Backstage at the Vinyl Cafe - I Resolve To…

Episode Date: January 12, 2024

I resolve to organize upstairs. Welcome back for Season 3 of Backstage at the Vinyl Cafe! We’re embracing the spirit of the New Year with a show all about resolutions and lists and getting things done. We start with an essay about Stuart’s fraught relationship with his to do list. And Jess has a backstory about her own relationship to lists and resolutions, and how that informed today’s Dave and Morley story.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

From the Apostrophe Podcast Network. Hello, I'm Jess Milton, and this is Backstage at the Vinyl Cafe. Welcome back to the world of the Vinyl Cafe. We are so happy to be back with you for another season of the podcast. I can't believe it's been almost a year since we started this little thing, and we're already rolling into our third season. We're so happy to be here, and we are especially happy that you are here too. I mean, I guess we could do it without you, but it would not be fun. Not at all. And while this little podcast is really a labor of love, it's you guys that keep us coming back.

If it weren't for you, there would be no this. So thank you for coming back every week. And thanks to Apple Canada. Apple named this podcast one of the best new shows of 2023. And that is because of you, our audience. You got us here, so thank you. And I know there are some people who are new to this, so if you are new to the pod and you don't know me, let me introduce myself. I am the longtime producer of The Vinyl Cafe, a radio show hosted by my friend, the late, great Stuart McLean. On this podcast, we get together to play some of Stuart's stories about the fictional world of Dave, the owner of the world's smallest record store, The Vinyl Cafe. We'll also be sharing some of Stuart's other wonderful writing too, some essays and scripts from his many

performances at venues across Canada and the U.S. And I'll be sharing some of my own Vinyl Cafe stories, stories about my days out on the road, living on a tour bus, stories about performance and process and writing and storytelling, and stories about Stuart, and all kinds of other stuff too. So, welcome. Okay, let's get down to it. It's January. So today on the show, we are talking about resolutions, about lists, about getting things done. When I say that out loud, it sounds horrid, but I promise you it will not be horrid. We are going to have fun. This is to-do lists Dave style, which means slightly unhinged, a little bit chaotic, and totally hilarious. But we're not going to start with Dave. We're going to start with Stuart.

We're going to start with an essay Stuart wrote at this time of year back in 2009. This is Stuart McLean sounding a little bit unhinged himself with my lost to-do list. My to-do list went missing. I know, I know what you're thinking. I misplaced it, but I don't think that. I wouldn't misplace something as important as my to-do list. I suspect it was tidied up. It was written in dark blue ink on a piece of yellow lined paper, and when I say it, I don't want you to think there was only one item on my list,

and I should be able to remember it. There was way more than one item. I'm a busy man. I can't possibly remember everything on the list. That's why I had the list. Yes, I know I'm always putting my glasses down somewhere that I can't remember, but this is different. This is my list of things to do. And no, I don't remember where I was when I had it last. Please don't ask me that again. And now I don't know what I am meant to be doing, and it's

making me agitated. Are you sure you haven't seen it? Let me tell you what it looks like. There was actually more than one list. There were several lists, each in a different quadrant of the page. Things to do, people to write, people to call. And there was a little doodle in the top right corner, a picture of a hammer smashing a little animal that you might mistake for a squirrel, but it's actually the neighbor's dog. It wouldn't stop yapping when I was working on my list. I keep thinking of the people on my list. Were you on my list? I'd like to take this opportunity to apologize. I haven't forgotten you. I lost my list. Are you someone sitting in a coffee shop waiting for me? Are you a dentist standing beside an empty dentist chair, dentist tools laid out beside you?

I'm not coming. If there's a paucity of me where you are and there shouldn't be, if there should be more of me than there is, it's not personal. You might have heard already I lost my list of things to do. I want to assure you that I'm going to begin a new list. I have already, actually, but you aren't on it yet. So far, there's only one item on my new list. Number one, find missing to-do list, which is why I'm talking to you now. If by any chance you have my to-do list, could you please call me? If you don't have my number, you could phone any of the numbers on the list and ask them for my number. Tell them I said it was okay to give it to you. I'll come over and pick the list up. It suddenly occurs to me that someone other than you might have the list. Was I supposed to

call you today? Has someone else already called? Have you received any confusing phone calls? It's possible my list has fallen into the hands of one of those people who like to get things done. One of those people who, unlike you and me, actually enjoys sitting down and crossing things off lists. Don't ask me how. Maybe the person who threw away my list, either by mistake or out of spite because of a little thing that I've already apologized for, so I don't see why we need to get into that right now. Maybe when they got rid of it, they were careless about it and it ended up with one of those compulsive list-completing types. Maybe someone like that found my list in their pocket, and no, I don't have any idea how it got there. But if it's possible to send a man to the

moon, surely it's not impossible that somehow my list ended up in their coat. And if they're one of those people who like getting things done, maybe they were delighted to reach into their pocket and find my list with all those things just begging to be crossed off. If you are the person who has my list and are getting my things done, I appreciate that, but I'd appreciate it more if you just return my list to me. Because you aren't doing those things for me, you're doing them for yourself. And you should get your own list. I'm beginning to feel unhinged without mine. And though I understand how you may be feeling pretty smug getting all those things done, have you stopped to think what it's like being me?

Not having the vaguest idea of what you're supposed to be doing? Just give it back to me. I live in the house with all the windows beside the one with a little yappy dog that's starting to drive me crazy. Honest to God, when are they going to take that dog inside and feed it? Where is my list?

I want my list back. You can have my glasses and my keys and my cell phone and all the other things I've lost. Just give me the list and then you can do whatever you want to the dog. I'll look after the dog right now if you'll just give me my list. Listen, this can't continue. Do you know what would happen if I don't do the things I'm supposed to do?

If I stop calling and writing and showing up? If I unplug? You don't have to answer that. Okay, I warned you, I'm over it now. It's gone. Do what you want with it. I don't need it anymore. I'm done with to-do lists. I'm beginning again. I'm starting fresh. I'm going upstairs to write out a list of things I don't have to do. You can have my to-do list. I'm starting my to-don't list, and I don't care what happens to it. That was an essay we call my lost to-do list. Stuart wrote that at this time of year because it is the list-making time of year. I mean, is there anyone listening who doesn't have a list they want to tackle this year?

Who are you? I want to know you. No, no, no. I want to be you. I always have a huge list of things I want to tackle, things I want to do or change. I'm not talking about resolutions necessarily, although I could be, I suppose. I'm not really into New Year's resolutions, not in the traditional sense, but I used to be. When I first started working with

Stewart on the Vinyl Cafe, I was really into New Year's resolutions. I used to write them every year. And I used to talk about them insufferably, I now realize. I used to talk about them in the lead up to New Year's. I used to think about which resolutions I should add to my list, which flaws or defects I should tackle. Stuart was fascinated by this process. It inspired him to write a David Morley story, which I'm going to play for you next after the break. He was fascinated in part, I think, because he didn't make resolutions, at least not at the time, not when I first met him. He actually was a resolution person. He just didn't make resolutions. I know that sounds weird, but I have this theory that you either are that kind of person, a resolution person, someone who's interested and eager to change and grow and

tackle big things, or you're not. Stuart was, for sure. He just didn't do the exercise. He didn't think about resolutions or write them down. He just wasn't in the habit. So I think he was interested in my resolutions because he was interested in doing them himself. But he was sort of, I don't know, shy about how to start or something. But maybe there was more to it than that. Maybe it was the fact that my resolutions were, how can I put it? They were unusual. No, unusual is not the right word. What's the right word? Ridiculous. Ridiculous is the right word. For starters, my resolutions were wildly achievable. I never made a resolution that I wasn't 100% sure I could achieve. So much for being eager to change and grow and

tackle big problems. Maybe that means I'm not really as interested in that stuff as I think I am. Or maybe I just knew that in order for me to want to tackle those kinds of things, my resolutions had to be fun. And they had to feel possible. I never resolved to, like, lose weight or pay off my mortgage or anything like that. My resolutions were usually focused on small, achievable things that I recognized would not move the needle in any big way, but that I hoped would make my day-to-day life easier, more pleasant, more livable. I think those kinds of changes add up. Small incremental changes are, for me anyway, easier to make, easier to maintain, and are often the path to longer, more lasting change.

and are often the path to longer, more lasting change. They're also just more fun. My resolutions were definitely fun. They were goofy. They were silly. They made life more fun. Stuart's favorite resolution of mine was this one. And I'm looking at this on the page and I'm not sure I can say it at all,

let alone with a straight face. Stewart's favorite resolution of mine was this, wear cuter socks. He laughed uncontrollably when I told him that one. You're not serious, he said. I was serious. I was very serious. I take socks very seriously, or I do now. But it was laughable. It was ridiculous, really, especially when you consider what my life was like at the time. I was 26 years old the year I made that resolution, and my life was, I can see now, not in a great place. My longtime boyfriend had just broken up with me. My mom had just died, and I just bought my first house on my own. Now, that last thing should have been something to celebrate. And I did. But if you saw the house, you would know it was not cause for celebration. No one would have celebrated the purchase of that

house. When I would show people that house proudly, I'd see a look of terror in their eyes. It's like their face was saying, do you think she knows? Like, should we tell her? It was on the market for about 100 days before I bought it because any sane person could see it was not worth buying. Anyone who wasn't as overly optimistic as me could tell there was a reason that it was the only house in Toronto that I could afford. The roof leaked. The foundation leaked. It was basically a dinghy floating on water with a clear view of the sky. When I bought it, I started gutting the basement. I was going to put an apartment down there and rent it out to my friends.

The only way I could afford the mortgage. My cousin, Russ, helped me. Now, there were a lot of problems with this, starting with the fact that the basement ceiling was only six feet high, starting with the fact that the basement ceiling was only six feet high, and my cousin Russ is six foot six. One night, he was down there working away, and I was on tour, so he had the house to himself. He was working on it late at night after his day job ended. And he was down there working on his knees, doing demo, and he put a sledgehammer into a wall and tore off the fake paneling.

And when he did that, dozens of machetes fell out of the wall. Hidden behind the wall were about 25 knives. That's the kind of house it was. This is a long way of saying there were a number of things I should have resolved to do that year. I should have resolved to save money to fix the roof. I should have resolved to patch the foundation. I should have resolved to get someone in to treat the mold in the bathroom. But instead, I resolved to wear cuter socks. But there was a really good reason for that.

I remember sitting in my front hall one night after a rainstorm. I'd been down in the basement dealing with the water seeping in from the foundation, using towels and kitty litter and baby diapers to soak it up. I was sitting on the bench trying to take my socks off. They were soaking wet, of course, and plastered to my feet. They were those white athletic socks, cotton and impossibly thin. My feet were freezing. My head was spinning.

My heart was racing. I was anxious. I was thinking, what am I doing? Why did I think I could do this? I remember peeling off the socks and thinking, why do I wear these stupid socks? They were the same socks I'd worn since childhood, the kind of socks you buy in packages of six zellers. They wore out quickly. They were dirty. Even when'd worn since childhood, the kind of socks you buy in packages of six at Zeller's. They wore out quickly. They were dirty, even when they'd just come out of the washing machine. They got wet, and they stayed wet.

Toronto winters are wet. The snow turns to slush almost immediately. Street corners have puddles that are too big to leap over, so I'd end up wading right through them in my inappropriate footwear, sneakers, leather boots, ruining my shoes and ensuring that my feet in their thin, white, cotton socks would be wet for hours afterwards. That soggy basement was the last straw. I peeled the wet socks off my feet, and instead of putting them in the laundry, I put them straight into the garbage. I was done with those socks. I resolved to wear better socks. Wool socks.

Socks that could handle slush puddles and leaking basements and bad breakups and moms who had cancer. Socks that would make me feel like I could handle those things too. Stuart loved this. He bought me my first pair of wool socks and he resolved to wear nicer socks too. He lapped me pretty quickly. He took it way further than I did. He always had fantastic socks. Wool, great quality, fun colors, quirky patterns, and so many pairs, each of them different and just so much fun. He out-socked me big time. I still try to wear nice socks. I learned pretty quickly that cheap socks are a false economy. The wool socks I buy are not cheap. They are embarrassingly expensive, like 25 bucks a pair. But what's fun about it is it's an area where you can totally splurge

without breaking the bank. You can really go for it. You can throw caution to the wind. You can act like money is of no object. You can do what I did back in 2006 and throw out all of your socks and replace them with amazing, warm, 100% wool socks. I have about eight pairs. I mean, how many do you need? Eight's enough for me. They last forever. I have some that are like 10 or 15 years old, and my family knows what to buy me for Christmas and birthday presents. Stuart and I laughed so hard about that ridiculous resolution, but it turns out it was one of the best resolutions I ever made. A small, unimportant thing that made every day of my life better.

I think that was the last New Year's resolution I ever made. After that silly resolution, I guess I figured I was pretty much done with the resolutions. I still pause at this time of year to reflect. I think about the previous year and what worked and what didn't work. I think about what was a good use of time and what wasn't. I try to figure out how to better use my time to help others, to help myself, to find more time with my family. It's a process that is inspired in part by the Dave and Morley story I want to play you next,

a story about Dave and his New Year's resolutions. My New Year's resolutions inspired this next story, and then this story inspired me to change my resolutions. We're going to play that for you after the break, so stick around. We'll be back in a couple of minutes, maybe less. Welcome back. Story time now.

This is the story we call Dave's Letter. Well, you would have thought by now, by this stage in his life, that Dave would have lost the impulse to tackle, with any earnestness anyway, the dubious task of writing down New Year's resolutions. Most people his age have given up on them,

have either, through sorry experience, New Year's resolutions. Most people his age have given up on them, have either, through sorry experience, recognized the futility of self-improvement, or, through delusion, decided the very idea of it is preposterous. This business of writing resolutions, which requires a certain resolve of spirit, if not a mind, tends to be the preoccupation of the restless and the young. Dave is no longer either.

But he is a man of habit. And one of his habits, each and every year, is to set aside time on December the 26th to work on his annual awards, the Davies. He gathers all the little notes he's scribbled over the year on receipts and various scraps of paper, and then with a glass of Jameson's Best beside him, a quiet nod to Ireland and the town of Dublin where he began the tradition, he spreads everything out and transcribes all the nominations into the green cloth-covered notebook that he bought in a little store in Dublin just off St. Stephen's Green on

St. Stephen's Day. Could it really be 30 years ago now? Year after year, he happily notes his song of the year, favorite movie, most despised meal, most irritating commercial, and all the other awards, best performance by a politician in a supporting role. The categories are flexible and change as the years dictate. But what hasn't changed is the list Dave appends at the end of each chapter, his annual list of resolutions. They stretch back to his early 20s. A surprising number of them resolved, a dispiriting number still in play. Dave embraced the run-up to this year's awards, as he always does, with joyful ambition. The Davies are, after all, a fantasy of joyful complexity, a complex inner world where Dave must assume many roles. Nominators, nominees, judging committee, adoring fans, and finally, on award night,

theater audience, TV commentators, presenters, and of course, the winners, who all give long acceptance speeches with many heartfelt references to the father of the Davies, himself. As usual in the weeks prior to the official announcement, there was much consultation, both at home and around the neighborhood. Opinions were sought. The lists were whittled and worked on. And then, two days before Christmas, three days before he sat down, pen in hand, Dave pulled up lame.

I don't know, he said to Morley one day at lunch. I've been thinking I might leave out the resolutions this year. You should resolve to clean up your room, he said. It came out just like that, just that fast. Whoa, said Dave. To be clear, she didn't mean his bedroom. She meant the storage room over his record store. And by clean up, she meant tidy up. Morley tries to operate within the limits of the possible. She was just throwing it out there. She hadn't even been up there for over a decade,

but she has lived with it for decades. For more to the point, she had lived through the semi-regular frenzies, or to get right to the point, the most recent frenzy, when Dave was once again tearing it apart, looking this time for a copy of the first edition of Rolling Stone magazine. November 9, 1967, John Lennon in How I Won the War. Lenin in How I Won the War. Each missing item, and this was not the first, not by a long shot, each missing item involved a frantic search which intensified as the

hours passed and which Morley watched with the sinking knowledge that it was just hours or possibly minutes before she would be drawn into the vortex. You're sure you haven't seen it? You're sure you didn't? Here it comes, she thought. Throw it out? Every important object ever missing

cast morally into the role of villain. The room we're talking about, the storage room, is an unfinished second floor space over Dave's record store. The space where Dave keeps his collection of music memorabilia. the flotsam and jetsam of a pack rat's two decades on the road. Handwritten lyrics, crumpled stage clothes, props, instruments, diaries, letters, some of sentimental value, some invaluable. He has, for instance, the scribbled set list from Dylan's infamous appearance at the Newport Folk Festival 1969, and a cassette tape, a collection of demos that aficionados have speculated about for decades, recorded at home by Sid Barrett himself. The rest of the collection, the majority of it, is all of lesser value, but of no lesser interest.

Boxes and boxes of stuff that he has over the years eat out at auction as need arises. He always contacts the original owner before the auction house, though in 35 years only two have asserted the preemptive right that he offers. Lowell George bought back a guitar, for which he insisted on paying fair market value. Roy Orbison repossessed a pair of sunglasses. Everyone else just laughed and wished him luck. It is, in a way, the center of his universe. So, on St. Stephen's Day this year, when David put the finishing touches to the Davies,

he stared at the last page and, unable to think of anything better, shrugged and wrote, I resolve to organize upstairs. Morley was annoyingly right about these things, but it seemed harmless enough and possibly even helpful and uncharacteristically achievable. He never imagined it being unsettling and certainly not uncomfortable. And so the holidays tripped by and December blew into January and the flurry of the new year flurried away in the snows of January, and the temperatures dropped and set records, it seemed. And pretty soon, January was so solidly frozen in place that nothing was happening. And in this universe of cold and solitude, the idea of tidying anything up seemed a bit extreme.

But soon enough, it was February, and things began to pick up. And as they did, so did Dave. So it was, on a February afternoon, that he unlocked the door at the back of his store and climbed the dusty staircase with a certain resolve. He snapped on the light, a single bulb dangling at the end of a wire hanging in the middle of the room, and he looked around. It was no more than an attic, really. There was a cardboard box at his feet. The lid ripped open during the mad search for the rolling stone.

He picked it up and carried it to the cluttered table under the light in the center of the room. He sat down. Two hours later, he was still sitting there He had emptied the box onto the table But he hadn't done much more He'd spent the afternoon picking through it There was some good stuff His favorite being a shopping list scrawled by the late John Lennon

When he was living in New York. Tuna for cat, chicken for Sean, the organic kind, salad for supper, guitar, where's my green amp, Yoko, question mark, question mark, question mark. Question mark, question mark, question mark. David forgotten all about the note. It sent him into a long reverie. A reverie that ended with him dusting off an old turntable and running downstairs to fetch copies of Rubber Soul and Revolver. He was back at it the next afternoon.

He kept going up every afternoon. By the end of the week, he had listened to every Beatles record ever recorded. By the end of the week, the room looked worse. How's it going? asked Morley on Friday night. You can't make an omelet without breaking eggs, said Dave. It's going to take a little more time than I thought. That's surprising, said Morley. And so he had Brian cover the afternoons for the next week,

and the week after that. And every afternoon he went upstairs and shuffled things around. He pretty much gave up on tidying the first day. Pretty much he was just searching, searching through his collection. But for the first time ever, he was not at all sure what he was searching for he was just searching and that's what he was doing on a snowy Wednesday afternoon in early March the third Wednesday he'd been up there sitting cross-legged on the floor peering into a box he hadn't peered into for maybe 20 years. That's when he found the letter.

A letter he had written himself. In Austin, Texas. At the Hotel San Jose. He remembered it clearly. Two days off between tours. A two-story motor court built in the 40s. He'd just finished traveling through Great Britain with Linda Ronstadt. She's being backed by Glenn Frey and Don Henley,

who, with her encouragement, were just about to become the Eagles. He'd sat by the pool and worked on the letter all day, trying to explain his decision to stay out on the road and not come home to university. This is how the letter began. We have to take it easy, real easy. Can't let the sound of our own wheels drive us crazy. What followed was a two-page polemic against the academic life. On page three, Dave had appended a list of his life goals. No house, he had written. A person shouldn't be tied down by an address. No job.

Work for love, not money. No kids. The world is over our consumer society. No pets, see kids above. I want, he had concluded, to change the world, not buy into it. When it was time to close up, he folded the letter and slipped it into his pocket. He handed it to Morley after supper. She read the first line and looked up at him. He knew what was coming. She said, don't let the sound of our own wheels drive us crazy. I didn't know it was going to be a hit, said Dave. The Eagles didn't even exist. Besides, I never mailed the letter. The point is that everything I

wrote there, everything, I've contradicted. There was a bit of a silence there. And I and I can't figure out, said Dave, if I was immature back then or, you know, a sellout now. A failure. Not a complete failure, said Morley. Because, said Dave, hopefully. Well, said Morley, pointing at the letter, you say right here you don't want to have money. You've accomplished that.

He took the letter to Kenny's the next day. He was sitting at the counter. It was the afternoon, maybe 3 o'clock. In front of him, a cup of coffee. Pushed to the side, two empty bowls of rice pudding. Kenny was sitting at his desk, which is more or less right in the middle of his restaurant. Dave was doing most of the talking. Kenny was listening. Dave was trying to explain his life, I guess. Dave said, I have the car, the job, the house, the kids. I got the cat. I had the dog. It's like it was all according to some plan. And that's the point. It isn't according to a plan. It's the opposite of the plan. If it makes you feel better, said Kenny,

that car is a real rust bucket. Dave stood up and walked behind the counter. He picked the coffee pot off the hot plate. He walked back and stared at his mug and saw it was still full. He frowned at the mug and looked at Kenny. Kenny shook his head. I won't sleep, said Kenny. Dave put the coffee pot back. What I can't figure out, said Dave, is what came first. Did I change what I wanted because I changed? Or because, you know, I gave up? To tell you the truth, I didn't even notice a change. I'm not sure I even noticed. He'd gone upstairs to tidy up. He'd come down messed up. He had come down messed up.

He tried to put it aside. He kept going up there and making half-hearted attempts to get on with it. He thought if he cleared up the room, he would clear up his mind. What became clear was that it wasn't the attic that needed to be straightened out. And so passed the weeks of this winter, Dave wandering around, lost in the foggy world where memory and dreams collide, in the ether between time past and time future. We all

in the ether between time past and time future. We all have our own time machines. Sometimes we travel on laughter. Sometimes on sorrow. Sometimes in the most unexpected vehicles. A leaf blows down an alley. The wind ripples a lake. A faraway smell that you can't identify but can almost taste.

Some unexpected thing taps you on your shoulder and you're gone, whisked away from the clang of time present. In Dave's case, it was the letter that set him off and a green canvas dog leash of all things that brought him back. It had belonged to his old dog, Arthur, gone almost a year now. The leash was hanging under a sweater on a peg in his attic. He was cold. He took the sweater off the peg and there was the leash. He put on the sweater and picked up the leash. He held on to it. Would he rather have lived without Arthur?

There was no other road. Good dog, he said. The next afternoon, he sat down with a pen and paper. He thought maybe if he wrote a new list, the pen and paper. He thought maybe if he wrote a new list, things would become clear again. That night as they climbed into bed, he turned to Morley and said, I tried to make a list. He was lying on his back. He was staring at the ceiling, his hands behind his head. He said, it's a new list, things that are important to me now. Like antibacterial hand cleanser, said Marley. Dave said, it sounds more like a greeting card. Marley said, do you want to read your list to me?

There was a piece of paper on the table beside the bed. He reached out and picked it up. I'm not sure what this is, he said. Then he said, it's the best I could do. Tell the truth, he had written. It's hard. Ask for help. Everyone needs it.

Then he said, don't speak of others behind their backs. He looked at Morley. Keep reading, she said. And so he read her all his list. Strive to forgive, he said. Be generous. Be quiet. You'll hear things.

Read books. You'll learn things. Eat your greens. You should show this to the kids, said Morley. They'd think it was silly, said Dave. I don't know what they'd kids, said Morley. They'd think it was silly, said Dave. I don't know what they'd think, said Morley, but it's not a silly list. And even if it is, it's your silly list.

I think you should show it to them. You know what else I think? I think you should leave the storage room just the way it is. I think you should leave the storage room just the way it is. There are moments in a man's life when he will feel alone. And moments, sometimes with friends, and sometimes with lovers, and sometimes even when he is alone, that he won't feel alone at all. When he will feel connected to something calming and reassuring. Something bigger than him.

These are the moments of love and tenderness. Of tears and sorrow. Of honey and salt. these are the moments of connection Dave reached out and turned off the light I am so lucky we met he said into the darkness so lucky to have you in my life. And he crumpled up the paper he was holding and he threw it across the bedroom and he pulled his wife toward him and he held on tight. That was Stuart McLean with the story, Dave's Letter.

It was recorded at the wonderful Station Theatre in Smiths Falls, Ontario. Remember that place, Greg? Awesome, awesome theatre. Smiths Falls, Ontario. Remember that place, Greg? Awesome, awesome theater. It's an old railway station that the local community converted into a theater. Pretty special place. If you haven't heard that story before, that's because it was only just released. You can find that on our most recent Vinyl Cafe album. The album's called Merry Christmas, Dave. Merry Christmas, Dave. All right, that's it for today,

but we will be back here next week with two Dave and Morley stories, including this one. And Dave, who was holding the phone in his hand, waving it in front of him like a microphone, said to Morley, who was unloading the groceries at the counter, Mary Turlington's invited us to a dinner party and he dragged the words out derisively as if Mary had invited him over to deworm the dog but he didn't stop there Dave said I'd rather have my legs waxed

than go to another party at the Turlington's and that is when the phone beeped Dave looked down at the phone in terror, realizing what he had just done. He had just left Mary Turlington a message. That's next week on the podcast. I hope you'll join us. In the meantime, if you want to find out more, you can go to our website, vinylcafe.com, or find us on Facebook or Instagram. Or find us on Facebook or Instagram. Backstage at the Vinyl Cafe is part of the Apostrophe Podcast Network. The recording engineer is a guy whose socks are definitely not cute, Greg DeClewt.

Theme music is by Danny Michelle, and the show is produced by Louise Curtis, Greg Duclute, and me, Jess Milton. Let's meet again next week. Until then, so long for now.