Backstage at the Vinyl Cafe - Performance - Kenny Wong and the Tank of Tranquility

Episode Date: October 2, 2026

“When things go wrong, when, it is seldom the result of some big thing, it is always a chain of simple things, almost all of them avoidable.”What makes a good performer? What makes a great performance? These are the questions we’re exploring on the pod this week, with a backstory about Stuart McLean and a recording of a story that perfectly illustrates the point. Ad-free listening is here! Listen to the pod ad-free and early, PLUS a whole bunch of other goodies – like virtual parties, Q&As, listener shout-outs & more. Subscribe here: apostrophe.supercast.com 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. I told you recently that I started a new job last year. I'm working at the Governor General's Performing Arts Awards. I'm loving the job for all sorts of reasons. I love the people I work with. I love working with artists.

It's a tiny organization, and that's what I'm used to, a small, nimble, flexible organization and team. But mostly, I love being back in the arts. I love talking about the stuff I've loved all my life, music, dance, theater, performance. I love talking about why it matters. My love of performance is directly linked to my love of Canada. I have long believed that our performing artists help tell Canada's story to us and to the world. And that's more important now than ever. The world is changing rapidly and our stories, who we are, what we care about, what we find moving, what we find funny, what we find interesting.

Those things matter. Our artists are a mirror. They reflect our image back to us. They help us understand who we are and what we look like. They help us see ourselves. Artists reflect who we are, challenge who we've been, and imagine who we might become. They give voice to our history, to our humor, to our heartaches, and our hopes. And in a country as vast and diverse as ours, the performing arts offer

a common language, one that transcends region and background and reminds us of what connects us. That's what today's episode is about. It's about performance, about what makes a good performer. And to start, I want to play you one of the stories that always comes to mind when I think about Stewart as a performer. I love Stewart's delivery. in this story, how playful he is, how confident he is, letting the pauses just sit there, how quickly he's able to react to the audience in real time, how he allows the audience to become part of the story, how he allows them to shape his delivery. Listen for all of that as you enjoy this.

This is Kenny Wong and the tank of tranquility. Occupational hazards. Occupational hazards are obvious for people who work in certain occupations. On high-rise construction, for example, or on a police force or at a nuclear plant. But there are hazards in the quieter professions as well. pity the poor accountant. We have one over here. Who can't help keeping a running record of everything in his life, totaling the cost to all the spoiled milk and the unread newspapers. The lawyer who sees nothing but lawsuits wherever she turns, or the poor shopkeepers, whatever shops they keep,

they all fall victim to their own goods. Dave's friend, Dorothy Kapper, has bought so many books from her own bookstore that she can barely fit a guest into her guest bedroom. Kenny Wong, who runs a cafe down the block, Wong's Scottish Meat Pies. I've always liked that one tell. Kenny can't resist a deal on a case of produce.

And then there's Dave, owner of a second-hand record store, Dave spends a good quarter of his working life, poking around flea markets and garage sales, church basements and record shows, making him vulnerable to what might be the most insidious occupational hazard in the world, the impulse purchase. You set yourself loose in the sort of places that Dave frequents,

and see if you don't come home, with the odd lava lamp, abused pair of cowboy boots, or, as Dave did on a snowy Monday, last November, a sensory deprivation tank. A few days after it arrived, he was over at Kenny Wong's cafe sitting on his regular stool at the end of the counter, poking at a bowl of Kenny's rice pudding. He hadn't told anyone about the tank yet, but he's about to tell Kenny. because he needs Kenny's help. He finishes his dessert, and he looks over at Kenny, says, where do you get your salt anyway?

Kenny waves at the cupboard behind the counter, and Dave says, no, no, no, I mean, where do you buy your salt? Who supplies you? Kenny says, you're looking for a deal? How much salt do you want? Kenny thought they were kidding around. Dave says, oh, about 800 pounds. Okay, now,

If you are feeling unsure about something, something that you have done as Dave was, if you were feeling shy or uncertain about how others might accept it, chances are when you share your secret, your story is going to drift from the realm of information exchange into the world of hyperbole and justification and rationalization. Kenny said, you need 800 pounds of. of salt? Dave said it's for my float tank. Kenny said you're kidding, right? And Dave took flight. Floating, he said. A floating is like a return to the womb. You get into a float tank and close the soundproof lid. You're going to float away on water denser than the dead sea. He leaned forward

and he looked at Kenny dramatically for the first time in your life, your brain will be free of stimulation and stress. Kenny didn't say anything. Dave said, one hour in a tank is as good as four hours of sleep. He's just making things up now. We get two hours in there, said Dave, and he's waving his spoon in the air. We wouldn't need to sleep at all. Think of everything we could get done.

We, said Kenny. Think all the extra time we'd have if we didn't have to sleep, said Dave. Kenny cocked his head and looked at his friend, and he said, you know, you never struck me like a guy who was exactly short a time. Okay, there's something else I have to tell you before we go any further. Dave has a touch of claustrophobia, and as enticing as he made it sound, as enticing as it might be, the thought of floating and the dark coffin-like capsule terrified him. What if he fell asleep and flipped over and drowned? Or worse, what if he went insane and came out stark, rave, and mad?

Maybe he'd find the inner piece that they talked about online, or maybe he'd come out convinced that he could talk to shrubbery. Oh, Dave wanted to get into that tank. but what he really wanted was for Kenny to take it out on a test drive first, which is why he was laying it on so thick. And it worked. Before lunch was over,

Kenny wanted to try it too. So off they went, and they bought 16, 16, 50-pound bags of salt, and they threw him into the back of Kenny's truck, and they drove the truck over to Dave's store, and they unloaded the salt into the back storage room where he had the float tank. And a week later, early on a Friday morning, they hooked up a hose to the sink in the washroom of Dave's store and ran it across the hallway and filled the tank with tepid water.

It took all day for the salt to dissolve. Just before four that afternoon, Dave called Kenny. It's ready, he said. And Kenny came over, and he changed in the washroom, and he darted across. the hall with his belly protruding over his feet on. That's not how you see Kenny. That's how I saw Kenny. Kenny changed in the washroom.

And he darted across the hall with his sleek, ripped body rippling in the light. Whatever you need. I'm here to please. Whoa, said Dave, you've been working out? Can we get back to the story? said Kenny. And then he climbed into the tank. And he lowered himself into the water. himself into the water. It's not hard, he said. It wasn't hard at all. It was just like

lying on a bed, except wetter. Kenny said, close the lid. I want the total experience. So Dave closed the door, and he stood there beside the tank in the suddenly, silent room, and he could feel his heart starting to pound. And his palms begin to sweat, his breath coming fast and shallow. He was feeling the first symptoms of sympathetic claustrophobia. After five uncertain minutes, he tapped on the lid of the tank. You okay? You okay?

Did he hear a muffled okay from inside the tank? It was hard to tell. It was like talking to a can of peas. Five more minutes. And he tapped again, this time, as hard as he could. And this time, Kenny opened the door. And he stuck his head out, blinking, looking like the dormouse in the teapot from Alice in Wonderland.

Also looking peevish. I was just checkin, said Dave. Kenny said, well, I was just letting go. I'm not going to be able to get into this if you keep interrupting. And so, feeling a little. little reassured and a little foolish. Dave turned off the storage room light, shut the door, and left. Some of us see trouble coming. Kenny ducked down again and closed the tank door like he was getting into a submarine, settling onto his back in the warm water, his arms and legs

extended as if he were making a snow angel. And a half hour went by. And then, another. Dave cracked the door and peeked in at some point. He wanted to knock again on the tank, but he didn't. Inside, where it was dark and soundless, Kenny was still floating on his back in the soft, salty water. But Kenny was beginning to feel like he had floated long enough. When things go wrong, When nuclear plants melt down or buses full of the faithful leave the road, when disasters happen, that is. It's seldom the result of some big thing. It's always a chain of simple things, almost all of them avoidable.

Kenny reached up in the darkness and felt around for the handle to open the tank door. The door didn't budge. He pushed harder, still nothing. Outside a mere foot from his head, Brian, who works part-time at Dave Store, dropped another milk crate of records on top of the tank. Brian is used to strange things popping up in Dave's story. A huge paper-mash sculpture of Frank Sinatra, a rusting phone booth, once even a coffin.

No one had said anything to Brian about a flotation tank. He put the crater records down on the lid, and he went back into the store to get the next one. Now, you would think that it would be impossible for Dave to forget, Kenny, but that just wouldn't be any fun, would it? You would think that Kenny would be all that Dave would be thinking of that afternoon, but we all forget things. Sometimes important things. It happens when other things come up. And things had been coming up all afternoon. A fella had walked into the store with seven milk crates of soul albums to sell.

When a Stephanie's old friends had come in looking for a birthday present for her father, and then, right before closing, Morley phoned to remind Dave that they were going to dinner at the low beers. And he promised he wouldn't be. late. And now he was. In his rush, he just forgot. He locked up

and he laughed as simple as that. Leaving Kenny in the tank, cursing like a sailor. Dave remembered him two hours later. He was sitting at the Low Beers dining room table. Gerta

carried in four beautiful fillet of cod. I cooked them suvied, she said, which means sealed in plastic and immersed in warm water. It's quite remarkable, said Gerta. You leave anything in warm water long enough, it'll eventually cook. Dave stared at his piece of fish and said something unspeakably inappropriate. And then he jumped up and ran out the front door without a word. Gerta watched him go,

poked at her cod, and then looked at Morley and Carl and said, Mine looks fine to me. But Dave was already out of earshot. Dave was pounding down the dark neighborhood streets racing back to his shop. When he got there, he rushed toward the back room,

praying that what he was going to find was a transformed and mellow Kenny Wong. What he found? was $500 worth of salt and water leaking through the floorboards and crates of records scattered everywhere and a noticeable absence of candy. Dave gave Wong's Scottish meat pies a wide berth for a day or two.

But after a few days, he knew he had to face the music. And so he screwed up his courage and he headed for Kenny's cafe. He went early and found Kenny all alone, behind the counter, unloading the dishwasher. Dave sat down on his regular stool, last one in the row, and he said, I guess you've been wondering where I'd be.

Kenny shrugged. Dave said, well, I'm here to apologize. Kenny was unexpectedly gracious. He turned and picked up the coffee pot from the warmer on the counter behind him. He poured a mug of coffee and set it down in front of Dave. Nothing to worry about, he said. All's well, it ends well. And then he looked up and down the countertop.

Hey, he said, could you grab me a basket of creamers? And Dave got up from his stool, and he headed for the big walk-in fridge. It's too bad Dave doesn't spend more time in Calgary. He's not quite as quick as you. He couldn't believe this was going so well. The creamers were at the back of the cooler. He walked in and stepped over a crate of lettuce and around a box of tomatoes, and he reached for them, and that is when he heard.

heard the big cooler door click shut behind him. He walked back and he reached for the handle with a sinking heart. Just as he expected, it was locked. What he didn't expect was the envelope with his name on it taped to the inside of the door. It was a sympathy card. Thinking of you in your times of trouble. Inside, Kenny had written, don't worry. I won't forget you.

Dave had just enough time to read that before the fridge light snapped out. And he sighed. He knew this was coming. He sat down on the tomatoes to wait it out. They'd always made it clear. You should forgive your enemies. But no one ever said anything about your friends. That was Kenny Wong and the Tank of Tranquility.

We recorded that story in 2015. at the Jack Singer Concert Hall in Calgary, Alberta. We'll be back in a couple of minutes, so stick around. Welcome back. In the first half of the show, I played you Kenny Wong and the Tank of Tranquility. I'll never forget the feeling of sitting stage left watching Stewart. It was so much fun seeing him interact with the audience and knowing how much fun he was having doing that. I couldn't believe it. It was like he was a different person up there.

I've told you some of this before about Stewart and what he was like on stage versus offstage. It's so common with performers. Offstage, Stuart was shy. He was an observer, not a participant, and he was definitely not the life of the party. In most social situations, he was the guy at the back of the room, huddled over his computer, or more likely his notebook, standing on the edge of the room, on the edge of the concert, on the edge of, well, everything, of life itself. Notebook in hand, taking notes, gathering intel, so he could turn it into something, a script, a story, a reflection, so he could help us see ourselves more clearly. But on stage, On stage, he was different. He was demonstrative, funny, so quick-witted, so fast on his feet, very, very confident, larger than life. Not at all the person he was off stage, at least not most of the time. But he was like that with some of us. With people he was very close to, me, Josh, Don Jones, Meg Masters, Louise Curtis, Greg,

Declute, John Sheard, his friends. With those people, he could be sharp and confident and quick and so funny, super funny. But in a group he didn't know, say, like backstage at a concert or at a party, he was different. He was more earnest, thoughtful, kind, generous, loving. He was all of those things, but he was not quick-witted and funny and sharp the way he was on stage. And for the longest time, like for years, for the longest time, I thought that that was performative, that it was an act. Like he was putting on a show up there on stage, because of course, you know, he was putting on a show. I knew he was a good performer, one of the best, one of the best performers. So I thought that that version of him, that version of him on stage, I thought that was an act.

I thought it was performative, done for effect. But over time, I realized it was something else. Over time, I started to realize that I think Stewart was actually the truest version of himself on stage. And that's something that a lot of great performers share. So many performers that I've worked with are like that. So many of them are slightly altered versions of themselves on stage. maybe a little bit sharper, faster, more animated, more in focus. And for a long time, I thought that meant they were putting on a mask.

At first, I thought that in order to do this incredible, amazing, high-level tightrope act, in order to do the thing that to the rest of us feel so out of reach, in order to go out on that stage night after night after night after night and just leap, and not just leap, but know that the leap might end up actually being a flop, knowing that sometimes they'll fly and other times they won't. At first I thought that that kind of leap required protective clothing, the same way all extreme sports do. I thought that instead of knee pads and bike helmets and airbags,

that performers created an on-stage persona as a form of protection, as armor, as performative protection persona. But these days I've been thinking, I don't think that's it. It's not that they're not themselves on stage. It's that they're more themselves on stage. They are an amplified version. of themselves. Most of us shrink under the lights. Performers grow. They inflate. They become an elevated version of themselves. And that's one of the reasons they're so inspiring. Watching them be vulnerable, watching that vulnerability lead to success is inspiring. I think we can learn so much from performers,

not just from their stories, but by how they put themselves out there. They show us that vulnerability isn't weakness. It's the path to connection. They walk out onto a dark stage in front of hundreds or thousands or hundreds of thousands of people, knowing that sometimes they'll soar and sometimes they won't. And when they leap, they give us permission. mission to leap to. They teach us it's okay, even necessary, to be a bigger version of ourselves sometimes, to claim space, to allow ourselves to inflate instead of shrink. They remind us to be

present, to put our whole selves into a moment, whether that's a moment on stage, in a classroom, or around a kitchen table. And just as Stewart turned his notebook scribbles into stories that helped us see ourselves more clearly, we can all choose to notice more, to reflect more, and to find meaning out of the every day. All right, that's it for today. Backstage at the Vinyl Cafe is part of the Apostrophe Podcast Network. The recording engineer is Greg DeCleut, and he's very comfortable in a speedy. Theme music is by Danny Michelle, and the show is produced by Louise Curtis, Greg DeCloat, and me, Jess Milton.

Let's meet again next week. Until then, so long for now.