, we probably played 50 weeks of that year. And every week in a different place. Well, we’d repeat places, but it was mostly in northern Quebec and northern Ontario and not this far north, but Timmins, Sudbury, that kind of stuff. And yeah, we played six nights a week. So, you’d start to play on Monday, Monday to Saturday. Sometimes you had to do a matinee on Saturday. So, something, at noon kind of thing. And, then Sunday was your travel date to your next destination.
The cool part about that was, again, you played every day, and you played every day with a band, and in front of people, and you could get real feedback for what was working and what wasn’t working. And it was, obviously, a great way to learn our craft; it was a great way to learn your instrument. You just played so much. And it was great! In the 80s we were in our early 20s. We had an amazing time.
Really early ‘Hatch stuff… I want to say that “Monkey Bars” was a very early song. And, I think “Devil’s Deck”, I think those were the two very first songs that we did. And then we added things in afterwards, The funny part is, there were some songs that started off differently, very differently, and then eventually became what they were. There was one of the songs that we did that was called “I’m Lazy”. And I believe that became, “I’ll Do The Talking”, maybe. Anyway, we were starting to play these songs a few years before we actually recorded them, and things changed as they went along. I think “Stand Up” started off faster than it ended up being. When we actually got into the studio with Kim Mitchell, he did a lot of stuff with that; changing tempo and stuff like that.
There’s obviously some outtakes from that album. Do you remember a song called “Car Stares”?
Yes.
I’ve seen that listed before. I’m sure I’ve seen it on a bootleg or something. But I don’t recall hearing it.
It was from our era where we were still hadn’t decided whether we were going to be like a rock band or, or, because it’s almost punky in sound. It’s really fast. That was an Andy song. He was the guy, mostly that was just in love with kind of the tail end of new wave – kind of punky stuff; and so some of his writing was like that at first. And, they’re songs that we either just never did, or songs that got rearranged later on and stuff like that.
I always found, especially on the first album, that dynamic of having the two singers and they’re being from two different influences, like two very different.
Yeah, absolutely. Carl’s more like, mainstream, I guess, maybe would be the…whereas Andy’s got a very different voice; I think, a little bit less mainstream and a little bit more unique. And he went for kind of the rockier, more melodic stuff, if that makes sense.
On that first album, you guys all had credits on that. What were a couple of the songs that you had the most hand in?
Well, again, I’d say the two that I get credit for is “We Got The Night”, and then “Stand Up”, I believe those are the two that I have credit on. Again, it had a lot to do with Kim, to be honest. He’d sit with me and we’d go through a few things. The drum intro to “We Got The Night” was something that I’d been messing around with, and Kim really liked it, and wanted to add it to the beginning of the song, basically. Originally, the song didn’t have that drum intro. And like I said, Kim really liked it, he was like,” No, no, this is great! Let’s put this at the beginning”. And with “Stand Up”, again, tempo-wise, feel-wise, that’s kind of what I brought to those songs.
And the other songs that I really liked that were around… There was “Dreamland” and “Where I Draw The Line”, which was the one that got dropped for “Hey Operator”.
Yeah, it’s funny, “Hey Operator” came in right at the tail end. When you record an album, you put the bed-tracks, down for 15 songs, if you know, to have nine released, or whatever it is!? So, there’s always stuff in the can, so to speak, that can be used, or don’t ever get used or whatever. And, some of the fourth album that we did was stuff that hung around. That was done in 2013, but some of those things were ideas from the 80s.
I got to be honest, I really like “Dreamland”. I thought it was a great song, and I thought it fit in really well with the album. Of course, it was not on the original release, it’s on the anniversary release. But again, a lot of those decisions were between not just the band, but the band and Kim and the band, Kim and the record label. So, you’re looking at that time, and I guess they fit. And obviously, adding “Hey Operator” was a good idea. I just thought it was kind of a shame that that we didn’t somehow add in “Dreamland”.
And we just, only a couple of years ago, actually, we did a show where we played the first album from beginning to end, and that included “Dreamland” and “Where I Draw The Line” We have not played “Sin After Sin” since the since the early 80s. And we’re going to do something kind of similar to that on November 14th in Toronto, at the Redwood Theatre.
We’re once again, going to get to play some of these songs that were never released for the first 40 years of our career. And, then now have been again. So, I think that’s kind of cool.
You guys went on to the second album, you had Max Norman brought in, and it kind of changed things a lot. Obviously, the first album had that flow of energy and the bit of rawness and all, that kind of went from song to song. And the second album seemed to be a little more of an attempt at more radio mainstream, with the production?
Yeah. You know, by that time, the record label was making a lot of decisions for us. Max Norman had had had a name in the business. The band wanted Kim to do to do the second album, and the record label talked us out of it. And, they wanted to use Max, Max had a history with doing the Ozzy Osbourne stuff. So Max was brought in. You know, if I’m being honest, it wasn’t as much fun for me. I loved working with Kim. Kim understood the band, Kim was almost the fifth member of the band. At least that’s how it felt. Whereas Max was much more of a engineer than he was a producer. Kim got into the songs with us better, Max just kind of barked out orders (haha). And don’t get me wrong, I listen to the second album now, and it’s definitely different than the first one. I agree with you on that. I’ve grown to like it more, like now than I did then. I think it’s got some pretty quirky things on there, and some very interesting things that we did. But yeah, it definitely was a very different experience than making the first album.
The second album, I always found it odd; there’s nine songs, and with the five on the first side…it took me a long time to get into the second side as much until I saw you guys last year when you did the whole album. It kind of made a little more sense for me, especially the last track, that everything kind of went together a little better, I think, hearing the whole album in its entirety live.
And that’s what I’m talking about. It took me a really long time to kind of get into the feel of it as well, to kind of really enjoy it. It’s funny when back in those days, because when you recorded everything live, like live on to track to make an album, it’s not like now with click tracks and all this other stuff. I can listen to those albums now and really enjoy them. At the time all I could hear were the really, really minor mistakes and it used to drive me crazy. But yeah, when we rehearsed it, was it last year…to do the second album, and play it live from beginning to end, it was really refreshing. It was like, “Oh, okay”. And playing it all together, just like you said, playing it all together – it made it a lot more sense. I got a new appreciation for the second album that I never really had before. And actually, I really quite enjoy it now.
Do you have any favorites from that album as far as playing live?
I love the last song, “Music Of The Night”. The feel of it…
It has a very late-night radio…something you want to hear after hours.
It’s funny because “Music Of The Night” started off as just a jam. We were just horsing around, and we got into this really cool groove. All the music was done, and then Carl came up with the lyrics for it later. It wasn’t one of those songs that either Carl or Andy just brought in half done; it was literally made from scratch. That was fun.
You weren’t around for Friction, and I don’t need to go into what happened…
My wife and I had children. So, for a brief time there I didn’t want to do the travelling. And I could see that our American record label had started to lose some interest in the band. So, I just thought ‘maybe I’ll get off this ride now’ , and let them carry on. That’s the biggest reason for it. And of course, Barry Connors came in and did the third album. I think they toured for about 6 months after that (I’m kind of throwing out numbers), and then the band broke up. And once we put it back together again a few years later, I was ready to start playing again and have fun with the boys. So really, I was really only absent from the band for less than a year, total.
You guys recently played the Friction album in it’s entirety, overseas. Did any of those songs have a beginning with you? Were you around for any of the ideas of what became songs on the album?
None. Again, once we decided to put the band back together in the later 80s… It was supposed to be a ‘one off’ show at Rock N Roll Heaven. A friend of the band’s had died of meningitis, and he was English, and the family didn’t have the money to get him home. So we were going to do this one show to make up the funds to have the body sent back to his family in England. The response from the show was amazing, and that’s when we thought ‘OK, maybe we can do this a bit more’. And the late 80s into the very early 90s we played lots! Lots of festivals in the area and playing weekends in the local bars and stuff like that.
And that’s eventually that turned into doing the fourth album, in 2013. We had an Italian record label (Frontiers) contact us and convince us to do another Coney Hatch album.
What did you think of Four? Were you happy with that?
Oh, I think it’s the best Coney Hatch album there is! It’s my favorite. That was done by us. Andy takes the producing credit on that album, but that was an album that was literally the four of us. And obviously, many years after the original albums, and time to grow as people, and grow instrumentally. I wish the fourth album had gotten more distribution…because it’s my favorite Coney Hatch album.
For me it’s the closest to the first one; it has that energy and raw edge to it…
Exactly. I couldn’t agree with you more. It is a modern version of the first album. I can only imagine, if it had been the second album, I think Coney Hatch would’ve been a much bigger band. There’s some really good radio friendly songs on there, and there’s some great groove stuff that the four of us get into. Great album! Again, absolutely my favorite album!
So, are you retired now?
Well, I am retired from my day job. I have a degree in child and youth work. And for 22 years, I worked at a secure custody young offenders’ facility in Thunder Bay. So basically, kids under the age of 19. But, you know, everything from murderers to gang kids to whatever. I retired from that in 2021, I believe. So, I think it’s been about four years that I retired from that job. And then, of course, immediately went out and joined a bunch of local bands around the Thunder Bay area, to keep myself amused. So, between Coney and three bands up here. I play in a 50s band, with an 81-year-old saxophone player. It’s just an amazing band; it’s so much fun. They’re very well known up here in northern Ontario. And then I play in sometimes three piece, sometimes four-piece rock band that does 70s, 80s, 90s, rock, and with about a 70% Canadian content – including a Coney Hatch song, we do “Monkey Bars”. And then my wife is also a musician, a phenomenal singer. And she has a country band that I was sequestered into probably about five, six years ago. She’s an amazing singer, and she plays guitar, and then she plays bass as well. She is the basically the full-time bass player in this country band. Yeah, fun stuff. It keeps me amused.
You sound busy!
Yeah, busy enough – rehearsals and shows, and trying to keep down the repertoires for four different bands. Yeah, it’s a bit of a thing, but…I am retired, so, yeah, it’s fun. And then throw in, I don’t know, the two and a half to three weeks of summer here in Northern Ontario (I’m, of course joking), but I also like to get out and play golf a couple times a week. So yeah, it keeps me busy.
Well, the corrections thing, is that something you got into after when you left Coney?
No, that was something after I had moved up here to the north. We actually left Toronto, my wife and myself and our two kids. We left Toronto in 91 and came up here because my wife Bonnie is from Thunder Bay, and had a lot of family up here; whereas, at that time, my parents were living in Tennessee, so I only had a brother there. And he took over the house that we were all living in, and we came up here to be around a whole whack of family. It was great for the kids, because, you know, lots of lots of camping….If you’ve ever been to Northern Ontario, as someone who’s been around a lot of this planet, for the four months, especially, of good weather, I will put Northern Ontario up against just about any place on the planet as far as being just beautiful. It just has so much going for it, hundreds, if maybe thousands of inland, beautiful lakes, and just great camping and fishing. And of course, for those who partake, I do not, but there’s great hunting up here.
Yeah, it’s a beautiful place to live. It was great for the kids to grow up, up here. It’s, especially, going back 30 years, it was a very safe place to live. Not that it’s not now. But It was a great move for our family.
And, just from then on, I just log in a lot of air miles, flying back and forth whenever I need to. It’s a quick…. between an hour and a half – two hour flight. And, I have family down there in Toronto. My brother is there, and his whole family, who also look after our mom, they live in the East End. My oldest son was in Vancouver for many years, and then he came back, …maybe almost two years ago, and is working in Toronto. So as an example, when I come down to do the Coney Hatch show, I’ll stay with my oldest boy, and him and I have a great time.
In the years after Coney Hatch, did you do anything like as far as recording, session work, or do you have any offers to do joining bands or anything?
I did. But I was so kind of, I guess, for lack of a better term, I was just burnt out, by the end of 84. I got some kind of interesting offers and stuff; but you know, we had just had our first son…. And, just didn’t want to travel anymore for a while. I had done it for a bunch of years. I just wanted to give that a rest. And I believe it or not, I drove a cab in Toronto for a while; it didn’t go all that well, but I did it for a little bit and then and then just got into… I worked for Ford, in their glass division for a while, and then ended up getting a truck license. And then I drove a crane truck for about the remainder of my time in Toronto before we came up to Thunder Bay. And, then I got into logging up here for a while. Now, still doing Coney Hatch stuff, once we resumed near the end of the 80s. I think 87 is when I think we started back. So, I was still in Toronto for that. And then when I moved up, I just kind of carried on where we were. We became weekend warriors’ kind of kind of thing. I mean, there was a time period there when my second son was born in 88, there was a time period there where Coney was working almost every weekend, at least three out of the four weekends, and, honestly, I didn’t need a job, so I stayed home and played Mr. Mom and looked after our youngest when he was a baby and, and my wife continued working. And then, and then like I said, when we came up to came up to Thunder Bay, I did some log hauling for a while and ended up getting hurt doing that. And then that’s when I went to college. And that’s how I got my child and youth work diploma.
Did you see the band? Like, after Carl left the band, they had a couple other singers in for a bit for a year.
Never saw any of the other parts of Coney except when it was Andy, Steve and Carl, and then they used Barry Connors from Toronto. I saw that; I think one show, just wanted to come out and say Hi to the guys. And again, I was still in Toronto, and saw them once, it was kind of short lived before it started to go into all these other variations of Coney Hatch.
And, of course, both Carl and Andy at different points, going off to do solo stuff. So yeah, no, never saw any of the other versions. And then, like I said, it completely stopped. I don’t know exactly when because I wasn’t involved and then started back up in 87. And, and I’ve been involved ever since.
(A discussion about the amount of shows the band did when it restarted in 87 ensues, with me not be able to read CD covers and Dave trying to recall the 5-city tour for the Best Of release. Dave estimates the band did about 100+ shows from 87 to 91. I show Dave the front page of the local Niagara entertainment rag with Coney Hatch on the front from 1992).
I was at the show in Toronto, where you did the first album. And I was at the show last year, where you guys did all of Outa Hand. I seem to recall you guys went into the studio while you were in town. (I think somebody posted that).
We went in and did the basically the bed tracks. We did two more songs. And they are, to my understanding, close to being done. We just kind of put them in the can and put them away for a little bit just till we kind of needed them. And I know that the boys started.
They did some studio work, the three of them, they didn’t need me because my part’s done. I want to say early fall. So just recently, they’ve gone in and did a lot of the stuff. I’m not sure if the vocals are done yet on them. But anyway, they’re really close. So two more songs. And we haven’t decided yet what to do with them. The last time we had a couple of extra songs, “It’s About a Girl” and an Andy song, “Heaven’s On The Other Side”, and they were put on with the live album. So, again, we have two more songs. Andy’s song is called “R…..”,. and Carl’s is still untitled because as of the last time that we spoke about it, anyway, it was I don’t know if he had settled on lyrics yet… But we haven’t decided yet what to do with those two, whether we’re going to do another eight, nine, 10 songs and actually put out a new album. We have been in discussions to do that, or whether we will put it out with something else. Hard to say. I do know, I believe we are going to record this show, the Unplugged one. And so I guess the two songs could go out with that. Just so you know, just so we keep the fans happy and give them stuff that they want to hear and want to listen to and …just keep putting out some new stuff every once in a while, that so that it makes sense to continue to come out and see us. (haha)
Will the Unplugged show will be like just the specific album or will be a crossover of everything?
It is in line with the anniversary edition of the first album. So, it’s going to be the full first album, and I believe two of the tracks that were like “Dreamland” and “Where I Draw The Line”. I don’t think we’re going to do the third one because it was never actually completely done. So, I believe that’s what we’re going to be doing is mainly doing the first album.
And again, we’re doing it Unplugged. I was starting off where I was just going to use bongos and now I’m going to use a real drum kit. But I doubt I’ll be using like real drumsticks. I’ll use variations. There’s a drumstick that you can get that have a bunch of bamboo rods in it. It makes it a lot quieter. So that’s plan A for me. But we’ll see where it ends up going. But the guys…I believe Carl is going completely on an acoustic. Andy is going to play acoustic bass, but I think he’s also going to play a couple of songs on an electric bass. And Sean is, from the last time we talked, is going to play kind of a halfway in between, if you will, an acoustic and an electric guitar, which will, still make it, I think, again, in this drummer’s opinion, a little easier for him to do solos and stuff like that. But still, it kind of sounds like an acoustic. That’s my understanding of the instrument he’s looking to play.
Do you keep in touch with Steve at all?
I don’t; but I don’t live in Toronto anymore. You know what I mean? So, I don’t really get an opportunity to see Steve. I know Andy and Steve were always really good friends. And I do believe they kind of keep in touch to a point. Last time I saw him would have been whatever the last show was. What did what did Tony’s East and West, what did they turn into whatever they’re called now(?) We played those two after we recorded the fourth album. So probably around 2014 would have been probably the last time that I saw Steve.
I saw you guys in 2014 in the Falls and I think Sean was playing then.
OK. So maybe it was 2013 because, again, that was the release date of Four. Maybe that was the shows that we did. That’s also very likely.
What did you grow up on as far as favorite bands, drummers and albums?
Well, I would say for me, Zeppelin – find me a drummer that doesn’t say John Bonham, right!? Ian Paice, Deep Purple, they were big for me. As a matter of fact, my earlier style, I would say mirrored Ian Paice a lot more than it did John Bonham. And then for me, bands that I loved, Aerosmith, again before they got sober (haha). I liked all that stuff. I saw them, I think, two or three times. And matter of fact, my youngest son – his second name is Tyler. And it’s purposely after Steve Tyler. And then again, just from learning to play, we were playing so much AC/DC, that there are times when we are putting our own stuff together, and Andy will literally say to me “Start off doing a Rudd!”, which is Phil Rudd, the early drummer for AC/DC. And that is just a pure and heavy 2 and 4, between the snare and the kick. And there’s others… I remember going to see Missing Persons, Andy and I, in the late 80s. We went to see Missing Persons in Buffalo, at this bar that Coney would play every once in a while, one of our favorite places to play. Missing Persons, which was Terry Bozzio’s band, and he was originally Frank Zappa’s drummer, and his wife at the time was the singer, and then some side guys (I apologize to them, I don’t know who they are). I remember standing there in this bar, watching Terry Bozzio play drums, and I leaned over to Andy and said “I don’t think Terry Bozzio and I play the same instrument!” He was doing stuff that completely, so far out of my league. A different style of music of course, but he was doing stuff that made my jaw drop. And of course, being on the same label as Rush, there was a couple of different times that we got to go see Rush. And I had gone and seen Rush as a fan back in the early days. I’d seen Rush a bunch of times. And again, what drummer isn’t going to say that Neil Peart wasn’t one of the best of all time, right!? My dad played drums, so when I took up the sport…the sport of drumming , I think was in grade 5.. Anyway, he took me to see Buddy Rich once, and then I went to see him another time. And this was a guy doing stuff with a pretty small kit but just doing stuff that was unworldly. It was just amazing to watch. I would love to say Buddy Rich was an influence, but he was more of a hero than an influence. I just couldn’t do what he did. But as far as what I wanted to be as a drummer, yeah there’s some Bonham in there, and Ian Paice, and throw in a sprinkle of Phil Rudd, I think you’d come close to what I ended up with.
Did you ever go and see some of the early Canadian bands such as April Wine with Jerry Mercer, or Lighthouse with Skip Prokop?
You know what, Lighthouse played my High School! It would’ve been 74, 75, somewhere in there. I was a kid, and I remember it was really cool, great band. And I got to see Max Webster that way too; again – played my high school. Kim and I had a great laugh over that. You probably know that Carl got to play in April Wine for a couple of years. And actually, my oldest son roadied for them for a summer, while he was in high school. Him and Jerry became best of buddies because both my boys play drums, and my oldest one, he’s an incredible drummer, they both are! But seeing Jerry, the guy was like a machine. He was a phenomenal drummer, and some of the stuff he did, some of the off-time stuff that April Wine would do … They were one of those bands that should’ve been SO much bigger than they are. As much as they are in Canada – they’re legendary, but as far as the world goes, I am always shocked that April Wine was not a bigger band than they were. And Jerry was a big part of that. He was just a powerhouse. And again, even in his later years… I think in ’06 Coney Hatch got to play the Sweden Rock Festival, and April Wine was there, and I got to talk to Myles, and he absolutely remembered my son. And the connection between many Canadian bands, I mean we’ve done many shows with Goddo, we did a bunch of shows with The Headpins, we’ve done shows with Lee Aaron. Yeah, the Canadian market, when you kind of get to that level, it’s all kind of one big happy family. It’s always so fun to do festivals in Canada because it’s like Homecoming, you get to see all these guys and girls that you’ve known for years; all these bands that have done well in Canada, and beyond, of course.
One of the first shows I saw was April Wine in ’84, and Jerry’s solos were a highlight of their shows.
Yeah, absolutely. And he did them right up until… and I went and saw them, I think this is when my son got hired, and Carl was playing in the band at the time. I think it was Jerry’s 65th (?) birthday, and his solo was as good as it was 30 years earlier! The guy was doing drum solos right up until the day he retired from April Wine.
He was something to see, with the whistle going and everything…
Like I said, the man was a machine. I don’t consider him underrated – he IS underrated. I think he should be talked about in the same way that Neil Peart is spoken about; I really believe that. He did great stuff and is a cool guy.
(We end things with me showing Dave a few more things from my collection ;-))
*Live photos of Dave and of Coney Hatch, courtesy of Donald Gadziola – https://www.instagram.com/rushguyyyz/
LINKS:
www,coneyhatch.com
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https://www.instagram.com/seankellyguitar/
http://www.andycurranmusic.com
Outsider Rock 