After You've Gone Read online

  After You’ve Gone

  After You’ve Gone

  LORI HAHNEL

  ©Lori Hahnel, 2014

  All rights reserved

  No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher or a licence from The Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency (Access Copyright). For an Access Copyright licence, visit www.accesscopyright.ca or call toll free to 1-800-893-5777.

  Thistledown Press Ltd.

  410, 2nd Avenue North

  Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, S7K 2C3

  www.thistledownpress.com

  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

  Hahnel, Lori, author

  After you've gone / Lori Hahnel.

  Issued in print and electronic formats.

  ISBN 978-1-927068-90-8 (pbk.).–ISBN 978-1-77187-012-2 (html).–

  ISBN 978-1-77187-013-9 (pdf )

  I. Title.

  PS8615.A365A64 2014C813'.6C2014-905345-2

  C2014-905346-0

  Cover and book design by Jackie Forrie

  Printed and bound in Canada

  Quote from “What’ll I Do?” by Irving Berlin, copyright 1923 (public domain).

  Quote from BOMP! Saving the World One Record at a Time. Pasadena: AMMO Books, 2007 by Suzy Shaw and Mick Farren. Used with permission from Suzy Shaw.

  Thistledown Press gratefully acknowledges the financial assistance of the Canada Council for the Arts, the Saskatchewan Arts Board, and the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund for its publishing program.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  My sincere thanks to Diane Girard for her thoughtful feedback on this book almost since its inception, and for general support and friendship. Much gratitude to Michael Kenyon for your wise guidance and for your poetic ear. Big thanks to Suzy Shaw at BOMP Records for your generosity. I am grateful to the reference staff at Regina Public Library, especially Sharon Maier in the Prairie History Room, for assistance in helping me discover the Regina of the 1930s and beyond. Thank you to Skip Taylor for his insights on the Regina old school punk scene. To Rea Tarvydas and Jan Markley, thank you for being there. Finally, my love and thanks always to Bruce, Nick and Dan.

  I am also indebted to the authors of the following books, which provided me with a wealth of invaluable detail:

  Blecha, Peter. Music in Washington: Seattle and Beyond. Chicago: Arcadia Publishing, 2007.

  Blecha, Peter. Sonic Boom: The History of Northwest Rock. Milwaukee: Backbeat Books, 2009.

  Dregni, Michael. Gypsy Jazz: In Search of Django Reinhardt and the Soul of Gypsy Swing. New York: Oxford University Press, 2008.

  Mitchell, Ken. The Jazz Province: The Story of Jazz in Saskatchewan. Regina: Regina Jazz Society, 2005.

  Shaw, Suzy and Farren, Mick. BOMP! Saving the World One Record at a Time. Pasadena: AMMO Books, 2007.

  Waiser, Bill. All Hell Can’t Stop Us: The On-to-Ottawa Trek and Regina Riot. Markham, ON: Fitzhenry and Whiteside, 2002.

  To Nick and Dan

  and Django Reinhardt

  Contents

  Acknowledgments

  Part One

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Part Two

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-One

  Part Three

  Twenty-Two

  Twenty-Three

  Twenty-Four

  Twenty-Five

  Twenty-Six

  Part Four

  Twenty-Seven

  Twenty-Eight

  Twenty-Nine

  Thirty

  Part One

  One

  Seattle, Washington

  June 12, 2007

  MARK AND I SIT SIDE BY side on the packed bleachers in Seattle Center’s Key Arena on a dark, rainy Sunday morning. Looks like this is a sold-out show. I’ve been to lots of shows at Seattle Center before — Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Mudhoney, The Pretenders, Iggy Pop, Bob Dylan a couple of times — but not usually this early in the day. Then again, this isn’t a concert. This morning’s show is Seattle University’s commencement ceremony. Our son Bill will walk across the stage any minute now to get his parchment. He’s on the floor talking to the pretty, dark-haired girl beside him. I can tell he’s nervous, maybe has a little stage fright, by the way he strokes his sandy beard, and the way two little patches of red stand out on his cheeks just like when he was little. I guess it’s a very emotional thing for all of us, maybe more for Mark and me than for him, since neither of us ever went to university. And even though we came to the ceremony when he finished his bachelor’s, and we maybe should be getting used to this kind of thing, it still amazes me.

  I know what the stage fright thing is like: I’ve been on stage lots of times, and so has Mark. Bill’s dad, I mean. It’s only been in the last little while I’ve started calling him ‘Bill’s dad’. When I meet people who don’t know him and just call him ‘Mark’ they don’t know who I’m talking about. But, yeah, neither of us went to university. I just barely made it out of high school. And now here’s Bill, getting his master’s degree in Mechanical Engineering. Don’t know where he got those genes from. It certainly wasn’t from either of us. Of course, Mom taught math and Dad was an accountant, so there’s math genes there, but they skipped a generation. I got my genes from Grandma Lita and Grandpa Bill. It was always music right from the start with me. Maybe that’s why it seems funny to be away from it now. Funny strange, not funny ha ha.

  Something else I’ve been away from for a while is Mark. I haven’t seen him in six months or so even though we both still live in Seattle. I don’t think there was as much grey in his beard the last time I saw him. We’ve been in touch by phone, of course, and email; there’s been a lot of back and forth over our other baby, Curse Records. But seeing him in person again I can’t help but think he’s aged since I moved out. I’m sure he’s thinking the same thing about me. Or not. When you live with someone for twenty-five years or so you think you know them. To the extent that you think you know what they’re thinking, even. But since we split up I’ve realized that’s not true. When things start to go bad you realize how little you actually know the person. And you realize that Chrissie Hynde was right — it is a thin line between love and hate.

  Finally, the Engineering students file up to get their scrolls. It’s quite a show, I have to say; the bright multi-coloured hoods and tassels against the sober black gowns, the ceremony, and of course the music. A nice solo piano performance of Elgar’s “Pomp and Circumstance,” what else? Bill looks so handsome, so grown up. He’s really got it together, that kid, in spite of his parents. I’ll tell him later what I’ve told him before, how proud I am of him. But I don’t know if I can ever really express to him just how proud of him I am. I hand Mark my camera; I’m too teary to be able to take a good picture.

  “Elsa,” Mark says. “Are you okay?”

  I wipe under my eyes quickly with the back of my hand. “I’m fine. It’s just a big moment.”

  He puts him arm around my shoulders for a moment. “I know.”

  Bill’s so young and he’s accomplished so much. And here I am, about to sell a record label that’s been on the verge of bankruptcy since Mark and I started it in the mid-eighties. So much
of it I’ve loved — all the people we worked with, the records we put out. But my own music got put on the back burner. Way on the back burner. Sometimes I feel like I’ve lost it completely. The thought of being in a band again scares me, at my age. In one way. In another way, I’d love to do it, if I had the time. And maybe soon I’ll have the time.

  After the ceremony’s over, there’s a reception in the lobby. Mark and I nibble on cheese and fruit while Bill makes his way through the crowd to us.

  “Congratulations, sweetie!” As I put my arms around him, I notice the background music: Django Reinhardt’s “Minor Swing”. And funny, I can’t help thinking as Mark claps Bill’s back and shakes his hand and takes some pictures, that somehow we have three generations of the family present here, not just two. It’s almost as if Grandma Lita has joined us. I’ll call her tomorrow and tell her how it all went today. She’s almost as proud of Bill as I am.

  Bill still shoots glances now and then, probably when she’s not looking, at the girl he was talking to earlier. I was that age not long ago, wasn’t I? Am I really old enough to have a son with a master’s degree? Again, I think of Lita. If I feel bewildered about the passing of time, I wonder how she must feel. I will have to call her.

  Maybe Sandy Denny and Fairport Convention said it best: “Who Knows Where the Time Goes?”

  Two

  Lita

  Regina, Saskatchewan

  June 1935

  I PUT MY GUITAR CASE DOWN and fished the little square of newspaper out of my jacket pocket. The address was right — Dewdney Avenue, not far from the C.P.R. Yards. But the building was a corrugated steel Quonset, like the ones they use to store farm equipment and such, with long, dry, yellow prairie grass all around, not far from the tar-smelling tracks. Could the Syncopation Five be a professional outfit, I wondered, if they practised in such a grubby place? Darlene had assured me that they were really good the time she’d seen them at a dance. This didn’t feel right. Still, things were tough all over. Maybe it wasn’t easy to find a place to rehearse. And since I’d taken the streetcar all the way from downtown I figured I might as well knock, anyway. The grass crunched like straw under my feet as I walked up to the door.

  The tall man who opened it had sandy hair, no part, slicked back from his forehead. He wore suspenders, had his sleeves rolled up, and a cigarette in a yellow celluloid holder was clamped between his teeth. He smiled a little when he saw me. “Yes?”

  “I came to audition. It said two o’clock in the paper.” I was nervous, had half-hoped there wouldn’t be any answer when I knocked, so I could go home and tell Darlene it must have been a prank, or a misprint. She’d been all excited about it, more than me, almost. About noon she came down to my room.

  “You’re not going looking like that,” she’d said. I had taken some time to select my outfit, actually thought I looked pretty good. Before I could answer, she took the situation in hand. She Marcel-waved my unruly black hair, fixed my make-up, even loaned me her new chevron-striped skirt. The skirt did more for Darlene than it did for me, though. The blue stripes brought out the blue in her eyes, and it fit her better. I felt like a fool, wondered if the man thought I looked like one.

  “Yeah, two o’clock,” he said. “But we ain’t looking for a singer.”

  I was almost ready to crawl away then, but something made me stay. Maybe the thought of what Darlene would say if I left without even playing for them. “I’m not a singer. I’m a guitarist.”

  “Are you, now?” He seemed amused. “Well, c’mon in. What’s your name?”

  “Lita.”

  It took a minute for my eyes to adjust from the bright Sunday afternoon outside to the dim, smoke-blue Sunday afternoon inside. A dark guy sat behind a drum kit, a round-faced blond boy lurked in the corner behind his stand-up bass. A stooped man with thin hair tuned a fiddle.

  “Look who’s come to audition, fellas,” said the tall guy with the cigarette holder. “Lita.”

  “Hey, Lita, where ya been all my life?” the guy behind the drums asked. The bass and the fiddle smirked.

  “Aw, c’mon, now,” the tall one said. “She came here for an audition, so we’re going to give her one. Besides, no one else is here yet. I was starting to think that damn Leader-Post didn’t run our ad. We might as well see what she can do while we’re waiting. So, Lita, are you ready to jam?”

  I took my guitar out of its case. It was a single resonator National steel guitar, prize of my life, which lived under my bed since I’d won it in a poker game a year before. I sat on an empty stool. “Sure. Can I tune to you?” I asked the bass player.

  “Do you know ‘Sweet Georgia Brown’?” the tall one asked.

  “Sure.”

  As I suspected, he was the singer. Played ukulele, too. Not much, a bit of accent here and there. He was a pretty good singer, though. I noticed that.

  It was kind of strange to play with them. I’d never played with anybody else before, not real live musicians. It was a little different than playing along with my records, all right. But fun.

  The tall one put down his ukulele, looked at me and nodded. “Not bad, not bad. I’m Bill, by the way, Bill MacInnes. That’s George Jeworsky on bass, Henry Onespot on drums and Otto Volk plays fiddle.”

  “Pleased to meet you.”

  “So, what else do you know?”

  “I know lots of stuff. How about ‘On the Sunny Side of the Street’?”

  We played it and a few other numbers. By the end, the men no longer smirked and smiled to themselves, and I relaxed a bit.

  Bill wanted to know how long I’d been playing. I lied and told him ten years. It was actually only a little over eight, but I played a lot. I had a lot of time on my hands.

  “You hardly look old enough to have been playing that long. How old are you?”

  “Eighteen,” I said. I could see that he didn’t believe me, so I added, “On my next birthday. In the spring.”

  “Hmmm. So, what’s your full name? Eulita?”

  “Yeah. Eulita Koudelka.”

  George smiled. “A Gypsy. Like Django Reinhardt, eh?”

  “I love Django Reinhardt,” I said. “I listen to his records all the time.”

  Bill looked at me from this side first, then the other, like he was buying a chair, or a picture, for his parlor. It made me nervous, more nervous. I felt in those days that I bore a fair resemblance to Olive Oyl from the funnies, with my skinny legs and long nose. I was sure he’d comment on it. But he said, “Could be a good angle. Gypsy gal guitarist.”

  I thought of my brother Steve, who’d changed his name to look for work. He needed something more white, he said. But being Stephen Knight instead of Stefan Koudelka hadn’t helped him much. “I could change my name, if it’s a problem.”

  “There’s an easy way to do that, you know. But, no, keep it. I like it. Well, listen, Gypsy gal, how about you go on outside for a minute and let us talk this over? Like a smoke to take with you?”

  I went outside a little reluctantly, not sure whether I should leave my guitar alone in there with them. I smoked the cigarette, careful to grind the butt out under my foot since the locust-hissing grass was tinder dry. After what seemed like a long time, I was about ready to go in and see whether they’d made off with my guitar in search of a pawnshop. Then Bill stuck his head out the door.

  “We’ve decided to give you a try. We’re playing a wedding two weeks from Saturday, at St. Vladimir’s Church hall. Can you make it?”

  “Sure, I guess so. What time?”

  “We’ll need to be there by 6:30 I don’t know how late we’ll be. Probably one in the morning or so anyway. We rehearse on Tuesday and Friday nights.”

  “Sure. That’s fine.”

  On the way to the bus stop I listened to my shoes clomp on the wood-plank sidewalk, wondered what to tell Gus. Not that it really mattered, it wasn’t like he needed a chambermaid that much at night. But I knew it would piss him off, anyway.

  And it did. He sat behin
d the front desk when I returned, big bear of a man, reading his paper and munching on something, as usual. He hardly bothered to look up at first, but when I told him he squinted at me. “You did what? Joined a band? Did they even hear you play?”

  Darlene was ironing sheets in the office. She came out and fussed with her blonde pincurls. Her philosophy was that you never knew who you might meet, so you’d better look your best at all times, even if you were ironing sheets. “Well, of course she played, Dad. She went to an audition. That’s what you do at an audition.”

  Gus ignored her. “So what’s this mean? You gonna quit your job? How much they paying you?”

  I’d wondered about all those things, too, on the streetcar on the way there and then on the way back. Somehow, I never got around to asking those questions. I was too nervous. “I don’t know,” I said. “I mean, I don’t know how much they’re paying. I won’t be quitting my job.” Not just yet.

  He waved a big paw at me, turned back to his paper. “That’s good. ‘Cause I don’t know where I’d ever find another chambermaid good as you, Lita.”

  Cheap as me, he must have meant. Lincoln freed the slaves, I told him once. Yeah, but not in Canada, he said.

  I had some trouble getting to sleep that night. The songs we’d played — that my band had played — ran through my head over and over. My band. I wondered what playing in front of an audience would be like. That morning I’d been a hotel chambermaid who played guitar. Now I was in a real band. Funny how your life can change just like that.

  Darlene was my friend, as much as anybody was my friend in those days. She was glad to have me around the hotel, that much I knew. I was glad to have her around, too. Mostly. Although she never seemed happier than when she was putting me down, usually in a backhanded way, never directly. She’d say something like, “That dress looks good on you, Lita. That one doesn’t make your behind look so big.” Or, “Your hair looks much better up that way.” She’d snipe, make cutting little remarks in front of others about my clothes or hair when I was a little ways away, but close enough that I could still hear.