Gavans Bar in Quyon may be known in the Ottawa Valley for hosting old-time country and fiddle music, but it suspended that reputation for at least one night last Tuesday to host an icon of modern Canadian rock music.
Joel Plaskett, a Juno-nominated Halifax rocker who has played with the likes of The Tragically Hip and opened for Paul McCartney, played a sold-out show at Gavans to finish his latest mini-tour.
Plaskett, who turned 50 this year, kicked off his seven-stop tour at Toronto’s Massey Hall before moving onto Northern Ontario and back down to Gavans, where it was standing room-only for his first-ever appearance at the venue.
After opener Mars Aspen delivered an acoustic set, Plaskett entered to whoops and cheers from the crowd – much of whom had been bussed in from Ottawa – cheers that only got stronger after he played hit after hit. Plaskett played for nearly two hours as the Gavans crowd was treated to some new tunes and some old ones, as classics such as I Love This Town got especially loud participation.
Last year, Plaskett released his fourteenth studio album, One Real Reveal, a largely acoustic album which is a change from his largely rock and blues-based catalogue with his band Joel Plaskett Emergency and before that with punk band Thrush Hermit.
Plaskett took a few minutes before his show on Tuesday night to speak with THE EQUITY about his latest tour, his career, and historic venues like Gavans that are trying to reinvent themselves.
He said after 30 years of touring he has found that venues full of character like Gavans are becoming fewer and farther between as new development threatens to eat them up.
He said places like these, even with “a few scuffs on the floor,” are treasures that reflect a community’s history and carry collective memories.
“I think what happens in them informs the feeling and connection that it has to the community in general. The repurposing of places versus tearing down and building new, often allows the spaces to change with the times. Maybe they get facelifted a little bit, modernized a little bit here and there, but the character [can] remain.”
Though Plaskett had never heard of Gavans before this tour (and only learned how to properly pronounce “Quyon” the night of the show), he said when he entered the venue he could feel a sense of place and a history inside.
“When we pulled into town today, I was like, ‘Wow, look at this place. We’ve done shows in different parts of Newfoundland, like the Legion in Woody Point, and [this] just has that Legion sort of vibe,” he said. “I don’t need everything in a straight line or every wall to be perfect. I walked in here, I was like, ‘Yeah, this is going to be good.’”
Plaskett reflects on 50, supernatural experiences
Plaskett said some of the most influential musicians he has performed with in his career were iconic Canadian rock band The Tragically Hip, with whom he toured in the early 2000s. He said he learned a lot about playing live concerts from legendary frontman Gord Downie.
“To watch the Hip play every night, and particularly Gord, who was such a kind of weird and exceptional frontman [who was] being his own freaky self and doing something that sort of threaded the needle
[ . . . ] that was really great to be in the presence of,” he said, adding that he learned how to perform in larger concert halls instead of clubs, which is where his band Joel Plaskett Emergency mostly performed at the time.
“We’ve always been a club band, but these were arenas we were playing as a three-piece, so we had to swing hard. The reason I’m able to do a Massey Hall show or something like that has a lot to do with the fact that we went out and had those opportunities.”
Earlier this year, Plaskett received a surprise fiftieth-birthday present in the form of some of his best musical friends recording covers of his songs and compiling them into an album, Songs From The Gang.
“It was an incredible, surprising gift [ . . . ] it’s still emotional to listen to it, because it’s neat to hear my songs back in other people’s voices. I get such a kick out of it,” he said.
He said the topics and themes of his music have shifted over the years from simpler themes to more philosophical topics, including the randomness of human experiences. He said a viewing of Jim Carrey’s 1999 film Man on the Moon, where Carrey’s character calls out the name Joel at the end of the film, made him think our experiences on Earth are not at all random.
“It was Jim Carrey talking to the camera, and he basically names me. I felt like, this is so weird, Jim Carrey is delivering, somehow via the universe, using my name, speaking directly to me. That’s what’s so weird about it, it was him talking about how we get an identity, and it was so remarkably on the nose for what I sort of needed to hear, that it really shook me,” he said.
Plaskett said the tour has also been a good opportunity to spend some time with father Bill Plaskett, from whom he learned to play folk tunes and who accompanied him on stage for a few acoustic songs on Tuesday night.
“It’s been a good week of hanging out.”
