A FAN’S NOTES

All Down the Line

A train arrived in Edmonton Sunday, just one coach, one coach, one coach long. Mack MacKenzie of Three O’clock Train performed a remarkably intimate concert in somebody’s living room. There were nine or ten mismatched chairs arranged haphazardly in the dining room in front of a couch and behind a levee of floor cushions, ottomans to the left blocking off the hall. Outside in the backyard were two fire pits and an immense blue-tarped tipi stuffed with rugs and couches. There were psychedelic paintings on the wooden fences. I didn’t hear any tinkling wind chimes, but the evening was still.

Getting to the show took a little Google and Facebook detecting. Neither Ann nor I had ever heard of a venue called ESPA ArtHaus. I eventually reached Lyn, the owner, on the phone. She requested that I not publish her address on social media. “How do we get tickets?” “There aren’t any.” “Well then, how much does it cost to get in?” “Nothing, although I’m sure there’ll be a donation jar.” “Oh, that’s easy, I can do that.” “Come for about 7:30 and BYOB.” “Oh, hey, what does ESPA stand for? My partner Ann is a violinist and taught in the Edmonton Strings Program.” Lyn laughed, “No, it’s the Edmonton Small Press Archive.” And indeed, her welcoming and eclectic home housed a trove of posters, pamphlets and comix from the underground.

While we knew that Mack was on a DIY solo Canadian tour, I tried to explain Three O’clock Train to Ann, who they were and what they had meant to me. Montreal has always had and always will have a vibrant live music scene. The prime of my fandom was the late 70s and early 80s. There was something in the air but not on the airwaves. Jim Zeller, Pagliaro’s harmonica player, was fronting a band playing a type of music that he described as “psychobilly” to the Montreal Gazette. And there was Three O’clock Train, fronted by Mack and his brother Stu. I vaguely recall another member of the group going on to join Men Without Hats (‘Safety Dance’); it’s all a bit hazy now.

“They should be as revered as the Hip and Blue Rodeo but they didn’t sound like either of them. Imagine the ferocity of the early Rolling Stones mixed with the sensibilities of the Band. And punk,” I said to Ann. It’s not fair to compare and slot musicians even though newcomers seek some context. Sunday night I asked Mack about this need to categorize and he said, “The closest thing to us was Rank and File, do you know them?” Yes, Texas cowpunk, and coincidentally, music made by a pair of brothers.

Station 10 was a bar on Ste-Catherine, a little west of Fort, a little east of the Seville Theatre and the Montreal Forum. The joint was named for the district’s notorious police station (since renumbered 25), a cop shop best avoided; rumour had it that arrestees frequently tripped down stairs, awkward in handcuffs. Sometimes Station 10 the bar would show sparkling new MTV the way nearby taverns would show Montreal Canadiens or Montreal Expos games. It was a long and narrow place with the stage at the back. My first Three O’clock Train gig has stayed with me for decades, a local band, good looking guys who didn’t come from another planet, in a local bar rattling the windows and the doors, cracking the plaster with a glorious noise I’d not ever heard before. It seemed as if something massive was taking shape in the cloud of agitated cigarette smoke. I seriously wondered, “Could Station 10 be the next Marquee Club or CBGB? Could this band be exploding in the neighbourhood where I live, write, go to school and work? Wow.”

Time and rock ‘n’ roll magic are ethereal things. I consigned my unpublished first novel to the trash and moved to Alberta in search of a better job and a better life. I lost track of Three O’clock Train, their big time inexplicably delayed. In the late 90s I came across a CBC Three O’clock Train CD in a downtown Calgary HMV. The price was $50. I held it, examined it. I recalled that the first CD I ever bought was Beggars Banquet, the $30 hook being the toilet wall cover art Decca initially refused to release in 1968. Fifty dollars was too much, my second marriage was slow-motion careening into the ditch and I was teetering on the brink of personal bankruptcy.

Ann and I arrived at the ArtHaus on time, which is to say we were early. Mack greeted us like old friends, and wasn’t this better than Pagliaro yelling “Fuck off!” at me back in those faded Montreal days when I’d simply asked Pag a question. Sunday I was the unhippest of hipsters, wearing a Three O’clock Train t-shirt to the Edmonton event. One doesn’t sport the headliner’s merch at a show, it’s just not done. Mack smiled when he recognized the design beneath my leather jacket. The shirt was a gift from my sister and her husband who’d seen him perform recently in Montreal in a live commemoration of the 40^th anniversary of The Last Waltz. Their snare aside from the music of the Band was the presence of Tom Wilson of Blackie and the Rodeo Kings, an ad hoc group the four of us admire. A random thought at this moment as I type: a Train and Blackie double bill would be some kind of barnstorming; Christ, yeah, Ann and I would pay to see that, money’s no object.

Mack had driven most of Sunday from Saskatoon. I said, “Good thing it’s not winter.” He replied, “I planned it. I’ll be in California when it hits.” He then revealed that sessions with members of Rank and File were scheduled down in Los Angeles. This suggested some good news, that there is more to come from the group beyond the spate of remastered catalogue reissues. I learned too the origin of the band’s name. Mack said, “The bars in Montreal closed at three AM.” Yeah, don't I know it? Three o’clock train was his and his mates’ euphemism for going the distance, staying out past last call and then getting home somehow. All aboard! He continued, “We needed a band name in a hurry and it’s not easy to name a band, but we all agreed.”

Mack’s set was unaffected, intense; he played whatever the hell he felt like playing in whatever sequence he wanted in a stranger’s inner-city living room in Edmonton, Alberta at this moment in time. ‘The Devil Like Me,’ ‘A Fire I Can’t Put Out’ and ‘I’m Not Your Indian Boy’ were the standouts from his songbook. He slayed ‘Love Hurts,’ healed its wounds and scars, covered Dylan from Blood on the Tracks and weirdly, a 70s hit from Electric Light Orchestra. Between songs he sipped from a small glass of wine and told a few stories gathered from a lifetime in music and the requisite roadwork. I sat transfixed and thinking, “Here we are again nearly 35 years down the line, halfway across the country and it doesn’t get any better than this, even in my memory. Wow.”