Luke Doucet Hearts Toronto

09/08/08 4:16pm

by David McPherson (CHARTattack)

Over tea at the Butler's Pantry on Toronto's Queen Street West, Luke Doucet and I enjoy some causal conversation about his Blood's Too Rich album. We chat about his Nashville sabbatical with wife Melissa McLelland, the lost love for the guitar in rock, our mutual admiration for Neil Young and Tom Petty, and the Canadian music scene. While the singer/songwriter, producer and Gretsch guitar god, who spends more than 320 days on the road a year, has a hard time defining where home is these days, it's clear this stretch of Toronto is as close as it gets. We sit by the window and every few minutes he waves to a passer-by, including a guy from the neighbourhood guitar shop who he jokes is his psychiatrist.

ChartAttack: You and Melissa lived in Nashville for a while in 2007. Want to share some thoughts on your Music City sojourn?
Luke Doucet: Our intention was to spend six months there, then come back to Canada for the summer, then see what we thought about going back there in the fall. When the fall rolled around, it got cold and we were so busy and happy to be back in Canada, we didn't give moving back to Nashville a second thought. There are a lot of good things in Nashville: the history is incredible, there are great musicians there, but a lot of those people are playing crappy music to make a living and that's why they go there in the first place. It's a good place to go and make a living playing music and not have to tour. There are always gigs or a session, but if your priority is making a living without going on the road, then you're going to take a lot of shitty gigs just to make money. I don't begrudge people that, but it's not what I want to do with my life right now.

How do you rate the current music scene in Canada?
The Canadian music scene and the Toronto independent music scene are the strongest in the world. That is not careless hyperbole. It's both the sheer quantity, quality and the variety. Whether it's blues, jazz, rock 'n' roll, indie, or country... I feel like I could bring somebody from outside Toronto into the city and take them to a different bar every night for a month and show them quality music by original singer/songwriters with a cast of musicians that are highly qualified to play that music. I couldn't do that in London, England I guarantee you I would run out of steam in three days... I tried!

When I come home from being on the road if I go out to The Dakota Tavern or The Rivoli or the Horseshoe, Cameron House or wherever you go to watch music, the caliber and quantity is so much better than almost anywhere in the world that it's almost laughable. I'm not running for mayor and have no vested interest in blowing sunshine up the ass of this town, but history is going to reflect what I'm saying.

It's not strictly Toronto, though. You could say almost the same thing about Winnipeg. I can think of five bands: The Perpetrators, Nathan, The D.Rangers, Novillero, The Weakerthans... I can't think of five better bands anywhere. Those are world-class, and that's in a city of 600,000 in the middle of fuckin' nowhere where it's freezing cold and no one wants to go!

Tell us about the genesis of the song "The Day Rick Danko Died."
It's not so much about him, but about a guy I met in Woodstock, New York. It's autobiographical. I was down there working on a record and I went into this particular local pub every night for a pint before I went to bed. I met this old guy and we got to be friends as I saw him every day. He came in one day really upset, telling me that Danko had died. I didn't even know they were friends. The song is more about this old guy named Allen, whose last name I never got, but it's about him more than about Danko.

Listening to your record, the sense is that Danko and The Band are a strong influence.
Music From Big Pink came out in 1968. I was born in 1973 and my parents were huge music fans, so they brought music into the house that was always really good. The Band were one of those few groups. Others included: J.J. Cale, Randy Newman, Willie Nelson, Paul Simon, The Rolling Stones, The Beatles and Stevie Wonder. I have never known a day in my life without them because they had records out before I was born, and my parents owned all those records. That was the environment I was born into, as opposed to having to discover it because my big brother had the cool record collection. I got into Led Zeppelin because my step-dad came and said, "Check this shit out!"