Toronto Mike'd: The Official Toronto Mike Podcast - Nash The Slash Rises Again!: Toronto Mike'd Podcast Episode 1860

Episode Date: March 6, 2026

In this 1860th episode of Toronto Mike'd, Mike chats with several people behind the new documentary Nash The Slash Rises Again!: Tim Kowalski, Director and Writer, Kevan Byrne, Writer, Colin Brunton, Writer, Rob Preuss, Original Music Score and Friendly Rich, organizer of the Nash The Slash tribute album. Toronto Mike'd is proudly brought to you by Great Lakes Brewery, Palma Pasta, Ridley Funeral Home, Nick Ainis, and RecycleMyElectronics.ca. If you would like to support the show, we do have partner opportunities available. Please email Toronto Mike at [e-mail].

An influential persona in the Canadian music world has passed away. Progressive rock musician Nash the Slash died over the weekend. His name is Nash the Slash. He's a one-man band with a difference. Nash the Slash. Nash the Slash. He may have a face that only a mother could love, but as you're about to see, no one will know. Welcome to episode 1,860 of Toronto Mic'd. An award-winning podcast proudly brought to you by Great Lakes Brewery. Order online at Great Lakesbeer.com for free, local home delivery in the GTA.

Palma Pasta, enjoy the taste of fresh, homemade Italian pasta and entrees from Palma Pasta in Mississauga and Oakville. Visit palma Pasta.com for more. Fusion Corpso Nikainis. He's the host of Building Toronto Skyline. And Mike and Nick, two podcasts that you ought to listen to. Recycle My Electronics.C.A. Committing to our planet's future means properly recycling our electronics of the past. And Ridley Funeral Home, pillars of the community since 1921.

Joining me today to discuss Nash the Slash Rises again. It's Kevin Byrne, Tim Kowalski, live in the basement, and Rob Pruse, and Friendly Rich joining us remotely. Okay, all four of you at once, say hello. Hello. Hello. Hello. There he is. Okay, I was waiting for Friendly Rich to chime in there.

I'm rhythmically challenged. So Friendly Rich. And I'm going to call you by that proper handle, friendly rich, okay? Very good. Respect. You and Rob Proust have been in the basement previously, in the TMDS basement. So you guys know this drill, but it's funny that you two are joining me remotely, even though you guys have been here before. Yeah.

I'm happy to be here in any form. Anyways, I realize maybe not as funny as I thought. You're not. Cancel that May 21st, Elma Cumbero thing. Hey, what's happening May 21st before we talk Nash the Slash? I think you're doing a gig at the Elma Cumber, aren't you? Are tickets still available? Call Bass outlets, and they're up in the third floor, I think.

That's amazing. Behind the organs. So you'll be joining me, Rob Pruse, May 21st at Elmacombo. Get your tickets now. Go to Tronomike.com and click Elmo gig at the top. But enough about me. Let's turn the channel to Nashla Slash. and let's first meet these newbies.

I'll call this fresh meat. You guys are becoming FOTMs for the first time today. So let's go one at a time so the listeners can find out whose voice belongs to whom. Kevin Byrne. How are you doing, buddy? I'm good. Yeah, thanks for inviting us to talk about Nash today. Yeah, I can't wait to get into it.

You are a, you're credited as a writer on this documentary. Yeah, I'm a co-writer with Tim. him and Colin Brunton, former podcast guest. Well, I'm going to go off on calling in a minute. Like, after we say hi to all four of you, I'm going to go off on Colin Brunton. Because until mere, I don't know, an hour or so ago, I had a, like, you know when the friendly giant? Hey, friendly rich, do you know the friendly giant? That's who I'm named after.

Nice. I knew that because you've been on the show, but then I forgot I knew that. And now I just had another mind blow. But the friendly giant used to put out a chair for you, right? Yep. Yeah, rocking chair. Right. Yeah.

I put out a chair for Colin Brunton. I'm just going to leave that and we'll pick it up in a minute. But Kevin, nice to meet you. I got some non-Nationalis-slash-a-audio I'm going to ask you about at some point during this chat. Kim, Kim. Tim Kowalski. Who's Kim? Not Ted.

You know, I'm thinking of Kim Mitchell. I'm thinking about all this stuff. Okay. Tim Kowalski, you directed this documentary National Slash Rises again. Yes. I was the credit I've been given, but, you know, to be honest, this was also like a really collaborative effort between Kevin, Colin, and myself. And it was a really educational experience.

So I want to hear all about that in mere moments. But I did, I think off the top I just mentioned that, oh, friendly rich and Rob Pruth. Before I press record, I mentioned, oh, they know the vibe, but the show they've been on. And I just wanted to make sure you guys understood the vibe. and you said you've been you've heard many episodes. Do you have any favorite episodes of Toronto Mike, Tim? I can't remember thematically what was going on.

Well, there was the one with Colin, which I'd list do, because obviously he's our buddy and we love him. And then there was another one I would listen to, and I can't remember who was the main guest, but I remember Rob was on it. There's a Gary Top episode of, uh, I don't think I listened to that one.

I heard, um, Don Piles was good. Yeah. I heard Michelle's recently. Hers was good. Macadory? Yep. Yep, Michelle. Who popped open what?

I couldn't wait. I didn't know if you guys were drinking beers or what. Okay, so what are you drinking, Rob? I got the Great Lakes super light low longer. Oh, there it is. Okay, so I put one on the table. Are you going to crack one? Well, I just learned that Tim.

You've got ears like a hawk. Well, I heard the Irish cricket out there. Tim's a bit of a lightweight. Tim. Yeah, I am a lightweight. I can't even drink de-alcoholized beer without feeling buzzed. I can't hold his beer even physically. I made a fool out of myself, a white horse.

Do you want to tell quickly this white horse story? Oh, it is just not much to it. It was like we were at Whitehorse for a festival screening. And Kevin did this amazing live set before. So it was like a double bill with Kevin doing his cut flowers tunes. And the promoter of the organizer of the show gave us both a beer each, like one beer each. And so I was slowly nursing the beer throughout his set. One beer.

Nursing one beer. It was a tall boy, though, to be fair. So more than this? No, it was like that. It was like that. Okay. Yeah, yeah. And so he finished his set.

And, uh, IPAs can be pretty, uh, he finished the set. And, uh, we got called to the front

to introduce the movie. And we didn't know we were supposed to do that. So I had nothing. So he just go up there like, hello white horse. Hello yellow knife. Yeah. And then so you hear kind of clap,

clap, clap over here, clap, clap, clap. Maybe over there, a little clap, right? And so I was like,

how many people here know Nash the slash? And then it was like, yeah, I know Nash. So I started doing this like MC kind of thing. And I was like, no, that's not loud enough. Yeah, is that all you got? Yeah, is that all you got? And that was one can of beer did that to you, Tim. Right.

Okay. So I'm going to tell the listenership before we check in with Friendly Rich, you're drinking a hop pop courtesy of Great Lakes brewery. And I can confirm there's zero alcohol in hop pop. Okay. All right, here we go. Pop that open. So if you start slurring your speech, it's psychosomatic or whatnot. There's no alcohol.

What's that that Simpson's episode when Homer goes to space and Barney takes a sip of that champagne and he starts running around like he's crazy drunk? And then they goes, I don't understand. That's non-alcohol champagne. Like, so that's what we're going to see. That doesn't taste very beery at all, actually. Well, it's not a beer. Well, okay.

It's like a carbonated hot beverage. Hey, friendly rich. Hi, Mike. How you doing, buddy? I'm well, man. Nice to see you again. Sorry, I can't be there in person to get my lasagna. Well, I'm going to go off on somebody who's not here in person in a moment.

But can you tell us your contributions to Nash the Slash Rises again? Well, there's a piece I did, a piece of music I did that's featured in the film that I'm very honored to have been a part of. it's called Thanks for All the Fish. And it was actually Nash's letter to the music industry that he kind of co-wrote with Gary Top. And I kind of set that to music for one of my prior records called Man Out of Time. And so that was awesome that that was featured. But I kind of come to this project as well, dual with having produced this new, tribute compilation called Nash the slash covered.

So those two things are kind of what brings me to the party here today. But yeah, and I knew Nash and, you know, I have so much respect for the guy as kind of an outsider weirdo, you know, in our town of Toronto, just like, it's awesome that he's so close to home. So I pulled great inspiration. from him, you know, so this was easy to kind of get on board to do this project. Well, I'm going to ask for your accounts of, you know, how you knew Nash, et cetera, et cetera. But can you name check any artists that can be heard on this tribute album that you organized?

Oh, man, anyone from Brian Poole, from Ronaldo and the Loaf, who are kind of contemporaries of Nash with the residents and all those weirdos, Ian Blurton, Christine Duncan, Einsof, so many amazing artists locally and then this guy Nolan Cook from Oakland, like some Americans, some Brits from the UK.

So yeah, it kind of goes all over the place, but it's really exciting. And that comes out on Friday the 13th of March as well. Nice. That's next week. Yeah, so we're doing like a release, a vinyl release after the screening of this film. It's just going to be a night of film and then music.

Okay, let's shout out the screening now, and then we'll revisit it later in more detail. But this is happening Friday, March the 13th. We're talking in the year, 26, if you're in the far off future. This is 2026. So it's 7 p.m. This is like a screening of Nash the Slash rises again. There's a Q&A.

There's live music. This is at the hot docs, Ted Rogers Cinema, because nothing's more punk than Ted Rogers. And Tim, you'll be there for sure. Oh, yeah. You've got to be there. You directed this film. Kevin, you'll be there for sure.

I will, yep. And Friendly Rich, you'll be there for sure. Oh, yeah. And we'll get performances by good FOTMs like Ian Blurden. But now I must find out. Will New York Rob Pruse be at this screening next Friday? I will. I'm so excited to see it.

I will. I'll be sitting in the crowd, nervous, and excited. Okay, that's amazing that you got the great Rob Proust. So Proust, tell me what you did for this documentary Nash, the slash rises again. Well, it started that

initially I was a contributor to the GoFundMe or the Kickstarter or whatever it was, which was like three years ago or so, you guys? Was it like 2023 or so or even longer ago than that? Yeah, well, there was two of them. Yeah, there was an Indiegogo and then it was a GoFundMe.

Oh my God, I had the Indiegogo for sure, because it feels like years ago now that I had a t-shirt and I got like a postcard and all the shit right and that was a long like maybe the early early stages and then a couple years ago at some point i i emailed Colin sort of out of the blue and just said hey you know i don't remember what what we what we had first contacted about and i said if you ever need any help you know with music for the film or anything just let me know i had no idea like what what i could possibly contribute but i just basically said whatever you know just let me know and then like a year went by and then And it was, then this was still like almost a couple of years ago.

And he was like, hey, you know, remember you mentioned you might be available and interested maybe? And there were some licensing issues, I guess, for a couple of pieces of music. Yeah. And so basically I kind of came on board to help fill in some gaps in the music score. And then Tim and I, it was about a year ago this time that we started getting into it. Yeah. And just sort of like I was, I came up with some, some instrumental cues for some sections of the film.

Hey, can I, is this a good time? Can I play what you sent me, Rob? If you want, sure. I do. Of course I want to. So let's just listen to a bit. So let me just let me set up. Let me set up the clip, Jim. Yes, boss.

So this is a little montage. Tim, I took a few of the cues because I asked him about this like if he had any thoughts about it. So I just took a few of my instrumental bits and I sort of montaged and sort of mushed them together. And there's a couple of extra little, little Easter eggs for Tim that I'll tell him after if he doesn't recognize them. Okay. And can you remind me, remind me after I play this. to go off on Brunton, okay? Okay, I don't want to forget.

It's important to me. Okay, here we go. It's only a minute and a half. You talented son of a bitch. Wow. Awesome. That was great. I could listen to that all day.

I want to buy that on a record. You could cut that, you could cut a trailer to that maybe. So, Tim, the beginning and the ending and a little bit in the middle, do you remember, you sent me in the way the early days we were trying to figure out

what to do with the violin stuff and you had sent me some little, like, test things you'd done with like unplugging a cable and like scraping a violin and shit. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I can't play the violin. No, but I worked it into this. So those little scraping things. Yeah, I know, but you made it sound like I kind of could, which is great.

Well, because it was kind of, what you sent me was kind of cool. So, so, so Mike, that's just a little, that's like little snippets of some different sections of, you know, things. Amazing. So, he did, he did an amazing job and he was so much fun to work with. Do you sometimes think he's too nice? Yeah. Kids, he keeps you on edge because I like nice people. We should all be, you know, good people.

But I feel like Rob might be, he's a little too nice. So you're always kind of waiting for, you know. Too nice for Nash. Yeah, but you know what? It's kind of different with Rob because you could be too nice and be super talented and that's great. But if you're too nice and not talented, that's a big problem. But it's not a problem. He's very talented.

And he takes constructive criticism really well. And he, there's nothing I love more than criticism. No, I don't know. It's not coming from it. It was just fun. Like, I didn't want to stop. It was great. Oh, yeah.

So a lot of voices on this ep, and I'll do my best to, you know, share the love. But I think we're going to start with Kevin, if that's okay. Yo. Would you mind if I just sit back and you tell me, like, how you knew Nash the slash? And just talk to me about Nash the slash. Well, I didn't know him personally. You know, Colin, don't forget to go off on him.

Oh, you know, can I do that first? Let's do it. Let's hear it. So I feel like this episode, which I'm still excited about it. I don't want to make it sound like it was going to be the Colin Brunton show. But Colin kind of sold me on this idea and I said, okay, that's amazing. Get FOTM Colin Brunton in the basement. Let me, because I'm going to play something from your previous life, Kevin.

But I want to meet Kevin Byrne. I want to meet Tim. Talk to him about directing this film. I love Friendly Rich. I get another chance to reacquate myself with the friendly one. Speaking of people who are too nice, that might be too friendly rich. But Colin Brunton locked.

I got a lasagna delivered for him from Palma pasta. Like literally this morning. I had a delivery just get Colin Brunton his lasagna. Fresh craft beer. Great Lakes guys were just here. Talking to Jim Brickman. I made sure I had some beer for Colin Brunton. And then I checked my email because it's getting time to get ready to make this happen.

And he's like, I can't remember where he's going. Where is he going, guys? Mexico. Mexico. He's like, oh, last minute decision, I'm going to Mexico. Yeah. Can somebody assist me in going off? That's kind of bullshit, right?

Well, no, it's true. The man needs a bullshit. The man needs a break. The man needs a break. But didn't he have a prior engagement in South Atobico? He did. But Mexico is warm. Friendly, Rich, will you help me?

I need somebody to just say, come on. Yeah, he could have zoomed it in like Robin's. I, right? No, I think he's up in the air at this point. Oh, okay. So, what time is the flight? What's that song thinking of you down in Mexico? Yeah, Edward Bear.

Yeah. Oh, Cancon. There you go. Yeah. Okay, love my can't con here. Okay, so, I mean, obviously, my tongue's in my cheek, but that is a bit of a bait and switch. And Colin, I take notes over here.

I got my shit list over here. You'll have to work your way out of that. And I do have a memory of a lovely email I got from Colin Brunton after he came on Toronto Mike, and we talked about this project where he said someone heard him on Toronto Mike and gave $10,000 towards the making of this documentary. That was a true story I got from Colin Brunton. Wow. Tim, do you know anything about that? Well, I remember it happening, but unfortunately I never, because Colin was dealing directly with that stuff.

So you think I'd be a little more hands-on. There were a few angel investors that we were eternally grateful to. because, you know, we failed in our first fund, right, you know, crowdfunding campaign. So we really needed to get it done for the second one. And there were some people who made it possible. Because, of course, with crowdfunding, if you don't hit your stated goal, you don't get the money. Right. You don't get any of it, right? Yeah.

Yeah. Well, no, you could have, you could have some crowdfunding platforms will let you kind of like just take whatever. But you have to, I think this is a switch. You got to select either. We forgot to hit this. We forgot to hit the toggle. The story of my life. That's the title of my book.

Yeah. No, there's a psychology to having the all or nothing option on because then it makes, you know, the funders feel pressure to actually donate more. Yeah, because they don't want to see this. Oh my God,

you're not going to make it. I'll give them 10,000 bucks. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But, yeah, we've been super fortunate to have some really huge.

But that wasn't enough money to get calling back in the basement, is what I'm saying here. No. Okay. Well, Kevin, we'll move on from my going off on the legend that is Colin Brunton. I have a copy here. I don't know who you probably can't see it, Kevin. I got a copy of the last Pogo sitting right over there, okay? Yeah. I understand the bona fides of the great Colin Brunton and we sing his praises off.

I had Liz Worth here last week. And her husband worked with Colin on the last Pogo jumps again. That's how he got to start. Is that Kiri? Kiri Papat. Oh, yeah. Very talented. Yeah. Yeah, so we, anyways, we love Colin, so I'm just kind of kidding here.

But Kevin, let's just start with you, and we'll go around the horn here. So you never had a personal relationship of Nash and the Slash. No, and, you know, like Tim will tell you his story, his origin story of coming to the Nash Dock. But mine is that really, I worked in a used record store on Queen Street called Driftwood Music, big up, driftwood. Yeah. And I worked there for a bunch of years with Dom Pile, actually, for a while. Love that guy. And, you know, records had come across.

the desk there, pretty much everything that's ever been made came across the desk and, you know, a couple of Nash records came in and I was interested in those early instrumental records, you know, bedside companion and dreams and nightmares. But I didn't really know much about him. Like I think by this point, his career had sort of tailed out a little bit, but I did know that he was still performing in bandages. And I was like, you know, that's, that's whacked. Like that he is still doing this decades later.

later. So, you know, when Tim was fishing around for people to join him and making the film, and I'd been an editor for many years at this point. So I always kind of have my antennae up for good stories. And I was like, instantly, I was like, that guy is going to have a backstory. Like, there's something going on. I want to be part of that story. And that's how I came to it. And then I came it to sort of be more fully immersed in, you know, his work. And obviously, his personal life, et cetera, but I came to appreciate some of the other stuff I had not heard.

Love it, Tim, let's hear your, did you ever meet Nash slash? No, I never, excuse me, I never met Nash. But I did appreciate him as a kid, growing up in the 80s, watching the new music.

I'd see him on, you know, he'd be on there every once in a while, wielding his skull mandolin. Well, you couldn't miss them, right? Yeah. That's me. I remember when I'm watching the same thing as you. I probably have a couple of years on you, Tim.

And I remember you couldn't miss this bandaged guy with the electric violin. Yeah, yeah. And it just, he totally put me in all, right? So fast forward to when I get out of grade school, or sorry, out of high school, and I did my first full-time job, which was like a summer job at a printing plant, and there was this older gentleman who worked the press next to me. And one day I'm working, he tass me on the shoulder, and he asks me, have you ever heard of Nash the Slash?

I told him, yeah, I love Nash. I think he's really cool, blah, blah, blah. And he says, yeah, I played on Nash's first record. I'm like, what? And he tells me the story about Nash living in this apartment above the box office at a movie theater. And he had his own recording studio in there and kind of looked a little bit like Elton John without the bandages. And part of me thought, okay, you're kind of pulling my leg. But there was another part of me thinking, ooh, this sounds like a movie I want to see.

So fast forward to when Nash died around 2014 And I started looking into his backstory A lot of that all of that stuff checked out It felt like a green light So I started putting out feelers And people answered And I got lucky with the people who did And here we are

And was that the original 99 cent Roxy Yes it was Yeah Shout out to the Garys Yep Yeah it's Yeah so It's kind of surreal

kind of experiencing that and then here's the logical conclusion. A movie came out of it. A documentary, you know, so great. Okay. I can't wait to get back to Friendly Rich, but I just am curious, Tim, is this your directorial debut? Yeah.

Yeah, it is, but you know, I feel weird saying. I don't even, don't judge me. No, I feel weird. You're so defensive about that. I'm like, Steven Spiel. I don't feel that way because it's like, we, you know, it was a very collaborative. effort between Kevin and Colin and myself. And we all had a lot to add to this.

As filmmaking is, and as, you know, a documentary film, so much of the story happens in, in the edit room. And so the three of us were kind of putting and writing and editing together.

Yep. Yep. Yeah. And you're smart to have one name as director because you know, I think the Oscars have a rule. If you guys are going to win best doc at the Oscars, I don't think you're allowed to have like,

multiple directors. I feel like this was what got the Coen brothers in trouble, I think. If I'm remembering. Oh, really? That was, yeah, I think you need to have like a single director, I believe. I believe.

Okay, friendly rich. Hey. Now you actually knew Nash the slash. Yeah, I mean, not well, but I cherish my encounters, that's for sure, because they were strange encounters. Like, he,

I booked him once. to perform at the Brampton Indy Arts Festival. I kind of did this for about a decade. I did this festival. I programmed this festival. And to have him on that bill was amazing. And then in my hometown of Brampton, Ontario, I used to do this thing called the Parade of Noises,

which was like 700 grade four kids all performing on homemade musical instruments in downtown Brampton at the end of, of the year. Like we would build these instruments throughout the year. And so I would get like members of the Nylos Pazam Band, Kid Kowala, John Oswald, like a bunch of, you know, weirdo Canadian musicians and Nash and Slash. And one year we had Nashville slash and I had it in my head that we would do. And of course he gets bandaged up in front of all these grade four kids. It's the strangest thing. And and and I'll never forget it. I do have

photos. I got to dig these photos out. I've been thinking about this. And we recorded it actually too. We did a music. I had it in my head to be really heady in some of these music education adventures that we would have. And so we did like musical Red Rover with Nash the Slash. So you hear a kid at one point go, you know, Red Rover, Red Rover, we call Nash the Slash over. So he had his violin and he's riffing on his violin. And then eventually he loses and has to walk over to the other side.

It was a very strange thing. but he was up for it. Like, the point is, he was always up for it and supportive whenever I'd throw something by him, you know? Amazing. And Rob, I know, I can hear you, just so you know, Mr. Proust. I hear you typing away over there, okay? Do you do? Okay, I'm going to stop taking notes.

Is that unrelated business? Are you, uh... No, I'm keeping notes on, like, Nash slash notes. I'm like, you know, what is the expression that Friendly Rich just used, something about noise? And I'm like, oh, I do hear that noise. It's Rob, I'm typing away here. But, Rob, tell me about. about your relationship with Nash the Slash.

I think our relationship goes back to like our early Spoons days. Like I'm talking maybe like 81, 82-ish. You were in the spoons? Yes. What did you do for the spoons? I played synthesizers. I think that we did, I think that we shared the stage at the edge with the Nash for like a Christmas party or something.

And then a couple years later, I don't even, I mean, our manager must have like reconnected us. But then we got him into our video for Tell the Lies, for our song Tell the Lies, where we filmed on this old plane and he was like on the plane in a coffin like a mummy. And then we had shot, we used some footage from that film for that video because it was paid for by Maxel videotapes because our manager's like dad ran was one of the heads of Maxcel or something. So there's a MacSel commercial. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Slow down for a second here because we'd had about maybe we'd had 50 chats, right?

Rob Proust, like recorded chats, right? At least, yeah. And we talk about the great sell-out era, very un-punk of you guys, okay? Yeah, I know. We're trying to be punk over here. That's not very punk. But you guys did the thrifties, right? And then you did the Maxel.

But did we ever know that there was actually like that connection you just briefed by between the schools? I remember it. I remember the, wasn't there a commercial as well? Yeah, but this connection. Repeat that line. Which one? Who is related to who? at Maxel? Oh, it was our manager's dad, like, was the head of Max L or worked for Max L or something?

Yeah, yeah. So we had connections, of course. It's who you know, not what you know. Did we talk about that before? Probably never. I don't, it doesn't come up very often because we did one, actually we did a really cool radio commercial once for MaxL too. Like in that, even before we recorded Nova Heart, we did this commercial, this radio commercial that played probably only on CFNY, and it actually turned into one of our songs on our second album. And Gordon Sandy don't even have a memory of this thing and there's no recorded proof that it existed but it was so cool. Do you do a Marsden impression? Not like.

Blair Packham. Blair Packum. So Nash toured with his, I'm just backing up a little bit to the Nash story. I interrupted you to just bang home the point. I don't think that's been disclosed that the manager of the Spoons says father. Yeah. What was his role at Max L? I don't remember.

He was like on the executive board or something. Yeah. I think that's a mind blow. Is it really? Well, they, so they, basically, our sponsorship was that they paid for us to make the tell no lies video. Right. And then they, like, cut, like, out of the video stuff.

They took some footage. There was, like, you can see the commercial on YouTube, I'm sure. There's little extra shots of us, like, with Maxo, videotapes or something. I had no idea. Okay. So in that video for Tell No Lies, we can see Nash the Slash. Nash is in the video. And then the subsequent tour that we did, which was like for our album Talk Back,

and Nash toured with us. and he would open for us pretty much across the country like most of the gigs we did together and he would come on a stage with us at the end of our set and play arias and symphonies with us as well because I was always playing like violin shit on my synth

but he'd come in like we had a little section where he sort of would go off on it and I don't know that there's any video footage of it I wish there was okay so for all of you and you know you can chime in here but when I think of Nash the Slash I think of him as like an enigma

wrapped in a riddle like it's such a mysterious figure So when you in this, I need to see this doc. I will disclose. I haven't seen it yet. I can see it on Friday, March the 13th at 7 p.m. at Hot Docs Ted Rogers Cinema. I can see it at that screening.

A lot of cool people are going to be there. I want to be there. But can one of you chime in to just tell me like how you tell the story of this really mysterious figure in Canadian music? Like anybody. I'll have that to you. Well, I mean, you know it took us nine years, right?

Yeah, but we tried every way possible. Yeah. But go ahead. Well, you know, the thing about documentary film is you go out, you get the material, you think you're making a certain type of film, you get back in the edit room, you're like, oh, no, that's not working. Plus, you know, we didn't have a voice of God. We weren't having a narrator.

And so essentially this film is told through the interviews that we shot. And to sort of create a cohesive story around that about his life. There were a lot of competing perspectives. There were a lot of different memories. There's a passage of time. People are, you know, a lot older, going back 30, 40 years. But there was also, you know, this idea that he was so mysterious that he presented different parts of who he was to different people. Right.

And so some people had a completely different relationship with him. Might have even been considered, had said to us, I was his best friend and then had no idea about the other friends he had at all. Yeah. And they were like, you know, when I found out, I just, you know, it was really surprising to them. And so, you know, we also had to figure out which of these stories holds water. So we've got to go and we've got to like collect evidence for whether or not the stories that we're hearing are actually, you know, are these faithful narrators. Then the other part of it was what's the important parts of his story that will make for a more kind of universal communication? it's not just going to be

I was very insistent. I don't want it to be a niche doc. I don't want it to be like, you know, this completely, you know, fan-obsessed, focused,

you know, a doc on him. Like a love letter. Yeah, I want it to be truthful, but I also want it to be about like, like some real human themes. And so we struggled with,

like, following those different paths of inquiry and finding the balance and finding the humanity. and presenting it in a way that showed like a very fulsome story and very fulsome picture of his life you were going to say something there friendly rich yeah i was just chatting with tim the other day about this how much i appreciate this in the documentary that he that you guys collectively kind of lean into like there's a darkness there with nash and

you know a lot of these documentaries like i i'm a huge john kenton Candy fan, but like I was left, um, we talked about this the other day, right? Yeah. Like I was, I was left kind of just like, I don't know. I didn't, for some reason I just couldn't get behind that documentary that just came out about John Candy. I just, I just felt like, come on, there's got to be some, not that, not that I'm, like, I think you need to highlight the darkness in someone's life, but I think you have to pay

attention to like who's producing these, these films and who's making them. Like, his kids aren't going to exactly, right. Yeah, well, yeah. Go ahead. Yeah, also we had, well, it's also, it's like a blessing and a curse, but we didn't have a big studio funding us, so we got to just take our time and make the movie we wanted to make. But this is a great point, Friendly Rich is bringing up,

which is nowadays we're used to seeing docs that are like sanctioned by the family or the estate or whatnot. Yeah. And my issue with a lot of the docs are saying, and this would even include the CFNY documentary that just aired on TV, TVO docs, which is, you know, that one had to be

blessed by chorus before it could go public, right? So inherently, you're not going to have a lot of warts there. Like, it's going to be, it is, and I talked to the director

and he said, it is a love letter to the spirit of radio. But you're getting, it's not going to call it a propaganda piece, but you're, you're,

I think you're right, friendly, rich, about that John Candy Doc. I felt the same way, which is, this guy was fucking amazing, so funny,

wow, look at all the great shit he did, and then he died young. Yeah. And goodbye. The book is a little more, I think, on John Candy. Not that this is about John Kennedy. The Paul Myers one? Yeah, yeah.

Yeah. I think it touches a different, it highlights different aspects of them that I didn't know about, which is what you want as a fan of these people. You want to go deeper. So the Nash, back to the Nash stock, I think you guys just did an outstanding job there of not shying away from. the dark elements in his life, his temper. Right.

Like, those are kind of like thematic, um, you know, motifs that come throughout it. And, um, and, and you just kind of accept it and you tell the story of who this guy really was. And I, I appreciate that. I haven't seen that in many docs that I've been. Well, yeah. Watching lately. Yeah.

I mean, we were, I think, really, really lucky to have Nash as a subject for the film because just so happens. He's a complex character. And he's, really interesting, you know, even without the bandages. Well, unlike anybody's life as complex if you spend enough time. But his life is really, but you know, like we over index sometimes, right? So we would go too far into the dark stuff and then Colin would say, hey, you know what? There was this other thing. He had a great sense of humor, for instance. Are we focusing enough on that? You know,

he was very generous. Are we focusing enough on that? You know, let's not get too wrapped up in, you know, this aspect of his personality. Pardon the pun, eh? Yeah. Well, I was always told you got a kick at the darkness till it bleeds daylight. Right. You guys can pull me on that, okay? That's deep. Get a tattoo of that line on it and attribute it to Toronto Mike, if you don't mind. A little drip blood drop coming out of the sun.

Anyway. Hey, I have a question. What's the opposite of that? What's the opposite of the kick at the darkness until it blees daylight? If there's too much daylight, how do you bring the darkness? You pull down the shades? Yeah, you wrap yourself in bandages. Stop blowing my mind, Bruce.

Well, you tell me that I'm too nice And then I need to find the darkness within When we all get together And make the Rob Pruss documentary We'll have to search like crazy To find some darkness You can just talk to my ex-wife All of them?

I maybe I don't have that size of hard drive, okay? Hey, so what I would like to do though is Because of course this documentary is being screened next Friday. So would you guys mind if I spent a couple of minutes playing the trailer and then we'll come back on the other side and talk more about Nash the Slash and this doc?

Go ahead. It's my show. I'm going to do it anyway. Now right. Nash to slash rises. And don't forget the exclamation mark. This is a key detail. I feel like people are going to say Nash the slash rises again. No, it's Nash the slash rises again.

Right. Man's desire to change his face to assume a strange or frightening disguise to impersonate his gods or to frighten devils is a desire older than the history of language. He wanted to be right

at that cutting edge. He's clearly an electronic music pioneer. In the context of that era, people weren't doing this type of thing. I created an orchestra that had not been heard before. I'm your Gino

He'll host, Iggy Pop. I've been on tour for some time now with this gentleman who calls himself Nash the Slash. This is very good ladies. Oh, my God. Hugely influenced by horror films. It was performance art. It was a whole persona he constructed and presented. It was an act of violence and you loved it.

I'd come to Toronto to do some rehearsals for my first North American tour. We went past this club and there was Nash. Oh, it's not what you expected. There was this dichotomy of two personalities that played. Just a guy hanging out, really low-key, and then the other side was a master of ceremony. The hand-in-fews came about as a happy accident, but you don't have to be a Freudian psychologist to think, yeah, there's definitely a sense of hiding one's true self. It's like a kind of an immolation of the self. destroying his instrument, covering up his body.

If he had it in the mind that you slighted him. Often pioneers end up with arrows in their backs. It's the ones that follow on afterwards that reap heroes of reward. Hook that to my veins. I'm ready. I want to see it right now. Okay, well, you better show up. There's an interesting comment I'm going to read before we get back to making of this doc and Nash the Slash.

But we are on the live stream, live.com. Tobias Vaughn says this. I've been a Nash fan for over 40 years, and I learned stuff from the documentary, including some pretty dark stuff. So if you can educate a man like Tobias Vaughn, who's been a big fan for four decades,

you're doing it right. Oh, thank you, Tobias. Tobolans. No, I'm not a nom de plume, okay? Nondiplum. I was thinking of Woody Tobias, Jr. Okay. The,

hearing that, okay, so the darkness, et cetera, et cetera, when I was thinking of what you said, Kevin, this is what was striking me. You talked about how different people, even good friends would not be aware of other relationships and other parts. And then I wonder Nash the Slash as a narrator. Like, is he a reliable narrator?

Like, when he shares a different part of himself with a different person, is that trustworthy? I'm wondering if he's an unreliable narrator. Yeah, that's another layer to the story is that he spun his own mythology along the way. I think everybody does that on a certain level.

I guess so. We all represent ourselves in certain ways to different people. It's not like this was particularly unique. It's just like the level to which he did it. Yes. You know, I mean, of course, you know, the anonymity is one part of that, but he did create like his own, you know, story.

even the origin story of the bandages, like getting to the bottom of that was, you know, a lot of private investigative work. Oh, bet. Yeah, I bet you,

if he's spreading mythology, then how do you, you know, differentiate fact from fiction? Yeah, a lot of, you know, his sort of braggadaccio,

the, you know, I was the first, this, et cetera, et cetera, you know, that's part of him

creating his character, but I mean, a lot of times he was absolutely correct. He was the first. but it also contributed to that, you know, comic book sort of, you know, villain or a superhero or whatever way you want to cast him. Yep, yep. Right, right. You'd concur, right, friendly, Rich?

Oh, absolutely. I love the idea of an unreliable narrator. I mean, that's where it's at. We are artists telling stories here, so who needs to be that faithful to reality? I mean, whatever. And he was all about that, right? It's all shrouded in mystery. Yeah, literally shrouded.

Yeah, it's almost like a psychology of being wrapped in bandages makes you a blank slate. So you can be like a villain to this person, a hero to that person, you know, and be like 10 feet tall when you're 5 foot 2, you know, that kind of thing. Tim, as director, I have a question for you. So you talk to different people in this documentary. Can you name check any of the names that we do?

might know who we'll see in this documentary talking about nationalist life? There's a few people you might have heard of. They heard a couple in the trailer. So you've got people like Gary Newman, you have people like Martin Youth Glover from Killing Joke, Daniel Dax, Steve Hillidge, Gary Topp, Colin Brunton, believe it or not. Wow, how'd you get him?

I don't know, but he showed up. It was weird. Got interviewed before he became our executive producer. It's like, you're doing this all wrong. Help me out here. Who am I forgetting? I have a name. We did like 50 interviews. So a lot of it didn't make it in.

Yeah. You know. Is there an extended cut somewhere for the Tobias Vons of the world, you know? The full extended cut. The original cut, I think, was around three hours. Oh, that was the assembly. The assembly cut. But even after that, I think it was.

Oh, don't get excited. It was boring. I find the diehards are actually interested in that three-hour cut, even if it's, you know, an editor. I think just having all that raw material for a die-hard fan is invaluable. It's a logistical nightmare to be able to put out a three-hour cut of a documentary with lots of unlicensed footage. There's a lot of legal chances.

There's a chap who did a directory about much music. Sean Menard. Right. Yes. He came over. You know this story, but he came over, we talked about it. I saw this film at Roy Thompson Hall. Like, I laid eyes on this thing.

I heard about it, yes. And then it was promoted by Crave. We're dropping it on Friday this episode. You know, Crave owned by Bell Media, much music owned by Bell Media. So it's all in the family, right? And it was debuting a Friday at, I don't know what it was, 10 o'clock or 8 o'clock or something. This thing never did drop because of music licensing issues. And that was years ago.

Yes. And I don't think the director has any. motivation or any inclination to rectify this. Oh, well, I heard that he put, I think he mortgaged his house to make this thing? Oh, that's the story he told me. Oh, my God, yeah. I mean, what's left after that? I feel horrible for him.

Well, he bounced back because he did something for the Terry Fox Foundation that I got to see, and it was pretty remarkable. So I think he's turned the page. Shout out to Bob Seeger. But can you speak to him to this music licensing and how that can affect, a documentary about a musician like Nash to Slash? Yeah, well, it's got many layers to it. We were lucky to have the support of Nash's estate

who basically gave us carte blanche. It gave us sort of like anything that you want to use, go ahead and use. No caveats, like don't make him seem too dark. No, no, we were really fortunate Trevor Norris, who's the state owner. Right from the get-go, he was like, I want to. want you to make the film, your film, yeah. Yeah, but that's the first stage. So that basically means that anything that wasn't,

it didn't have a publisher attached to it and was released independently, we can use as much as we want and you don't have to pay for that. But then there's the other stuff that Nash, he signed a record deal with this label called Dindisc in the UK, was a subsidiary of Virgin Records. Richard Branson was actually involved in deal personally. And yeah, so that stuff was kind of tied up with BMG. So we had to pay for the sync of those,

which is like the publishing. And then we had to go over to Universal, I think, who had the master's rights, which is like the recorded material. Sure. So that adds up over time. And, yeah, so there was a bunch of stuff we could use for free, and there was a bunch of stuff we had to pay for. And then there was stuff that wasn't Nash music, like Iggy Pop, eggs on plate.

And there was Gary Newman, cars, yeah, and some other people. Yeah, and so we were lucky that we had a music supervisor who really kept everything in check. Who's that? was Natasha Dupree. Dupree, yeah. I mean, the thing with documentary, music documentaries is so many of them don't get made because they run into those licensing issues

unless they have, you know, a vanity project where an artist is, you know, wants to make a documentary about their life. Like Billy Joel. Yeah, whatever, you know, Elton John or whoever it is. And a lot of them don't get made or they end up like the, you know, the Color Me Impressed Replacements video,

a documentary, which is like the band isn't in the documentary. Right. Those vanity projects, my wife was watching a document. I'll put quotes around this. No one can see my air quotes, but a documentary about Jennifer Lopez, okay? And I was in the room just casually watching this thing, which is essentially like when Mr. Burns made that movie about himself. This is the biggest fluff propaganda thing you've ever seen. And it's like, oh, of course, she's making this about herself. You should see the Toronto Mike dog I'm making. I come across amazing.

What a smart, handsome man. No darkness there. That's my neck project. I'm going to do a hit job on myself. Yeah. Okay, friendly, Rich. You know, you know, you've seen the dock, obviously, and you've been heavily involved in the tribute,

the tribute music, et cetera. But, like, so do you think good job of the music in this dock? Oh, amazing. Outstanding. I mean, Rob, you did such a good job there. Yeah. Thank you. and and just overall I think it really is

it it it gets you like if you're not if you didn't know a lot about Nash and this is like a gateway in like I think wow that this is going to attract hopefully a whole new generation there's a bit of a renaissance around Nash's work and if you're a fan I think you like

Tobias Fawn yeah Tobias said Woody Tobias Jr. said like it's definitely it's definitely goes deeper and so for all of us fans it was very intriguing on that level too so great job

well that's the toughest balance if I may chime in again I've seen a lot of these nostalgic dog the greatest difficulty I find is you'll see a dock and this actually did apply to 99 Queen Street West and it did apply to the Safe Hawaii dog but if you are like well versed in this world where you've been very interested you've dug in you've had lengthy conversations

with people like David Marsden and this and that or the Garys etc like there's one dock for the great unwashed right and then there's another dock for the diehards, it is very difficult to make a dock that the diehards get something from in love and the Great Unwashed are not intimidated by and they can have a gateway to the Nash, this last universe. Yep.

And we've accomplished that here. I think, well, so far, we haven't had eggs thrown at us or tomatoes thrown at us yet. I'm still waiting for that, but. Well, the diehards will let you know, right? That's right. Yeah, yeah, no, we've been super fortunate. Yeah, I think that screening at Blood and the Snow, where there were a lot of OG Nash fans there,

we got some really positive feedback, so we felt really good about that. That's cool. And, you know, just to go to the point, I find films that do that one note, isn't he great, isn't he great, isn't he great, isn't he great? I check out after 15 minutes. So I feel like where we were really,

fortunate that we captured that friction that, you know, throughout the story because it just keeps you roped in. Kudos to whoever granted you, blessed you to tell this story the best you can. I feel like we need to almost like put documentaries that are

like when this, when I find out Bell Media is going to approve the 29 Queen Street West dock or I find out chorus is going to approve of the CFWine dock. I feel like that's almost like an asterisk is required on those docs, like sanction by the stakeholders.

Yeah, I would say chorus entertainment shouldn't be approving anybody with their share price. I went to the SCTV documentary that was directed by Scorsese. They had a filming pre-pandemic. And I've been so stoked about that damn thing

for like, what, six, seven years now and there's no sign of it coming out. Can we talk about this for a minute? Yeah, these docks get, these docs, some of them die on the tree. Yeah. Before he passed away, Joe Flaherty said that that doc was done. Like stick a fork in it, it's done, it's never coming out.

Like he made that statement before he passed, and he died years ago. Now we've lost Catherine O'Hara. So that's two people. And you were there, Friendly Rich? Yeah, it was such a moment, man. It was such a moment. Did you secretly record it on your iPhone? I took photos.

I mean, they had a Johnny LaRue crane. They actually had a crane there in honor of candy. It was so moving. Polynesian town crane, the actual crane? Yeah, you know the way we all nerd out about SCTV? It was literally like the entire cast with Jimmy Kimmel. Wow. And Scorsese's kind of skulking through the aisles.

It was a surreal, a surreal experience. I did hear, but I heard of, like I've been trying to fall this pretty closely too because I'll joke, you've heard this all the time, Rob. I'm like, release the footage, Mr. Scorsese. Yeah, man. Yeah, I don't think it's him. I think it's Netflix or something. Where the music rights is.

You guys were talking about music rights. Yeah, yeah, that'll stop any film dead as tracks. Yeah, yeah. I mean, that's part of the reason why we had to work with Rob. And you know what? You were so desperate. You called up. No.

You know, the thing was Nash had done a soundtrack, like television work for a series called Cold Blood, I think. Yeah. And, you know, it was kind of like a, sort of a cop, forensic. detective 90s kind of thing. Yeah. And so he had a collection of tons of recorded stuff that had never been released before. Stings and all

this stuff and I was dropping it in the edit all over the place. And then we went to get the licensing for it and they were like no way, no how we're never going to we're never going to let you use it. But why is that? The show is dead and buried. The music will well they yeah I think once he kind of maybe handed it in it was

theirs. Whether they used it or not. But you may get a point right there, Kevin. Like, why not set it free for this, you know, this low, this small little doc about this great Nash the Slash? Why are you being such a corporate dick? Truth be known, they probably, we probably could have just went ahead and used it and they would never know. But we don't like having any of that stuff hang out. You don't want to go to bed at night and say, oh, I hope, but they don't find out.

No, we're nice Canadians. We don't roll like that. And then Rob did all the incidental music again. And it turned out better. Way better. And it was a fun challenge for me because all those, you had sent me the list of all the bits, like the sections. You're like, we need something sort of like this. And so it was sort of like a good template for me to know what I'm going to try to base it upon.

And apparently, I mean, I've never really done film scores, but I love the idea of film music and film composers and stuff. And I was here about temp scores where they'll say, here's our temp music. So now just do something like this, but not this. Yeah, yeah, do something like this, but different. Yeah. Yeah. So like, you know, like kind of be like Nash, but totally be yourself. Exactly.

Well, and to get into the role, like every piece I worked on, I put bandages on too. Like when I sat at the keyboard, I made sure I wrapped my face and did everything. Is that real? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Really? That's amazing.

Oh, wow. I did not know that. Roll with me, kids. throw with me. Oh, okay. I can't tell because I'm not looking at your screen. Are you winking at me? Well, you're always winking at me. My whole life is a wink, yeah. On that note, so I want to apologize

to you, Rob Pruse, and you friendly, rich, because what happens in these situations with two in the room, two on Zoom is, I forget about the two on the Zoom. Like, I'm so, you know, take it away. So, no offense, but I do remember a note from the great Rob Bruce that he only had an hour. I do. I actually

have to take off. So, Dr. in the swamp, please, I'm going to shut up and listen. to you until you leave the Zoom. Okay. Well, I will see you at the screening on the 13th, which I'm so excited to see all three of you guys. Mike, maybe you'll be there too. I don't know. Oh, I'd love to be there.

Okay. And it's been an honor for me to even be involved in this at all. Like I said before, my first email to Colin was like, if I can contribute anything to this, I would love it, only because I have such great memories of Nash and like the times that we spent together on stage and just, you know, hanging out and stuff. So it's been a complete, like, it's. It's practically an unexpected thing for me to be a part of this. But did you reach out to call in after he came on Toronto miced, or was it unrelated to that?

No, it was years before. Yeah, that's why I'm asking. Yeah, yeah. No, it was a couple years before. So, yeah, so you guys go on and I will see y'all in a week. See you then. Looking forward to it, man. I can't wait.

I'll see you there. Rob Pruss, we love you, brother. Thanks for doing this. Thanks, guys. I'll see you later. See you later. Bye. So I had a question come in.

There goes Rob Pruse. See how quiet it got when Rob was. left. We know who had a signal to noise ratio there was quite high. Well, I could hear the typing. I heard a little echo come back. I mean, does no one wear headphones anymore when they're doing this thing? Come on here. I had a question come in. This was actually for Colin Brunton, but he went to Mexico. Like, he just said, screw you guys. I don't need my beer and my lasagna. I'm out of here. So I'm just going to read this. And then you, three gentlemen can tell me if you have the answer here, okay? So this gentleman's name is

Tim the driver, F-O-T-M-T-T-M-the-driver. He, He writes, a good friend of mine is the brother of Cam Hawkins of FM. I believe Nash was one of the founders of the group back in the late 70s. Can you ask Colin if he remembers Ian Hawkins or Larry Freemes? Freemes, Friam's, F-R-I-E-M-E-S. Ian is Cam's brother. Ian is a great flutist, almost like Jeff Rotel's Ian Anderson. Larry was a roadie for the group when they were FM.

Fun fact, FM opened for Rush for an entire tour. I heard lots of good stories about Jeff Plumann. Okay, so the fun fact for the great unwashed is that's the real name of Nash the Slash. Jeff Truman. It is. Bandages are off. He says before he became the bandage imprasario

later in his career. So do you guys have any knowledge of Cam Hawkins of FM? It was really a Colin Brunton question, but if one of you wants to... Yeah, we interviewed Cam for the film. He's in the film. Yeah, he's probably in the first... the first batch of interviews we did.

He was one of the first people we contacted. And he was really gracious. And he helped us out throughout the production of the film. If we needed music, if we needed his voice for a sequence, he was there. And yeah, really, really solid guy. Yeah, and early FM, you know, Nash is an originator and created FM with Cam Hawkins. It was just the two of them initially. And, you know, that first record went, they added Marty Deller as the drummer later,

But that first record is, you know, considered a, you know, like an exemplary sort of piece of progressive rock music of the time and, you know, held in high esteem by a lot of people. Oh, and speaking of that rush tour, I think Ben Mink was on that tour, if I'm not mistaken. I know we have some Super 8 footage, a really, really short clip in the film. And I believe it was, it was South FM playing a big sort of arena. and I think they were opening for Rush in that little piece of film. Amazing. And Friendly Rich, because you're the last Romanian remote joiner here, you just run over me, man.

If you have something you want to interject or something you want to say, I won't consider it rude. No, no, and I'm Italian, I'll cut you off six times over. But I do, no, in all seriousness, I do, this compilation record was inspired kind of by conversations with Colin around the we said wouldn't it be cool to do this and I thought okay do I really want to produce a compilation but you know sometimes these projects just write themselves like it there's a book you know not the national slash book cut throat um this compilation

record like it's part all part of like I think a vision that Colin kind of put in all of our heads around wouldn't this be cool to uh to all come out kind of in tandem together. So it was really neat. Like I honestly, guys, this wasn't on my agenda to do, like I love National. I really respect him and honor him. But I didn't really think this record would come out. But it's the more, all these amazing artists that I ran this by were like,

hell yes, I'm in, you know. Rob, Rob Higgins from Dearly Beloved, Ian Blurton, the list goes on. Everyone was just like, yes, I'm in. Like no questions. So it kind of writes itself. And I think that's really beautiful. And it's a testament to the kind of community that people like yourselves and Colin have built around the guy. So yeah, man, I'm chuffed about it.

Yep. Yep. This goes to show how inspirational Nash really is. How he just makes people want to do things. Rob Higgins, bass player? Yeah. Used to be in Change of Heart. That's right.

Yeah. nephew of Geddy Lee. That's right. There you go. That's a fun fact. There you go. Drop these fun facts on me, Kevin. And Kevin White, can I ask about your name for a moment?

So we lost the great Kevin Staples fairly recently. And Kevin spelled his name, K-E-V-A-N. Correct, yeah. And that tripped up many a person covering his death. And I didn't want to be that pedantic asshole who said, you know, you know, right. Yeah. You spell Kevin the same way. Yeah.

So can I ask where that comes from? Yeah. Well, so the story I used to tell was that my father's Irish. He's from Ireland. And I was under the impression that it was a Gaelic spelling for a very long time. Until shortly before his death, he told me that, no, it was just a mistake they made on the birth certificate. See, that was my guess. Occasionally, I'll meet a Michael who's M-I-C-H-E-A-L.

And I'm like, oh, whoever had to fill in that form at the hospital just fucked up. Actually, I never told anyone this before, but my name is spelled T-E-M originally. Show me your driver's license. But I legally changed it when I was 14. I'm kidding. I can tell you were kidding on that one. By the way, you mentioned your name, Byrne, Irish. Yeah.

Kowalski is also a very Irish name. Super Irish, yeah. He used to have an O in front of it, but he dropped it because, you know, the whole... No dogs or Irishmen in the pub or whatever. Right, exactly. I couldn't deal with the bigotry anymore. Oh, Kowalski, yeah. Yeah, yeah.

It's such a cheesy thing to say, but when Gino Vanelli was here, my first, I didn't know how to open it with Gino. You know, Gino Vanelli is sitting right there. And I said, Gino Vanelli, I said, it's Irish, right? That was the, yeah. Did I just say that out loud? Yes, I did here. So, absolutely.

So I'm going to play a song if it's okay that has nothing to do of Nashla slash since we finally got rid of that Proust guy. He was really. dragging things down over here. But can we listen to a bit of this and then talk about this non-nash-the-slash song? Is that okay? Okay, so here's a bit of this. Can any of you gentlemen name that tune?

No. Hey. How about you, Tim? Can you name that song? I enjoyed it. I've heard it many, many times on the radio, but you know what? I always... No, I never learned the title.

It's okay. It's not that memorable. It's rash. Who's the artist, Kevin? It's King Cobb Steely. It's my old band. Oh, dang. Bit of a mind blow there. Friendly Rich, I see him. Boom, he goes.

Beautiful. Nice. Nice. I feel like we can embed a very short little King Cobb Steely chatter into this Nash the Slash episode. Wow. Small world, guys. That's, Kevin, that's amazing. Yeah, it's, I mean, it was a huge part of my life for a long time. I haven't heard that song in many, many, many years. It sounds great. Yeah, it does, actually. Thanks.

Yeah, man. I've never listened to it with headphones on. It was always... Everything sounds better. We were a headphones band for sure. Yeah, no, I always heard it like in a small, like, radio, kind of in the background kind of thing. It sounds great. Really good.

Yeah, that's Guy Fixen, who produced and engineered the record, and he had prior to that done, I don't know, My Bloody Valentine. and one of my favorite bands of all time called Moonshake where they were really freaky weird post-rock experimental band out of England super not popular but I don't know they really struck struck a note with me nice

do we get like a I don't know can we do this really quickly just a little bit of a could you share a little of the origin story a little like give us a little king Cobb Steely KCS, yeah. I mean, we started, what, 91 or something? You know, just friends like in Guelph going to university there. And I had been in like a punk rock band prior to that and sort of came up against the limitations of playing that music and wanted to do some other stuff. I was really into, you know, other forms of music like hip hop and, you know, a lot of world music. and guitar and stuff like that.

And, you know, we got together and started playing music and ended up making, I don't know, like six records and touring a whole bunch and working with a bunch of people. Yeah. How would you, like, this debate happened. We have a WhatsApp group for FOTMs and we were talking about King Cubs. Steely. Like, what genre would you throw this in? Yeah, I mean, that's probably what the record company was always asking us.

How do we market this? Get into a box, Dan. Yeah, they like boxes. Yeah. Yeah. boxes. It was a hybrid for sure. And, you know, we were all, you know, super interested in music and exploring all types of music. And so we always, that always found its way into our writing. And we were a very collective, you know, group of writers. And we collaborated with a

whole bunch of different musicians, including Michelle McAdory and Eric Cheneau and, you know, countless other, like so many. Ian Blurt, played on our first record, second record. We toured with Change a Heart a ton. Nice. Yeah. Anyway, that's a long. Yeah. What, you're saying that's in the rearview mirrors.

Yeah. So how far in the rear view, like, how far are we? You know, it's probably been, I think we released an EP in like 2014 or 2015. I can only date things according to my kids. I got three kids, like, you know, up to 18 years of age. Yeah, I do the same thing. Yeah. So I know, I think around 20,000.

2014, that's when my youngest was born. I think that's the last thing we did. But I was just noting today that Fugazi has put out a record of their Albini recordings. And when we recorded with Albany, it was right after Fugazi. And we've been talking about releasing them because we never did release them. And so now after seeing that today, I thought, you know, my baseball player just texted me, Kevin Lin, and said, hey, we should release those albini recordings. So what was it like working? Like he's sort of famous for, I'm going to capture your sound.

Yeah. Yeah. I'm not going to get involved. Yeah. He's never called himself anything more than an engineer, didn't want to be a producer. He was like, basically get in there and be a live band and I'll put it down for you. And, you know, sometimes that works and sometimes it doesn't, you know, depends on the kind of music. We had a lot of syncopation.

We had a lot of different things, samplers and percussion and stuff. And maybe didn't translate and probably why we didn't release it, but it was a great experience working with him. Friendly Rich, do you have any King Cobbs? I find it tough to say, you've been calling it, KCS. Yeah, it's tough to come out of King into Cobb. Yeah, that is probably what the record company was saying too. Fit in a box and change your name.

Any King Cobbs TV questions? All I'm going to say is release the tapes, man. Yeah, you release the tapes, Scorsese, we didn't quite wrap up that, Scorsesey talk. Yeah, everybody, just release the tapes, everybody. Release the bass. That's cool. that's cool I didn't realize

it was connected to Guelph and people like Eric Chonot yeah that's awesome yeah Eric and Michelle had made a record at that time called Whirl which is one of my favorite records we played some Whirl last time she was here absolutely beautiful stuff yeah

absolutely you know she's the girl in the try video do you know that friend I know from your podcast like the try video right this is a big deal it was all over much music anyway and it was a big breakthrough for Blue Road the cute gal in there is Michelle McAdory. Yeah, and I've actually been playing music with her over the last couple of years. She's been working on new material, so.

Okay. Her son was taking some kind of special journalist in tough situation training. I don't think that's what they call it, but he's a great, he's a great photo journalist, yeah. Okay, very cool, very cool. So I was, well, I was going to play a little, little, I feel like we, we heard some Nash the Slash, obviously. It was going to play a little Nash the Slash, uh, on her, on her weight. out here. I want to say that I do have for you, Tim, and for you, Kevin, where is it, I do have measuring tapes for you from Ridley Funeral Home. So it's not just the beer. You are getting

beer. Yeah, what do you do with yours every day, friendly, Rich? I have mine. I measure my body so that I know how long it's going to, how, how long it's going to be in the, in the coffin. That's what you're supposed to do, right? You're measuring yourself for the coffin. Right, because you shrink as you get older. There you go. Yeah, exactly. That's right. Exactly. So you have to update Brad Jones on your measurements. So thank you to Ridley Funeral Home. And I want to just shout out the new podcast from Nick Iienes. It's called Mike and Nick.

And I happen to be the mic in that equation. So I urge people to check that out. You can actually hear it on the Toronto Mic YouTube channel. And last but not least, I'll be very brief to tell you all that if you have old cables, old electronics, old devices in a drawer, a room, who knows what you got going on in a closet. Don't throw that in the garbage, okay, Tim? because those chemicals end up in our landfill. I don't do that.

I'd be so mad at you if you did. Well, you don't have to keep it. If it's obsolete and you can get rid of it, go to recycle my electronics. But I might be able to fix it for later. Yeah, you've got to go check out Tim's place. You'll see what. Is he a hoarder?

Well, should I be calling the fire department? Actually, no, I'm not a hoarder. No, he's not a hoarder. He's, he, but I am a collector. Yeah. Okay. I have a big movie collection. It does dominate my apartment.

How big? I don't know, probably because I live in a really small place. So I must have like a thousand plus. But are these like film canisters? No, no, no, like Blu-rays and DVDs. He's got a bunch of CRT monitors. No, I got rid of those. I got rid of those last summer.

Okay. Well, that's what you go to recycle my electronics. Yeah, actually the very CRT TV that's in the opening of the film is now sitting in the window at Blood and Bandages on College Street. So if you ever walk past there and you see a TV with crazy stuff, that's the TV that was actually shot. That's a mind blow. How did you get Gary Newman? Like, was it as simple as asking him to be a part of this?

Like, how do you score a Gary Newman for this time? Well, I was lucky because we were lucky because I had been working on a film called I Dream of Wires, which is a history of modular synthesizers. I've been doing some editing with that. and I became friends with the filmmakers, Jason, Jason Am and Robert Fantanato. They've also made a couple of other excellent music documentaries on Robert Mogue and also Morton Sabotnik. And anyway, he had interviewed Gary Newman for his, you know, his synthesizer doc. And he was like, you know, I've got his contact information and, you know, I'll set you up.

I'll introduce you. And then he just happened to be coming through town. He was playing a show at the opera house. Right. And so we raced down there. Oh, my God. Setting up that shoot was crazy. Because the people who ran the opera house said, okay, you got 20 minutes to talk to Gary

Newman after sound check. And then audiences would come in and you can't be any, you can't go over it. And you've got to be ready. So we get there and they say, okay, go upstairs. And so we go upstairs. were in the balcony. This used to be a movie, I think a movie theater or,

well, it was an opera house at some point, but I think it became a movie theater. That's how it got its name. Yeah, but it became a movie theater at some point because they stuck us in the balcony and there was no lights.

And we couldn't find a switch to turn it on. And it was big, you were in the cab getting there. So I was stuck there by myself. So I had to basically pull out my phone and stick it in the corner. Yeah,

I was like, yeah. Yeah, yeah. And so it was like basically, okay, we got to get up. And we had, move furniture around. And the, oh, look at that. There's a big, like, old projector here. So we set up the couch in front of that. We did all the dark.

We threw up lights. Gary Newman came in five minutes early. We just, you know, we were just dripping sweat. And it was like press record go. And he was amazing. He was amazing. Well, I have a little clip. I know we heard a bit in that trailer.

You can hear a little Gary Newman, but I'm just going to play almost a minute here. I'd come to Toronto to do some rehearsals for my first North American tour. I'd only be famous two minutes. We already had a support band for the tour lined up. It was already booked and established and so on. And we were just out walking along and we went past this club and then got in there and there was Nash. The music was just absolutely brilliant and it was so different.

And the instrumentation he had and the way he was doing it and he was just one person, person, never seen anything like it. Nobody spoke to Nash and said, you know, would you be interesting coming out on tour like in a day's time? But two days, those are short notice. Did you know Gary Newman is a titch? Just like a titch older than Gary Oldman.

Who Tim looks like. People said that to me and I still don't see it, but I'll take it. Oh, you know, I guess with the glasses, I can kind of see it. You're not the one that's in slow horses, mind you. You're talking about the... Earlier, Carol. I heard that when I was younger, too, though. Like, when I was in my 20s, too.

I never wore glasses then, so I don't know what the hell of that. But I'll take it. You know, I've been called worse than that. Friendly, Rich, thanks. So why couldn't you be in the basement again? You were going to Mexico? What was going on? Yeah, no.

You find me here in Region Park doing my thing. I feel like you could have been here. If a little more effort, friendly, Rich. Next time. Next time, my friend. But thanks for doing this. Yes, any final words from you? No, no, just thanks for having me on and long live Nash the slash.

Indeed. Well, thank you for helping to keep his memory alive. Kevin, man, I could do a whole episode about King Cobb Steely. But thanks for being here. You're now an FOTM. You made your Toronto Mike debut. We'll get a photo by the tree. It was great to meet you.

It was great to meet you. Thank you for having us. Thank you for shining a light on Nash's story. And Tim? Yes. just made your directorial debut. Do you feel the pride? Do you feel proud of yourself for this great piece of art you've created?

I feel proud of what the collective has created. Very humble Canadian man. And also, I just want to thank you for inviting us down here because we were chatting about it before we started. But I grew up in this neighborhood that we're recording it. So it was a trip down memory lane. And it meant a lot to me. well we'll get you back here good Irishmen like yourself

oh by the way the Irishman fun fact yes that's the movie that distracted Martin Scorsese so he left that SCTV doc just sitting on the shelf that movie's overrated you know what it's kind of long right yeah and you got

old man De Niro yeah with CGI kicking and all the deageing garbage and I mean I could I mean Scorsesei I could say that about, I feel bad, and I can't say things like that about independent producers, or filmmakers. Yeah, it just feels bad.

Release the tapes. Release the tapes. Release the tapes. Hashtag, release the tapes. Thanks for doing this, buddy. Great to meet you. Yes. Great to meet you.

And that brings us to the end of our 1,860th show. A round of applause. A round of applause. That's a milestone, I think. Go to Toronto Mike. for all your Toronto mic needs, whatever they may be. And I'm serious. Rob Pruse is on stage with me at the Elma Combo on May 21st, 2026.

Buy a ticket, come out. It's going to be a great time. I promise to at least attempt to entertain you. I would love to see some friendly faces in the crowd. You hear that friendly faces. Okay, Rich? No pressure. Much love to all.

all who made this possible. That is Great Lakes Brewery. You guys are getting beer. Was the hop-pop good? Yeah, it was good. I do feel a little tipsy. Well, that's amazing because there's zero alcohol in that hot pop. Oh, man, I'm a weakling. Palmapasta. I have lasagnas for you, two

gents. Nick Iini's Recycle MyElectronics. orgia and Redley Funeral Home. I have to go to my calendar and find out who's up next. I've let us all down here. Okay, well, I got a couple episodes on Monday.

One is with Michael Longfield. He's with Cycle T.O. We're going to talk about these bike lanes. Doug Ford wants to rip out in his legal action to stop that. This will be quite an interesting episode for a cyclist. I'm going to listen to that one. I'm going to rage listen to that. Yeah, well, we'll be doing that, I'll be doing that too.

And I chat with Michael Longfield. And Megan Patrick is a rising star in the world of country music, a world I know nothing about. And Megan Patrick makes her Toronto mic debut. See you all. Monday.