Guest Column // Parkdale Life – A Musical Journey in West Toronto

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Looking Downtown from Parkdale on Canada Day | Photo credit: John Charlton

Parkdale is a former working class neighbourhood in West Toronto, long on the cusp of gentrification but perhaps never quite there – and home to an astonishingly deep and interconnected community of musical life. Bands like The Beauties, NQ Arbuckle, as well as more established voices like Luke Doucet and Melissa Mclelland resonate around this fertile musical neighbourhood, creating a rugged and soulful new Canadian twang. There’s clearly something special going on here. Foremost among Parkdale musicians is roots singer-songwriter Justin Rutledge, who has emerged in the last five years as a major voice in new Canadian music.

At 24 he made a remarkable first album No Never Alone, released first in England. It emerged fully formed and clear in its intent – a lyrical and atmospheric exploration of love, loss and redemption in a cold landscape – a contemporary Canadian Winterreisse if you will. The first track – “Too sober to sleep / Too drunk to cry” – sets the tone – drawing you in with poetic lyrics, a gothic alt-country swirl of pedal steel and a quiet, sometimes cracked, soulful voice. This voice takes you through a journey peppered with Catholic religious imagery (blood, crosses and lambs abound), references to Walt Whitman, loneliness and yearning, and a Mark Twain like wistfulness. It ends with the most beautiful version of the traditional song ‘The Blackest Crow’ I have ever heard – as the banjo and fiddle fade out you can see the isolated footprints in the snow. This was the real thing – Cormac McCarthy meets WB Yeats meets – what? Wintry urban Toronto? The cold north of a huge country? It was poetry, soul, and grit.

Three albums later Rutledge has grown more mature but still has a determined literary edge to his songwriting. His second album The Devil on a Bench in Stanley Park had a more raw sound with songs about bitter relationships set in the far North, huge landscapes and skies and urban life. His third, Man Descending (the title from a short story by Saskatchewan writer Guy Vandehaeghe) is more mellow and thoughtful even than the first – with the dark, nervous atmosphere set by the first song ‘St Peter’ (“There’s a cross on the wall, crooked and lame / a thief in the night / buckets of rain / there’s a lion in the street / the city’s alight / St Peter don’t you lock that gate tonight” …). Literary references pepper the album (love measured with coffee spoons) and it ends with paean to the Canadian wilderness, ‘Alberta Breeze’, with melting ice and bleating (or is it bleeding?) lambs.

Rutledge – who I had first met 2 years ago in a provincial Ontario town on a Canada Council study tour – has arranged to show me Parkdale and its musical life. From the Cadillac Lounge through to the venerable Dakota Tavern we run into musicians on both sides of the bar – a great way to pick up a great band. The tiny bar Not my Dog – reveals singer–songwriter Daniel Sky (behind) and Juno nominated blues singer Treasa Levasseur (in front, playing later) – talking about their music, their CDs, the guidance and influence of veteran guitarist David Baxter and the small venues in which they play. In the same bar we also meet a member of the Beauties – house band of The Dakota Tavern who will back Justin at this year’s SXSW. What’s revealed as we wander is a perfect melting pot for alt-country, roots and urban twang, all kinds of music made by artists set on making a living enough to keep on making the music. David Baxter’s name comes up frequently as a guiding force in what is happening here.

I run into him at the Dakota Tavern, where I was intent on hearing another Toronto based alt-country singer, Joshua Cockerill, who originally hails from Calgary. The Trick With Your Heart I’m Learning To Do is an eloquent first album that he’s put out himself. He is a young looking 21. But when he takes the stage at the Dakota to do three forty minute sets, growling from behind a twanging semi-acoustic guitar songs of raw, literate emotion, this is clearly no ordinary boy from Calgary. His band features David Baxter and Burke Carroll, legendary steel guitarist, and the sound they make is the real thing – prairies and drinking, living and loving done hard.

David Baxter looks like an old testament prophet with a sense of fun. He has had a hand in many of the records emanating from songwriters in Toronto – some coming from his studio – and is proud about what his young people have done. He says he shows them standards and tradition, and feels sorry that there are not more venues for them to play in more often. I tell him my impression of the concentrated musical community here, and that opportunities to play, to put out a CD and make a living writing and playing music seem to be many. He says things aren’t the same as ‘the old days’, when he was touring Ontario, pumping out multiple sets every night for six nights in a row. He’s finally made an album of his own (Day and Age) – more laid back than many of the records he plays on by the young people, but you can see the solid tradition and authenticity he brings.

Many of the musicians I meet work in bars to make a living (hence the ease of bumping into them), and the lucky few might get small grants from the Canada Council, the Ontario or Toronto Arts Councils, or a scheme called FACTOR, funded by federal money and levies on the record industry and radio stations to promote Canadian music and musicians in the face of homogenous indifference by the multinationals. Perhaps we need such a thing in this country. Combined with a generous and eager community of musicians, ample chances to play live and to record, and the continuity of tradition provided by older pros like David Baxter, and you can begin to see why something is going down here.

While ushering me through this musical community Rutledge talks about his new album The Early Widows, (released in Canada in early May) which is more edgy in sound than the others - but which displays the same intelligent, literary approach to songwriting as before. The opening track, ‘Be a Man’ sets a fretful tone in sound and words as choice of courage or cowardice is pondered – a tone that infuses the whole album from the fine psychological detail of songs like ‘Jack of Diamonds’ and ‘All Around this World’ to the anxious emotion of ‘Turn Around’. Many of the songs are part of a project with author Michael Ondaatje to write songs for a play based on his novel Divisadero – for the character Coop – a characteristically quiet, intense, suffering but redeemed character in the book. He’s pleased with it as a departure from his previous records – there’s more electric guitar and complexity of sound – but it is still recognisable as a Justin Rutledge record – with a reflective emotional journey at its core. It is also clearly rooted in the fertile musical soil of this corner of West Toronto.

How long Parkdale will retain its unique character and nurture musicians and artists in the way it does is open to question. A loft development called ‘The Bohemian Embassy’ is opening nearby on the site of former artists’ studios. The developers and bankers are moving in and we know what that means.

Alan Davey, Chief Executive of Arts Council England (and champion of Canadian roots music!)