A LONG WAY FROM MANY PLACES

Gasoline Alley and a Visitation from the Spirit of Elvis

Around this time of the month in 2012 Ann and I travelled to Lethbridge, AB to catch Bob Dylan IN SHOW & CONCERT! Part of the attraction was using those proper nouns in the same sentence without it sounding like brown acid babble. I was reminded of that little escapade Wednesday because we hit the road again this week for an intimate performance that didn’t quite compute.

Modern Nashville icon Rodney Crowell, performer, writer, producer and friend of the late and legendary Guy Clark, has been omnipresent in Alberta this August, playing any music festival anywhere. If you’re not familiar with him, you’re familiar with his songs as sung by others and they include Roseanne Cash, Nitty Gritty Dirt Band and Bob Seger; he’s a bit like John Hiatt in that anonymous hit-maker sense. Crowell’s two latest releases are masterful collaborations with the utterly sublime Emmylou Harris. A tour scheduling quirk placed him in a pub situated in the only place in the country named after a Rod Stewart album.

In terms of growth, the Edmonton-Calgary corridor has been one of the most explosive areas in Canada over the past decade. It is always rush hour on the Queen Elizabeth II Highway, every county, town, city, provincial park, tourist attraction, golf course and federal jail is connected. Smack dab in the psychological middle, where bus riders and drivers pause for cigarettes, snacks, gas and parking lot beers on the outskirts of Red Deer, Alberta’s third largest city, is Gasoline Alley, a seemingly endless strip of signs, services and recreational vehicle dealerships.

Ann and I drove south over the rolling parkland. The fields were green. The stands of trees, windbreaks, always in distance, were blue. The sun was invisible in the ashen sky, there was heat and the smell of wildfire smoke blown east over the Rockies by prevailing winds. Ann always does the driving because I could never be bothered to get a proper license. My father drove if he absolutely had to. My mother was a hazard, no matter what she says now in her dotage. Driving just wasn’t an expected Chuck Berry, Beach Boys or Bruce Springsteen rite of passage for me growing up. My passenger job with Ann is to be of service: I punch her gum out from its blister pack; I light her cigarettes; I open her sparkling water; I change the music; I fish her sunglasses out of the glove box.

I didn’t need to do any navigation on this particular trip because both of us have been down this road a thousand times before.  Neither one of us has ever contemplated dawdling for longer than three-quarters of an hour in Gasoline Alley, let alone booking a room for the night. Pulling into the strip from the highway we realized that there were infant Gasoline Alleys behind the original, newly paved back streets and parking lots cluttered with more restaurants, hotels and big box retailers all nurtured by development. There was a there there now, a micro-city near the county line, a colossal outdoor mall haphazardly designed to purvey services and stuff, born again Bibles too, Jesus knows.

The Hideout is a thrown up building dating back to the chain restaurant school of architecture, rustic industrial. There are wood and stone decorative accents inside. The ceiling is high and open, exposing ducts, joists and trusses. The dinner special was prime rib which cost two dollars less than the price of admission. Ann’s $30 concert ticket was numbered 002, mine was 003. Ann and I opted for sandwiches to split and share, a Cuban for a Reuben and tastier fare than the nearby Donut Mill. Our attentive waitress thought we were clever. There were plywood panels laid on the pool tables for extra seating. To our right four fat guys with ten years on me stared at their drinks as their impossibly thin, leathery wives talked too much and too loudly.

The warm up act was a shy local kid with chops, the brim of his ballcap could not have been tugged any lower. Next came the announcement from the stage every road-tripping concertgoer dreads: Rodney wasn’t feeling well; he was suffering from hypertension. The update was worse: Rodney had gone to the hospital. Ann and I know all about emergency wait times in Alberta. Ann said, “That’s it.” I said, “In the old days it used to be drug busts or overdoses.” She said, “We might as well stay.” I said, “There’s nothing else to do here.” We agreed together to forego the proffered refunds.

An acoustic guitarist and a fiddler came out, the other members of the Rodney Crowell Trio. They were unused to vamping. They billed themselves as Two Guys on Stage. They thanked the audience for selling out their debut. Regrettably they had no merchandise for sale. People began to file out. The duo handled the crisis with witty aplomb. Their set included a stellar version of Elvis’s ‘Mystery Train.’ Maybe it was the summoned ghost of Elvis playing puppet-master, but Ann and I soon experienced the Miracle of Gasoline Alley.

Rodney had been released from Red Deer General. Rodney was in the building. Ann and I changed tables, moving closer to the stage and acquiring better sightlines. Crowell made his entrance with an electric guitar. Even the leather ladies shut up for a moment. He was apologetic and somewhat perplexed by his own health, “I don’t drink. I don’t smoke. I’m fit. Doctors can’t tell me what’s wrong with me.” During the ensuing applause I thought, “Elvis left us 40 years ago this week. Don’t rush to join him, we’re not worth it.” Crowell performed an abridged, audience-friendly set, filled with songs everybody knew. Perhaps fittingly, the highlight for me was a raucous cover of ‘That’s All Right,’ Elvis’s first single. Ann and I danced in Gasoline Alley. We never once imagined that that could ever happen.