Toronto Mike'd: The Official Toronto Mike Podcast - Ron Hawkins: Toronto Mike'd #648

Episode Date: May 18, 2020

Mike chats with Ron Hawkins about a variety of interesting subjects from Lowest of the Low to the Do Good Assassins and The Rusty Nails. Then, I play three covers of his songs and get his reaction.

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CDN Technologies Your IT and cyber security experts I'm Mike from Torontoike.com and zooming in from under the Karla Bridge is singer, songwriter, Ron Hawkins. Hey, Mike. How's it going, Ron? You forgot bon vivant. Oh, yeah. Bon vivantnie because i have trouble saying words uh complicated words like that but uh how tell us uh how are you holding up during this covid19 global pandemic wait there's a global pandemic i uh i'm in my basement studio right now and uh the funny thing is like there

when the pandemic hit there was so much work for me to do a full 10-song Do Good Assassins record coming out this summer, and then a double live Lowest of the Low record that we recorded in December. So I was down here every day in the basement like I would be every other day anyway. So literally, we'll go for a walk at night or something like that but i don't really notice it well that's i think that's good news like a lot of people are having you know having trouble adapting to uh this new normal and it sounds like you adapted pretty easily so is like so tell us like who's in your if we consider your home like your pod, who's in there with you? My bubble. Well, my partner, Jill, and my daughter, Ruby, who is 14.

And when I say that, I'm sure to the listeners, that sounds like, oh my God, what a cocktail for disaster, a 14-year-old teenager in your house with not really a lot to do. teenager in your house with not really a lot to do. But we, I don't know, we're, we're sort of like weirdly pandemic proof family because we, we've always joked about how when we've had trials and tribulations in our lives, we've kind of, we have the sense of, and I don't know if it's like being a writer, Jill's a filmmaker too, and Ruby's very creative writes. And I don't know if it is that thing where we sort of,

once we get through the tough stuff, we've, we're already rewriting it into a romantic tale of survival. So we just tend to have these, uh, you know, I guess one way of looking at it would be incredibly diluted or another way of looking at it would be a healthy way of putting things in perspective.

No, I actually know what you mean. Like, so I have, you know, they're half the time I have six people in my pod and, uh, the half the time, there's only four people in this pod. And by the way, there's a 15-year-old girl half the time who's in this pod, my daughter, Michelle. So I actually totally get what a teenage girl is like during a lockdown here, but I will say I felt like, uh, my, my lifestyle was sort of pandemic friendly because I already bike everywhere. My wife cuts my hair. Uh, like I, I hunker down here and I, I kind of work, I've been working from home for, you know,

almost a decade now anyway. Like, so, but I, I'm going to ask you some questions and we're going to have some chatter, but then I want to get, to get deep on something that, uh, I know has definitely changed in your life with the social distancing. So it's not, you know, there's some things not happening, such as, you know, live performances and stuff. So I need to get in the weeds

and find out like how that affects the Ron Hawkins of the world for sure here. But I'm glad- Even that, I mean, are we getting to that now? Are we? Well, okay. I actually, I can call an hour. I want to come back to it that now? Are we? Okay. I actually, uh, I can, uh, call an hour. I want to come back to it.

I can, I was going to come back. I'll come back to it. Okay. I'll come back to it because, uh, I'm, I'm very interested. Boy, do I have an answer for you? You're not going to forget that answer. If I, uh, step away for a while and come back to it. How's the hair last time I saw you, you had the, uh, you were rocking the Mohawk again.

Uh, like uh like like like how's the hair during the pandemic uh it's good it says hi um it's it's pretty good it's like uh it's just it's still a mohawk but I just because I can't be bothered to put in the narcissistic work of making it into a mohawk it's become more of a uh I don't know like a new romantics kind of it flops over to the right side so if i wear a hat it looks like i'm in maybe early duran duran or uh you know yeah possibly joy division if i was cooler but well at least i thought you might go with flock of seagulls there but i'm looking at well it's not quite that architectural do you know gord depp is in flock

of seagulls now oh yeah yeah like he's joined the band, Gord Depp from The Spoon. That makes sense. That kind of makes sense, though. Yeah, because they're kind of like, remember the 80s, if you will. And it makes sense to me. And there has to be. I'm sure there's a modular synthesizer in Gord Depp's house somewhere. I would bet.

I'd bet everything. I'd bet the house on that one, for sure. So just to let people know, because I didn't throw it in the intro, but this is Ron Hawkins from Lowest of the Low and not Ronnie Hawkins from the Hawks, just so it's clear. Ron,

do you have any regrets about that? Are you glad to be this Ron instead of the other Ron? Well, it buys me some more time because if I was that Ronnieonnie that would be a little farther down the line right um yeah it's uh you know i like i like rockabilly and i like his attitude he he growls a lot which i respect and he has he has an eye for talent right like if you think about who was in the hawks you're like like, like that's kind of amazing. Right. Yeah.

You know, I, but I, I'm one of those guys who has some, um, blind spots when it comes to, I often joke about how, you know, probably at some point have to hand back my Canadian passport because the so-called Canadian greats in quotes, I'm not a fan of almost any of them. And like the one I can sort of pull out is Joni Mitchell. I really like Joni Mitchell and I feel like she was instrumental to me lyrically. Like I listened to Blue a lot when I was younger. And I think it informed a certain way to look at the poetry of lyrics and stuff like that. But other than that, like, you know, the band, it's not like I don't like the band. It's not like I hate the band or anything. But it's like,

Neil Young, the band, I just don't really have rush, you know, I just don't like the band it's not like i hate the band or anything but it's like neil young the band i just don't really have rush you know i just don't really have time for it so what is your like i'm curious as a singer songwriter when you hear a song like the weight okay the band's the weight like what is your reaction to that do you listen to the song and go meh or are you like uh like wow that's a well-crafted uh wonderful... Oh, certainly well-crafted. And I remember it. Like, there's lots of songs I remember as a kid that caught my ear because kids aren't sort of self-aware style victims and punk rockers.

So, I mean, like when I was a kid, there's lots of songs that caught my ear and the melody of that song caught my ear. But it's like as I grew into a human who, not the kids aren't humans, but as I grew into a more sentient being, I, you know, started to listen to lyrics and things started to be more important to me. And trappings of how things sound started to be more important to me. It's just not my thing. It's like, and I still listen to that song, though. That's a really well-written song. Obviously, I know why it is where it is,

but it just doesn't really do anything for me, you know? Interesting, because there's a part of the wait where, you know, the and, and, and, and I'm off key because I can't sing, but you know the part where it actually is kind of reminiscent of what you might hear in like a, like a damn, damn the circumstance. Like there's a bit of a, what you might hear

in Bleed a Little Wild Tonight or something like that that you'd hear in The Wait. What's that called when the different people sing like that? What's that called? Harmony? Sure, let's call it harmony. Yes, you're right. Oh, like the sort of call and response sort of thing?

Yeah, like that. Yeah. It is. You hear a bit of that in The Wait. And then, of course, that's in a bunch of low songs. Well, you know, but, uh, well, you know, it's like,

I often talk about, um, attraction, like physical attraction to people. And there's lots of times where you'll see somebody that you recognize the mathematics works. And on paper, you're like, clearly that's an attractive person,

but the person like nothing, no bells or no tinglings are happening. And you know, nothing is firing off in my, in my, my pheromonic toolbox. That's a great analogy. You're absolutely right. You look, this is a symmetrical, beautiful person.

Nice teeth, nice face, nice hair. But I don't find them sexy, maybe. I guess there's something, a difference between like beautiful and sexy, if you will. Yeah, the soul, I like the soul aspect of it. And again, not that those guys in the band didn't bring sort of soul and country music together, like I get it all. But it's just like, you know, I guess maybe that's the wonderful thing about music or about art in general is that oftentimes this will happen, you know, this back and forth, and eventually we'll get to the end and go, Ron never really made the point. Like Ron really never figured out why he doesn't really dig it but he doesn't really dig it so sure you like what you like if you will uh i totally get that by the way speaking of canadian bands and what i'm gonna say one more thing mike i think what it is is we're using our brains to figure out why the band doesn't do it for me and maybe why the clash does do it for me or why you know amy winehouse does it for me but you know somebody else doesn't and i think what it

is is because that's the wrong tool to use. You know, like somewhere, like the way art hits us is somewhere, or should hit us probably somewhere different than that in the solar plexus or in the heart or in the soul or whatever you can. So it's like, you know, I'm using the wrong toolbox to explain why it doesn't do it for me. You're right. It's very difficult to define why you love a song. Like, right, it's just sort of like an innate reaction almost. It's from the heart, the soul. It's very difficult to define why you love a song like right it's just sort of like a an innate reaction almost it's from from the heart the soul it's very difficult to uh

define i think when you try to define it that way is when you ruin it right it's art like yeah well that good that great quote that i i keep i've only used it as coming from alvis costello but i think it may come from somewhere else where you know talking about art is like dancing about architecture and maybe i'm butchering that quote. But I feel like it's like, hey, Ron, tell me why you don't like that smell. It would be really hard to explain. You would go, I don't know. I just, it repulses me.

The smell of the band repulses me. What are your thoughts on the monarchy? Today we, and don't worry, we won't dwell too long on this. But today we celebrate Queen Victoria's birthday. And I'm of the opinion that, yeah, I like the monarchy. Today we, and don't worry, we won't dwell too long on this, but today we celebrate Queen Victoria's birthday, and I'm of the opinion that, yeah, I like the day off, like at this time of the year. It's good to get a long weekend for families and everybody to

enjoy life, but maybe we change it to, I don't know, Terry Fox Day or something like that, but I'm curious what your thoughts are on that. One word, three syllables, guillotine. Off with their heads i think is what yeah i mean i love i love lawrence's prince charles and diana mug but oh yeah so yeah i've been i've been watching those too i guess it's on facebook this is happening where lawrence so does he have a massive mug collection what's the deal there he's got a lot of mugs he's got a lot of mugs yeah I mean I mean maybe he doesn't have as many mugs as as uh Kylie Jenner

has I don't know like you know like it's all relative how many mugs a person has but he's got more mugs than I have no actually he probably doesn't have more mugs than I have but he has more novelty mugs than I have right right right but you don't have any like Lady Di, Prince Charles, commemorative mugs in your home there? No, we have a Beatles mug. We have a Rubber Soul mug. That's cool. Those guys have OBEs, so maybe that's through the back door,

that's a little bit of a British monarchy mug. And I joked off the top that you were, okay, two thoughts. One is I joked off the top that you were under the Carlisle Bridge, but like, are you, is it fair to say you're east of Yonge Street? No, no, it's not fair at all. I'm quite west of Yonge Street. I made the, I made the cardinal sin as a young East Ender of growing up when I, when the lowest of the low started, I moved across the Blue River Vidoc to the,

to downtown or to the Kensington market and around there. And now I'm, now I'm even in greater hipster ground zero. I met like Dundas and Ossington. Oh yeah. Okay. So, uh,

I, you know, it's funny cause whenever I got two days ago, I had to drop something off in East York and I'm, I'm East of young and I'm doing it and I'm like, Oh, I I'm, I'm like,

I'm in lowest of the low land. Like this is like, uh, yeah, you, you were certainly, oh I'm like I'm in lowest of the lowland like this is like yeah you you were certainly you were in lowest of the lowland in terms of uh most of the uh thing most of the um land landmarks that happen in the songs happened out there right I gotta shout out the only cafe because uh they serve great lakes beers so I just want to, the only is near and dear to your heart, right, Ron? Yeah, yeah. In fact, one of the last, we had a five-night run that I had to cancel just when the pandemic started that was supposed to happen in March.

Well, hold on to that. We're going to get to that. And you know what else we'll get to? So after that discussion, I want to have a frank and honest discussion about being a singer-songwriter when there's no live events i want to talk about that but then i have i pulled and i haven't done this you've been on the show a few times uh yeah i was gonna say always with lawrence but this is actually no you were on the show without lawrence the first time you came by uh lawrence is like your chaperone keep you out of trouble

whatever but i don't like to go anywhere without lawrence if i can help it well yeah someone's got to play the harmonica i mean that guy's great the uh but i was i pulled what i decided to do for the first time is i pulled a few covers of songs you wrote and i'm actually going to play the songs and we're going to chat about the cover uh of a song you wrote so that's going to come later but first i'm going to ask you a few questions about um a few questions from listeners so when I said you were coming on the show Tommy Two-Tone he wrote me that's his real name Tommy Two-Tone he says did Ron grow up around Greenwood Park in Toronto so that was it yes yes Ron did in fact I you know a couple years ago the last two low records um do the right now and agipop we do

the right now was completely recorded at revolution recording which is at leslie and basically around leslie and queen and then agipop we did some overdub stuff later in the process at revolution and um i would go across bluer street and then get out at greenwood station and take the bus down so basically every morning when i did that it was like a real uh it was like one of those shows where they take you back to your neighborhood and walk you around the landmarks and i found that when i hit uh dundas and greenwood i would look back across the park and for whatever reason it was exactly the the path i would take to walk home from junior high back home and i started to well up. I really found that when I was around that part of town,

again, I just started to well up, you know, I started to, because I mean, it's just a cavalcade of memories and, you know, it shapes who you are really.

yeah, no doubt. No doubt. So good question, Tommy, two tone, uh, Brian,

now you, you mentioned off the top, Ron, that you were working on some do good assassin stuff and some low stuff. And Brian's question, you mentioned off the top, Ron, that you were working on some Do Good Assassin stuff and some low stuff. And Brian's question is, can we have, sorry, he says, can we please, because Brian's very polite,

can we please have a Rusty Nails 20th anniversary of their breakup reunion in 2021? Huh. I would love that. I would absolutely love that. And in fact, I did one show, which was just acoustic show of Rusty Nails song, the sort of swingier Rusty Nails songs with Christopher Plock, who was one of the baritone sax players in the band. sort of a shanty kind of cafe stuff. And we did that at the Cameron this year and talked about it.

But the thing about the Rusty Nails is they're scattered to the four winds. Like one drummer, Mark lives in Chicago and Jason had been in and out of Japan and Vancouver. And so it's not like just calling people down the street and saying, Hey, let's get together. And right. So I don't know. I mean,

I think all bets are off with this global pandemic. Maybe everybody will come home. I could see Mark coming home for socialized medicine. I could see Jason staying in town. So maybe we could work it out. We'll have to see what the train's like. For the novices listening, that's a great question. How do you decide

what's a Do Good Assassins project? What's a Lowest of the Low project what's a ron hawkins solo project like like can you in a nutshell can you tell us like like how that gets decided by you uh yeah i'd say 70 of the time 60 70 of the time it gets decided by me 40 of the time it gets decided by fate um actually no 30 of the time it gets decided by fate 10 of the time it gets decided by lawrence who looks at the lyrics of a song or the style of a song goes yeah no we're not doing that one and it gets and it gets moved to a different folder so uh you know it's like i i think the rusty nails sort of came out of my solo thing out of the lowest low

where i wanted to do the most unlowest little thing i could do so secret of my excess you know though there are elements on there that sound maybe a bit like i was in the low but like i really started to to look into the kind of tom waits kind of bluesy grungy uh scrappy kind of dirty blues and i had a band called, in between my solo, Secret of My Excess and the Rusty Nails, I had a band called the Leisure Demons, which was ill-fated and very shortly lived. But I always reference it as like the Rusty Nails

had some creepy sort of sleazy older uncles. That's what the Leisure Demons were. Right. Sort of more, a little more sort of dirty than the Rusty Nails were. And then the Rusty rusty nails thing was kind of you know was informed by that swing thing that was going on we were doing kind of bluesy punk and we liked uh rocket from the crypt and the cadillac tramps and stuff like that and

that was that thing so that was very easy to to when a song came out that sounded like that that had a certain amount of swing to it it was easy to chart that over there and then solo records often i find are a little more like ten kinds of lonely or something that are a little bit more stripped down and sort of you know i hate when people use the word honest you know with quotes around them like like the other stuff you do isn't honest and somehow if you just have an acoustic guitar and deliver a story then it's honest you know like right and then the low stuff is just i've been in the low long enough you know i never want to close the doors on the low growing into something else.

And I think Agitpop really showed that we still are interested in doing that, like bringing in new elements and trying new stuff. But there's definitely, I don't know what it is, if it's just a swagger or a vibe or a kind of, oh man, this go-kart is, you know, the right tire is coming off, but we're going down this hill anyway. You know, kind of vibe to the low where it's like things are shuddering a little bit and everything, but we're going to hold on. That agitpop, if you listen to it enough times, you just want to fuck shit up. I just feel like we got to burn it all

down. It kind of sparks that rebellion, if you will. It's quite the piece. Yeah, I mean, that's how I wake up and my eyes open in the morning and I go, let's fuck shit up. And so

when the other records don't sound like that, it's because I've used an awful lot of self-control to say, maybe I should write a love song or I should write because my natural instinct, the gears that the car goes into immediately are let's fuck shit up and you know I came out of my first band was called Social Insecurity which was a full-on like Marxist straight-edge punk band which morphed into

Popular Front which was also very political and then by the time I got to the low I had learned you know how some people talk about writing political songs is sort of a more, they talk about it sometimes like it's more adolescent or it's less sophisticated than when you learn how to temper your more rage filled thoughts and turn them into poetry kind of thing, which is, I think what I tried to do with the early low stuff was to hide the anger and hide the. Okay. Speaking of the early low stuff like what exactly like for dummies here what exactly is the difference between popular front and early lowest of the low well it would be exactly that like popular front was writing songs about uh

chili and writing songs about uh you know just the kind of politics very very clear far-left politics and uh anti-empire and you know sort of anti-imperialist kind of very clear statements about political statements about things that piss me off and the band was wrapped in it's funny because some people have said to me about agitpop oh it's cool you're adding the scoffing and the horns and everything but it was like popular front was kind of doing that right so it was really about it was really about that and then as i say i sort of learned like hey wait a second i'm writing about all these things that are halfway across the world or uh giant macrocosmic things and when i moved across the blue reviduct as i say into the downtown and started to have this little tribe of people that I hung out with and I started to say well maybe I write about the only cafe because I'm

there all the time like I know about it I know the people and I started writing these little character studies of people and I just found you know we were floundering Popular Front like the last gig we did with Popular Front was just my girlfriend well so we knew that we were hitting a wall so you know finding this other thing where it was kind of based on folk and punk and telling little stories uh suddenly resonated very very we just saw it in people's faces it was really resonating with them and so that that was you know as an artist no matter what i want to do that's still intoxicating when you find that you're affecting people you know but there are songs on uh shakespeare My Butt that were popular front songs, right? Yeah. Believe it or not, there's a couple of songs on Agipop that were popular front songs.

All right. Yeah. You know what? And I was lucky enough to get invited to the launch party. And you were telling, in fact, I think you also told it on Toronto Mic'd because I enjoyed that experience so much. I think I said to you and Lawrence, can we do that on on toronto mic because you just spoke to each song and uh what it was about and uh yeah it was great yeah interesting okay so michael lang another uh big fan of uh of your work and uh listener of toronto mic he says uh if you have time and michael we have all the time in the world here are you kidding me there's a global pandemic haven't you heard uh can you please ask in fact michael didn't say please and i added the please and uh brian said please and i skipped it isn't that interesting okay uh can you ask ron his recollection of the december 2012 concert at the horseshoe that was so stifling hot four people were taken out by ambulance including yours truly oh man no wonder he's not is it too late like what's the statute of limitations he's not gonna like lawyer up on this one right he's uh

nobody's certainly not gonna say please after that um yeah i remember that because uh it was it turned out to be a comedy of errors i mean maybe not a comedy for you, sir, but it all went down because about, I'm going to say like three weeks before that, I went to see a friend's band play. And they hadn't played for a long time. So it was a real sort of regathering of all of our friends from the 90s who went to see them. And Steve Stanley walked in and he was wearing a black sweater with a white shirt under it. And he looked fantastic. I said, Steve, you look fantastic. And, uh, and I said, you know, maybe we should wear that. That's what we should wear at the horseshoe show. Like all four of us,

you know, like kind of a beatle-y kind of thing, like a uniform, right? Right. I was a bit sort of like private school looking and it was just, you know, kind of cool. And, uh, he was like, Oh, all right. So we went out, we've done this a couple of times as a band, we go shop as a band, which was kind of fun. And, uh, we got these outfits. So we, so we We've done this a couple times as a band. We go shop as a band, which was kind of fun. And we got these outfits. So we decided to wear them.

Well, of course, as you say, it was August, right? So it wasn't really the time. It wasn't Northern England. It was Toronto in August. And so it was a million bajillion degrees on the horseshoe. And their air conditioning broke. And so we got up there. And there were moments in the set, because we're so stubborn, we was, you know, there were moments in the set because we're

so stubborn. We would, you know, it's like, this looks too good not to do it, but I'm going to go to the hospital for sure. And there were spots in front of my eyes every now and then, because it was like pushing out all that air to sing. Yeah. You were dehydrated for sure. Yeah.

Dehydrated. And then we saw this thing happening, which was that people were dropping in the crowd and the ambulances were coming. And so, and you know, you would think that that's the end of the story. It was crazy hot and people went to the hospital. But so, so the next day we had a show the next night. So the next night at the horseshoe, I sent a blast to everybody and said, Hey guys, it's a fucking million degrees in there. And the air conditioning is broke. Like we're a mesh tank top, you know, ladies, you too, everybody wear a mesh tank top. And so of course because they were horrified about what happened the night before they turned they

got the air conditioning fixed and they turned it on about 11 o'clock in the morning so by the time people got there underdressed it was a million degrees below zero i don't remember any ambulances coming for hypothermia or anything but oh yeah that you know that's uh that's the way it works right murphy's law something like that uh it's either too hot or too damn cold but uh yeah it was a classic classic example of the lowest of the load the needle going you know our needle was always going into the wrong like the wrong direction right um you know actually because we were talking about the uh old days before we come up to current day. Tomorrow.

No, not tomorrow. Tomorrow. Do you ever watch the Red Green show? Is this at all something on your radar? Not often, but I saw it. Yeah, I did see it. So tomorrow's guest is actually Steve Smith, who is Red Green. He's on the show tomorrow.

But the day after tomorrow is Brother Bill. Oh, wonderful. And he's a I mean, it's funny because I was like, I said, oh, Ron Hawkins is coming in tomorrow, and I was just poking around, and I was remembering that was it Chart? Who is it that did the top Canadian albums of all time and put, it might

have been Chart magazine or something. Yeah, it was Chart magazine. Okay, and the blurb that they published in Chart, I'll read it, and then I'll tell you who to attribute it to, but it was this. It was, Canadian music had its big names, but independently,

no one had come along with anything great in quite some time. After that night at Clinton's, all that changed. In late fall of that year, the Low released Shakespeare My Butt, an album that couldn't have defined their live show any better.

The album, to to me seems to be a collection of all those shows i'd seen but it's the lyrical content of shakespeare that's what made me admit it's one of my favorites of all time canadian or not to this day i don't really know why that is like anything that's a that is a personal favorite. Only you truly know why you like it. Hey, we talked about that so much. But judging by the success of this disc and this band, many people could obviously relate somehow, some way to what the low had to say and play.

And it's good to know sometimes that you're not alone. And that is the quote that Chart published. And that was by Brother Bill, on-air personality, CFNY 102.1 FM. And that was by brother bill on air personalities, CFNY 102.1 FM. And he's my guest on Wednesday. That's amazing. You have to say hi for me. I mean,

I say hi to him every now and then on the, on the Facebooks, but yeah, brother bill was like part of the crew, you know, like Dave Bookman and Alan Cross and all those guys, like the CFNY, the 102.1,

the edge in, in those days, they were, you know, I mean, I think every band, you know, in LA, they have K-Rock and stuff like that. Like every band can cite a certain DJ or something like it's like without that person, we would have languished in obscurity. And that little crew of, you know, those guys, Brother Bill and Bookie and all those guys, for sure. I always i always say you know like the door opened a crack and of course we were you know working really hard and i think we had something to offer but we jammed our foot in that door and and kept it open as long as we could to get through it because bands like us were never you know bands the way we sounded we we self-produced that record in a in a in a film

post-production studio with our friend Andy. And it's like, you know, records that sound like that were never played on the radio. Like, you know, there was a noticeable drop in sort of like volume and mastering and stuff like that when ours would be played after something else. But I think that speaks volumes about, you know, there was something there for people. There was something on offer that, you know that the audio files it didn't matter you know it didn't matter the songs didn't matter that much uh no absolutely but and and you mentioned bookie dave bookman and on a very sad note uh thursday of this week marks the one year anniversary since we lost bookie so i'll be i did a little thing you know we talk about the

the sort of feeling inspired or why we do what we do and it comes from somewhere other than our brain in the middle of the damn fourth music hall show for agitpop the release show uh i think it was an eternal fatalist or something i just sort of dropped onto my back and had the mic and i started talking to the ceiling and i just started talking to bookie and I and I said you know just basically saying how much we'll miss him and that he was in it for the same reasons we're in it and I just said you know we'll keep doing this until you tell us to stop because you know he was such a force you know such a foundational force so without a doubt we'll talk about bookie again on uh on thursday, who, of course, I'll be calling him Brother Bill on Thursday. But he hasn't gone by the name Brother Bill, I think, since he left Toronto many, many moons ago.

So he goes by his birth name now, Neil Morrison, whoever the heck that is. Elephants and Stars. Elephants and Stars is the handle of the person. Let's talk about Elephants and Stars. Elephants and Stars says says is it harder for him and ron you're the him uh is it harder for him to produce less talented musicians than himself speak for a moment about you produce like you you're not just uh producing your content and stuff you produce other artists material as well yeah every time every now and then i'll take on a

charity case like elephants and stars and uh throw the scraps of my great wisdom down in front of them um no all joking aside uh i don't yeah i produce records when i when i'm asked to produce them and when i think there's something there that i can relate to there's been a couple of times i've certainly turned things down like i would never do it uh i mean i do do it for money but i would never do it for money in terms of like i talk to people and i'm like and i say to them like we're gonna go out we'll have a conversation about what you want to achieve and what i think i can bring to it and if that doesn't line up then by all means i will help you find a person who will do that we will line up you know uh with you you to do that because I've just, I've made records, you know, I've made records with, uh, people who I did not see eye to eye

with, or even kind of could not stand. And then you're in a situation, you know, you're in a very intimate situation with somebody for quite a long time. And, uh, you don't want to do that unless you feel it's not like I don't have to be a cheerleader for them, or we don't have to think exactly the same thing, but we have to, we have to have a relationship that's productive and that makes sense right and this ties into the topic i want to tackle now this is it i hope you remember all your all the things you were going to say but uh you is it fair to say even ron hawkins who produces such great art that so many of us love and not just music by the way because later i'm gonna i want to talk about the paintings too but uh you also need to uh eat and you probably need to pay a mortgage or rent uh i don't know your

personal details but you have uh people melves to feed your daughter probably uh uh needs to eat as well like like so you you need to produce other people's music for money. Is that fair to say? Let's hear you. I don't need to, but I mean, it's like, you know, I think what you're saying is that section in OK Magazine or whatever, you know, the stars, they're just like us. Right. They need to eat.

They need to get their hair cut into strange shapes. No, I mean, you know, like the lucky thing, the thing I've either fallen ass over tea kettle into or felt my way in instinctively into however you want to put it. I wind up in, I've wound up in a place after 30 some odd years where I'm blessed to make my living doing things I love. And I'm not, make my living doing things I love. And I'm not, because I'm also cantankerous and, and opinionated and stubborn, I've not made that job easy on myself. I probably could have made more money faster and easier, you know, because of the decisions. And luckily I've been surrounded

by people that have, that have the same kind of cantankerousness, you know? So, so what it comes down to is, you know, I was singing and writing songs and everything. That was my thing. And that's what I was. I think it was like March of 1991 where I remember going out, taking my friends out, buying everybody beer and saying, today's the day. I'm never working a straight job again. I'm an artist, you know, and that's it. And it was that late into the game for me. I mean, that early in the lowest low, but that late in the game after,

you know, some odd 15 years or so of doing it to say, that's it. I either sink or swim. And so, you know, I sunk for a very long time in the early days of lowest to the low, you know, I was living in a little squat with a bunch of people where we would literally, we would make a giant pot of kettle of soup that we would live on all week basically. And, you know, because we're spending what little money we had on alcohol and hanging out and going to bars and stuff. And then that's, you know, slowly took off. The band took off.

And as the same story that a lot of people have is as we got bigger and as we got a machine behind us, we seem to be making less money as the, as the, as the entity lowest low was making more money, we would turn around to each other and, we seem to be making less money. As the entity lowest of the low was making more money, we would turn around to each other and go, why are we making less money? Because that's the way the industry works, right? But can you, could you elaborate on that a bit for us, for those of us not in the industry?

I mean, I've had like, if Chris Murphy comes on, he tells me something similar. And all I think is, Chris, Sloan, big fucking rock band. What are you talking about? But what do you mean? Like, how does that economics work? Well, I think is, Chris Sloan, big fucking rock band. What are you talking about? But what do you mean? Like, how does that economics work? Well, I think it works. I think that economics works the same as it works for artists themselves.

You know, for every inspiring artist you see, there are 25,000 mediocre, shitty, uninspiring people who probably should never be doing it. I know this is not going to make a good facebook meme but you know there's there's very few people that are good at uh conveying uh an idea to you in an artistic way that's going to inspire you right there are fewer than that people in the industry that are into it for the same kinds of reasons you know a lot of people were wondering why would lois the low sign with warner Canada, you know, this far into their career? Well, I will put it down strictly to Steve Cain because I talked to Steve Cain. Steve Cain is the president of Warner. He is, as George Strombolopoulos calls him, the last punk rock president. And he is into it in the same

way he was into it when he was 16 years old. And he's into it for all the right reasons. But you're going to be hard pressedpressed to find the Neil Morrisons, the Dave Bookmans, the Steve Kains. There's a handful of them, and then there are thousands of other people who are either misguided, greedy, evil, or, you know. So it's a toxic industry to be in. And I always say I'm in it, but I'm not of it. Like, I'm in it because I need to be in it to get my word across.

Right. But it sounds like, are you saying that there's a bunch of people with their hand in your pocket? Am I reading too much into this? Yeah, well, the minute you sign to a major label, actually, I say major label. I've had the same problems with indie labels. Indie labels get a pass because they're indie. The point is, indie labels are just little versions of big labels which is that there's some super cool like i worked with shake the record label out of montreal which was a tiny punk rock label they

were fantastic you know worked with other indie labels that sucked because they were they had no vision well the thing is with an indie label is like if they have no vision they also have no money so the only thing you want from them is vision, because if they don't have any vision, then they're just a shitty business with no pocket money. But so yeah, like let's say when we, we worked with Universal, the lowest lowest plugging along, we tried to get Shakespeare in my butt signed by a label.

Cause we want it to be, you know, we were kind of punk rockers the way Art Bergman was like old enough to, to remember, you know, bands being on, you know, Pistols being on EMI or Clash being on Epic or whatever, is that you can use the machine, right? So we tried to get signed and we couldn't get signed by anybody. Everybody thought we were a joke. Everybody thought, listen to how this sounds. It's underproduced.

You guys can't, you know, this is not going to sell. Well, then we got hooked up with um uh steve page's dad page publications and we put it out ourselves and i think we had sold 7 000 copies or something and as as you know so typically all of our phones started ringing from the exact same people who said that we sucked all trying to sign us and so we made a pact with the devil and signed with universal and it was you know i'm not saying that everybody at universal was bad but i'm just all trying to sign us. And so we made a pact with the devil and signed with Universal. And it was, you know, I'm not saying that everybody at Universal was bad, but I'm just saying that I don't think Universal really got what we wanted to

do. And their business model was just built. It makes sense for them and it makes sense as a capitalist organization to run it like that, but it doesn't make sense for us as a small indie band. So it just suddenly there was a giant machine and there was a lot of decisions being made that weren't our decisions. And, you know, we just seem to be out on the road all the time and I, and the money didn't seem to be coming in. Wait, did you say Steven Page's dad? Did I hear that?

So these, he had a, I'm not, I'm not sure how short lived or long lived it was, but he had a publication page, and he put it out. I had him on the show two weeks ago, Steve Page. And of course, I believe the yellow tape is what feeds out Shakespeare My Butt for biggest, most units sold of an independent release in this country, I think, something of that nature, maybe. Yeah, you have to go to Buffalo until we outstrip

them. New World Records and Buffalo. Apparently Shakespeare in My Butt is their greatest selling album of all time. Abbey Road sold some copies, but Shakespeare in My Butt surpassed it. I think I've got a pretty good foothold

as a podcaster in Buffalo thanks to me constantly playing a certain song from shakespeare my butt i think that was my uh in right with the buff okay we'll get to that uh it's the secret handshake right okay there's now now ron there's such an extensive economy tied to events and a large gathering of human beings like and i just throw in that if you're hosting a party or an event uh you gotta do certain things like you gotta make sure you've got fresh craft beer from great lakes in stock delicious italian food from palma pasta you got to order your stickers badges and tattoos from sticker you.com basically uh in this new normal

you know with the pandemic which i just informed you about you should really watch the news once in a while come on ron yeah i'll check it out i'll check it out you're not allowed right now you haven't been allowed for months to gather together like we can't collect and it hurts a lot of people right in the wallet but i'm guessing it would particularly uh amongst the victims would be people like yourself who perform live for large groups of people. Like, can you speak to like like the artist economics when you can't tour or perform live in front of human beings? Yeah, well, as as we were speaking and I didn't quite finish that thought before about income and stuff like that, is that, you know, now that it's all shut down, I mean, I got to this place, as I said, sort of feeling blessed that I could make art my living.

And so music is a big part of that. Producing I sort of fell into because a few people asked me, and then I realized I'm pretty good at it. And then I started to get more and more work that way. And then I also paint. I'm a visual artist. And so between all of those things I managed to eke out a very good living for myself as an artist which is an accomplishment these days

but now so now you get to the pandemic that I've heard about and apparently it's shut down everybody's live livelihood so we you know with lowest low had a bunch of shows we had to cancel livelihood so we you know with lowest low had a bunch of shows we had to cancel um as did the djs do obviously all the shows are canceled so immediately that's a massive problem well you know i do a live stream every tuesday which is called tommy douglas tuesdays and the reason it's called tommy douglas tuesdays is because i quickly realized how you know i bitch about canada like i bitch about all kinds of mass capitalist empires. There's problems here and there are people who are more privileged than others and there are people who are suffering due to the way our society is structured. compassionate human being who cares about the population on whatever level you take that i mean i do see people online talking about how justin trudeau should be in prison and i for treason and i can't really figure out why that is but um but you know things like serb so the the emergency relief benefit for people in the gig economy and stuff like that you know happen uh i've i've

availed myself of it a couple times and uh jill working she works in the service industry and is a filmmaker so obviously both of those things dried up immediately so she gets ei so between all of it um for us and again i feel a bit in a privileged position like this but uh we've kind of because the spending has gone down to zero pretty much right we find that we're kind of in the same boat that we would have been in before the pandemic so we're not really suffering from it uh economically right now. And I know that if this drags on and on and on and on, it's a problem, but to answer your thing about no live gigs, I mean, it hurts.

It hurts physically to not be able to hug people and to see them and to feed off that sort of feedback loop of energy that happens. But the live stream thing, I have to say, I, I dragged my feet for two weeks only because of the i couldn't get the technical side of it to sound the way i wanted it to but once i got that up and running uh we dove in uh with both feet and i think the first two weeks i did it there were like 700 viewers uh 700 people during the show and then something like 7k viewers uh post facto and they were from ireland and la and uh australia and all over the states and it was like there was a way to connect

with people that wasn't there when i was doing live shows even but it's and let's face it people you know humans have these gross we walk around in these gross shells i mean most people's outer shell is pretty gross i'm'm speaking for myself as well. come on. Yeah. So, so now we have all the benefit of their great souls in the chat line and all of their great energy and everything without having to look at our horrible

shells. All right. Not to get all capitalist on you because I know that's, that's a dirty word, but, uh, so Tommy Douglas Tuesday, firstly,

what time? So what's today? Monday. Yeah. Monday, Queen Victoria day. Right. Uh, what time tomorrow on Facebook and people just i guess they just search i mean i was on it last tuesday it's

fantastic and i know there were a couple of hiccups technically but uh that just makes it more punk rock to me i think that's cool but uh what time on tuesday is tommy douglas tuesday it is at 8 p.m est so just So just search Ron Hawkins. You'll find him on Facebook. And yeah, he goes live and it's real slick. Like I said, I was on it last Tuesday. And speaking of Steve Page, what he's been doing is using

Zoom. We're chatting right now via Zoom. He sells, I think, for $5 a pop or maybe it's $8. I can't remember. He gets 1,000 people on Zoom and he performs on Zoom for that 1,000 people at $5 or $ bucks a pop, or maybe it's eight bucks, I can't remember. He gets a thousand people on Zoom and he performs on Zoom for that 1000 people at five or eight bucks a pop. Would you consider doing anything like that? Or maybe even, yeah, I'm just wondering, because right now, you know, I can enjoy Tommy

Douglas Tuesday for free. Yeah. And that was a conscious thing on my part when I started Because as I say, because I'm not hurting from this I'm in a sort of weird and rare position where I don't seem to be hurting right now When I started the Tommy Douglas Tuesdays The thing I decided was that I wasn't going to monetize it I wanted it to be sort of like an outreach to the community that we have And say, you know what, just put your pajamas on

Get a glass of wine or cider or whatever you want to do, plop yourself down and we'll have some fun. And the cool thing is, you know, because I'm old enough that I have an audience that has always bought music, you know, is very, very quick. Like their hand is always two inches from their wallet, you know, trying to support local music and stuff like that. So they So I got a lot of great comments right after the first one from frontline workers. First of all, emotionally from frontline workers who were saying, you know, my life sucks right now. And Tuesday nights really are a little boost, a little vaccine for me to get through the

week. And then a whole bunch of other people who were saying, you know, how can I pay you? There's no tip jar. What can I do? And so I decided, hey, you know, since I'm doing okay, I'm going to put up these little cardboard signs every week of places. You can send that money. If you were going to send it to me, send it to Michael Guerin hospital so they can get PPE or send it to,

you know, there's, there's been a bunch of stuff for shelters. And for last, last week there was some stuff for animal shelters because our four legged friends are suffering apparently as well. So just every week, it was nice to have that and direct people to a place. And I want to do that for the time being because until it gets tougher, which it will down the line, then I'll start to find ways to monetize it, I guess. But for now, I just wanted it to be like, hey, man, we're here.

And something in my heart, my heart swells to think that even a global pandemic can't stop the community that we've built from getting together and not just watching my show. That's one part of it. But interacting with each other and seeing each other and saying hi. And are you okay checking in? Now, I know you and your wife are the last couple in the city without smartphones. Is that right? Yes. phones. Is that right?

Yes. But even you will admit that we got a little lucky in the sense that the pandemic, if we were going to get a pandemic in our lifetime, and this is the first one in our lifetime, it would happen when the internet had matured to a point where we could actually do things like this. Can you imagine going through all this

without the internet? Yeah, like trying to fax you guys all my songs every tuesday you'd have a party line or something uh nine six whatever whatever those numbers were and then we'd all call in and maybe hear you through the phone but uh thank goodness we can just press a button on facebook and see you and and hear you on tuesday night at uh 8m. Now, I just, well, I, funny thing is, I actually rejected the streaming thing. Like, I'm a guy who likes my MP3s, okay, because I'm of this age. I like, even though it's not CDs anymore, I have graduated from CDs to MP3s, but I really was late to the streaming game,

but my wife got this deal on Spotify where you get, like, two accounts for, I don't know what it is, some real good deal, three months free, months free and then whatever apparently it was in the budget because we're spending like you our spending is way down but you know our spending is way down because there's nothing to spend money on but the grocery bill has never been higher yeah true and i don't know if that's is that engineered or is that just the reality of of it's harder to get it to you? I don't know. I think it's partly because at this point we're like, we got to eat. I don't care what the price is.

Get me the yeast. I don't care what the price of that yeast is. Like we're back in the day. Get me the yeast. I never thought that was, I didn't think I would hear that this morning. Get me the yeast. Well, my wife says it on a daily basis.

I literally go out hunting for for yeast i put on my mask and i go hunting for yeast but okay so uh heather bambrick just this morning uh she's an fotm like yourself and she said uh her line i actually copied and pasted it is uh musicians can't live off likes and she was sort of reminding us to open our wallets and help out the artists and musicians that we love because notoriously, I guess this is, we've talked about this in the past, but I'm doing it again. The money you get from streaming is not significant. Is that fair? Yeah, it's completely negligible. yeah it's completely negligible um i think i was going to ask you this question i like i have spotify and i have never had anything except the free trial and i don't pay for it and i don't and i've never not been able to find whatever it is that i need so what's the what's the benefit

of getting the premiere or whatever i'll tell you uh the benefit is that i have these smart speakers in the house listening to me all the time no privacy anymore but these i can what happens is literally uh i'll say uh i'll just be i'll walk by my smart speaker and say play ron hawkins peace and quiet or something and then it comes out and for that magic to happen i think i needed a pro account i think. Gets rid of the ads and lets me do that, I think. But that was, yeah, you're right. There's a free version. And I think there's limitations with that free version that we've decided not to slung.

Sure, but they seem to go hand in hand with my own personal limitations. So everything is good. Precisely, precisely. But I mean, streaming, I think what you're getting at is that how does a person who's a songwriter make any money anymore from songs themselves maybe right well yeah because it ties into the whole like my understanding from talking to a number of and again i'm not talking about like rush or i'm talking you know i'm not even talking about like bare naked ladies who get

a bunch of money because they wrote a theme song for a very popular sitcom i'm talking about like artists like yourself who songs that we all love but my understanding is the primary source of revenue for an artist who makes great songs like lowest of the low is when you go to the horse or you yeah you play the danforth music hall or lee's palace or horseshoe tavern or something and we fork over money and go in and see it with our friends uh if that's gone like in your just it's just mainly spot Spotify and there's no money in it. And I know you are very eloquent. You're in a good place and you're able to make dues. But for those who are having trouble paying their rent now because they can't perform,

which is how they were making all their money, streaming is insufficient. I guess that's where I was going with all that. Yeah, I am. Well, you know, again, because of the way this industry is set up, I mean, I think these are all, you know, we're talking about the music industry, but I think I may have made this point to you before when I start thinking like, you know,

why don't I feel comfortable in the music industry? Why is it so toxic? You know, and then I step back and I go, oh, because it's part of the giant society that's toxic that I don't feel comfortable in and don't feel as wired properly. And I think the pandemic has clearly shown up how at risk most of the population is and how sort of inhuman and how uncompassionate the society we live in is set up. So the music industry is just a smaller version of that uncompassionate system.

So I think we're in a boat where I was going to ask you, like, you know, aside from bare naked ladies, like who's making their living playing live shows at Lee's palace on the horseshoe. I doubt too many people are making a livable wage by doing regular shows that bars the size of the horseshoe or,

you know, like, no, you're right. They always have another job. Yeah. the size of the horseshoe you know like no you're right they always have another job yeah everybody has another job or you know and even in those scenarios like we would find with lowest to the low when we were at the top of our game and as i like to say to my daughter canadian famous which means barely famous at all but famous in canada right and crossing the country and doing all of this you know grunt work rock and roll grunt work

across the country there's still four guys in the band there's a sound man there's a you know, grunt work, rock and roll grunt work across the country. There's still four guys in the band. There's a sound man. There's a, you know, there's a spiritual leader, John Brooks in our van, who's supposedly our road manager, but it doesn't seem to be, you know, he's yelling at us a lot about you find the fucking bar. So, you know, there's people on your, that you love to have around you and there's a little circus going around and everything costs money and the van costs money and gas. And so it's like, it's really, really hard to make that be your living anyway. You know?

So I think everybody's got a side hustle as they say these days. And I wish we could find a place to be in the society at large, but in the, in all the industries as well, where we truly honored the work that people do and make sure that there's a living wage doing it. And you know, because it's that kind of thing. It's like, you know, people, people, you know, certainly people in the industry do and people who are hardcore music followers do, but in the society at large,

I don't think people really honor the arts, uh, or what they do in their lives to the level of what they actually need them to do. And I think if it just sort of dried up because everybody who was an artist just dropped out of starvation, they would realize all of a sudden, Oh man, that served a really important part of part of my every day. And it's gone now because they died. Yeah. Side, but true. I think, I think you're, you're, you nailed that one for sure. For sure.

I was thinking of like venues that, you that Lowe would play back in the day. And then you mentioned Kensington Market off the top. And Sam Grosso was on this show. And we were talking about the different places he's owned through the years. But I guess you've heard that Graffiti's closed. Did you hear that? Did I hear that Graffiti's closed? I played the last show there, yeah.

Oh, yeah. Well, I'm way over here. Yeah. So you did catch wind of that one. Okay. I caught wind. And like Larry's Hideaway is long gone. I guess that's probably been gone since the mid-90s or something like that. But

do you have, through the years, like through your long career, could you name maybe your favorite Toronto venues that you've played, whether they're defunct or still with us? Oh, yeah. Strangely, the only cafe was just a place I hung out in the 80s even. By the time I wrote about it and we were in the low, I had moved downtown and i wasn't really hanging out there much but it i feel like it's uh one of those stepping stones like you know i don't want to be overly dramatic but i feel like if there was no only cafe there might not have been a loss to

the low in terms of like i learned to have the kind of romantic outlook on my own life that i that i wrung out on shakespeare my butt in that place, because I, it's the place where I started to look at myself as a protagonist in the movie of my life kind of thing, you know? So that one's really important to me. Graffiti's again, I had a million great shows and again,

you know, stripped it right down because it's like, it's almost like it was like busking, but just, you know, with a room around you, you know, it was like the people that came there were what we,

what I call graffiti nation, which got transferred over to the only end is now you you know it was like the people that came there were what we could what i call graffiti nation which got transferred over to the only and is now you know graffiti nation probably makes up a lot of the people i now call tom rads for the tommy douglas tuesday right so that place as far as a rock and roll venue um like for the low i always feel at home at lee's palace i feel like when we're on that lee's palace stage like this is the perfect storm it's like it's not so big that we feel uh separate from each other and that we're putting on a bit of a dog and pony show. It's not so small that it doesn't feel like an Epic rock show. You know, it's right. That perfect sweet spot where there's a sea of heads,

it's sweaty. There's not a lot of bells and whistles. There's no washroom in the band room. Is that right? Oh, I should have asked you this off the top when i asked you how everybody's doing but but how's your mom doing your mom doing okay yeah yeah my mom's great my mom had a little uh flu-like situation uh and wound up going to michael garron hospital which is in the east end which is where i was born actually used to be called east general uh yeah so she had a little uh a little scare of uh flu-like symptoms which obviously

normally would just be the season and you would check in and bring her some soup but in this scenario it was uh you know it's added stress but she's uh she's good she's very good good she once told me um i guess it was before a danforth music hall gig and i met her i think laurence introduced me to her and then she told me she loved my podcast, but then she added a qualifier when her son is on. So I think she only, I don't know, I don't think she listens to Toronto Mic'd unless her son is actually featured on the program.

But I'll take it. I'll bet you there's a thousand moms across this country going, yep, they understand that logic. Right. Which means she's, yep, they understand that logic. Right. Which means she's, hello, because she'd be listening to this episode then. It features her son. Yes. Hello, Marlene. Hello, Marlene.

I'm on. So I'm going to play some covers of your music. And just before I do it, though, I'm going to let you know that if you want a convenient notification about what's coming up, is it garbage day? Is it recycling day? Is it yard waste? I was weeding on Saturday. So I really recommend, Ron, you and everybody in Lois to the Low and Marlene and everybody, you go to garbageday.com slash Toronto Mike. And you download, or you don't even have to download it. You can just sign up.

It's good for the show, but it actually is a great service. I use it and, uh, it's, it's, it makes my life simple. So that's your to do.

That's your action item, uh, Ron, uh, at the conclusion of this episode. And I'm going into my player here. Cause I've got three covers of songs you wrote. And here we'll start with this one. I'll, So I'll play it for like 30, 45 seconds, then I'll bring it down and we'll discuss it.

But I hope you can hear this. Just wave at me if you can't hear it, okay? But let's hear this one. Everything's coming up. Rosie Ingram. Thank you. I want to take a street car downtown I want to take a street car downtown Read Henry Miller and wander around Drink some Guinness from a tin There's my UI checkers just coming Darling, where have we been? This my UI check is just coming. Tell me where everything goes.

Everything is coming up. Rosy and gray. Yeah, the wind is cold but the smell of snow. I know it's sacrilegious for me to fade this down, but this is an Australian band called Weddings, Parties, Anything. And it's a song you wrote. Yeah, it was a great honor to hear them cover it because I was a big fan in the 80s. They were kind of like, I considered them kind of like the Australian Pogues,

sort of very folk-based, but but very punk rock based, very political. And I was a huge fan of theirs. And not unlike, you know, eventually meeting Billy Bragg when I met weddings, parties and became friends with them, a certain 16 year old part of me, my head exploded because it's like, you know, I grew up with them and never, ever expecting that I would have enough success to get a chance to meet them. ever expecting that I would have enough success to get a chance to meet them. And I love a story like in August, it was like an August, another August show in Kensington Market at a place called the Siboney, which doesn't exist anymore either.

I saw weddings maybe in 1989 and an awful lot of people, it was one of those shows where an awful lot of people were there. Lawrence was at that show and I hadn't met Lawrence yet. So a bunch of people that I would later become quite close friends with were at that show and I hadn't met Lawrence yet. So a bunch of people that I would later become quite close friends with were at that show. And it was one of those sort of tribal ground zeros where you would meet your people. And the funny thing about this, so like flash forward to like 1993, I think, and a mutual friend, Bruce Eaton, we used to work at Upper Canada Brewery together. He was a fan of theirs and had met them. And he put us together to do a double bill, a Friday, Saturday night show. And so on Friday night, we were opening for them.

And then Saturday night, they were going to open for us. And Friday night, we did a cover of a song of theirs called She Works. And we did this total rave up, you know, punk rock version of it. And as the story goes, Mick, who's the lead singer, and Wally, who's the squeeze box player, were back at their hotel that night. They're like they totally you know they ripped us with that one like that was a great version like we got to learn one of their songs and play it tomorrow right so they learned rosie and gray so and they played it and then years later mick contacted me in toronto when he said you know we want to put this live version on a on a record can we do that and i was like yeah and then it just took on a life of its own over there like it's become a almost like it's like a national folk wow fusion you know i'll bet a lot of listeners

are completely ignorant to this right now like uh like which almost makes me want to ask like what how did you discover weddings parties anything in the first place was it like the record store guy recommended it like like how do you even get introduced no there was a there was a little um there was a little pathway um i i think i think billy bragg was the gateway drug uh so i was a big billy bragg fan and then billy bragg led me to going to the mariposa festival every year which was kind of a folk festival but branched out into other forms and so i learned so i went there and i learned about uh the men they couldn't hang and weddings, parties, anything and people like that. And so, and also I think weddings open for a Billy Bragg show at the Masonic Temple in the 80s that I saw.

And I just, you know, became fans. My other joke about that is they covered Rosie and Gray. They took an entire verse out and still made it two minutes longer. I'm just going to plug, I'm going to go under my desk here, Mike, and I'm going to plug in because my computer is going to die. Oh, my God, yeah. We don't want to lose you. We don't want to lose me.

We're just heating up here. I'm not doing anything pornographic down here. I'm just making sure of my… I thought you had like a bottle and you were going to like relieve yourself because I've taken so much of your time here. You're like, I'm going to do the rest of it on the flying on the floor. So maybe we could be like, much like a Billy Bragg was for you.

Maybe, maybe this episode of Toronto might can be a bit of a gateway for anyone listening to check out weddings, parties, anything, because anyone who's listening to us now already has heard a Rosie and gray, uh,

how many times? Six hundred and, uh, almost 650 times at least, uh, just by listening to this podcast. So this version, which is very cool. And again, you call them Australian pogues. I hear it. Yeah, there's kind of a folksy punk aspect to them and very cool.

So maybe people can check them out. By the way, you opened for Billy Bragg, right? The Low opened for Billy Bragg. Is that right? Yeah, Low. Well, no, actually, Billy Bragg opened for The Low, which was weird. Because we did a show at the Molson Amphitheater at the, you know, I guess the height of our reunion, first reunion, 2000, where people had not seen us for six years. And suddenly it was like a feeding frenzy. And so we, we did a night that apparently the Globe and Mail called Commie Night at the

Molson Amphitheater because it was the Weaker Thans followed by Billy Bragg followed by us. And I have a great photograph. At some point, Steve, Steve always was, was into this kind of thing where it's like, we should do a song with Billy. And you know, that stuff didn't, often didn't really occur to me, but it always occurred to Steve. And so we doubled up on a billy song during his set uh and he said well what do you want to play and we said i think it was uh accident waiting to happen or something and it was like he had forgotten how to play it so there's a

fantastic photograph side stage of the three three of us me and dave and steve standing around billy and billy's looking at his guitar and we're teaching him re-teaching him how to play his own song that's amazing that's amazing. That's amazing. So I went, I went, uh, I opened for him across country as a solo artist as well. Oh yeah.

Which was a total blast. He's a, he's the real deal. Yeah. Awesome. Now do we give, so we give two thumbs up to the weddings, a cover of Rosie and gray.

Is that right? Yeah. Yes, for sure. All right. And I'm cool. I'm purposely closing with, uh,

a band I know you love already because I've seen your guitar. So let me just play another cover of a Ron Hawkins tune here. I don't know where I'm going I don't know where you are tonight I don't know what I'm blowing And I ain't feeling all too right But I'm hanging around I'm hanging around

You're hanging up the phone again I'm hanging up this down cause I want you and I need you and I'm bleeding and I'll bleed a little while tonight Yeah, I'll bleed a little while tonight All right, this artist's name is Jeremy Fisher. Recording your Bleed a Little While Tonight. What can you say about this cover of one of your songs? Like most covers, it's better than our original version. I ran into Jeremy at the National Arts Center.

No, not the National Arts Center. What's it called in Calgary? The National Music Center? NMC or something? He was doing an artist in residency there, which was cool. And he's a nice guy he's a good guy yeah it seems like a good guy so uh does he just cover this or like how does it work does he just does he uh ask permission does he need to like what are the rules for covering uh i have no idea

no he never asked permission and i wouldn't i wouldn't expect him to but i i don't think you have to i i think uh i think the rule is kind of like you could do anybody's song that you want. You could even record it, I think, but you just have to pay mechanical royalties to use the song. If you're going to put it on a record and make money off it, then understandably, you have to pay that band.

So in theory, let's say Justin Bieber wakes up today and says, I'm going to cover Rosie and Grey. Like that's actually would be a good thing, right? Because you could make you could not that money matters to you. But even if you wanted to help give it to some good causes, you could make some money off of big artists like that covering a Ron Hawkins song, right? Yeah. I don't want to leave the viewers thinking that I don't like money because I like money. I know it sounds like you're against money, but you're against money it's just not your primary motivator just doesn't motivate me yeah just doesn't it's not my prime motivator as you're saying yeah I don't know it would be weird if Justin Bieber woke up and

decided he wanted to cover Rosé and Grey but I'd be interested to hear how that would sound but um yeah you know at the end of the day I mean of course it would be you know like i i read the i got a tom waits biography one time and i was really heartened maybe it was at a time in my career where maybe i wasn't quite as centered as i am now or maybe i uh you know had different desires from it or something and uh what i loved was every single record i would i would i would it would start it was like a record a, and it was like it would start. Swordfish Trombones was critically acclaimed. It was an economic failure.

And then I would go to Rain Dogs. This record came out, it was critically marveled at and economically. So every record of his was sort of like really, you know, fairly poor sales. But, you know, was critically acclaimed. So as an artist, he was thriving. As a human, he was not. But somehow that gave me some kind of pleasure, you know. And I think I have a very good, like, sometimes my daughter will talk to me about, you the career and everything and I'll say to her you know I'm quite comfortable at this point thinking that it's exactly I'm exactly 50 percent a massive success and an

abject failure because I'm a massive success in that I've had an entire adult life time of doing what I want to do and making art my career I'm a massive failure in terms of like of course I would like the message that I'm sending out to reach as many people as it can and it hasn't done that so you know and i'm comfortable with that that's i've made choices and this is where i am you know okay question i'm again if i'm repeating myself over your many appearances i apologize but it just struck me one of the things that uh probably suppressed the low from reaching more people in this country uh and beyond was probably what i the fact that uh we couldn't we didn't see all these great songs on much music like uh sure uh 102.1 played the hell out of them and they were it was great music i i mean you're preaching to the choir here i still

i still listen to shakespeare my butt all the time and the other stuff too i don't mean to dismay the other stuff's great's great too, of course. But tell us, like, was there a conscious decision to not become like a, like Moe Berg, for example, I'm an Adult Now was all over the country because that video was played on high rotation. Like, where was the low on much music? Yeah, we didn't make, you know, we didn't make videos and we sort of, we had a little bit of a personal philosophy to not make videos because we found them to be sort of, uh, you know, kind of like selling shoes or something. It was like, it wasn't really, I'm not saying that it can't be an art form because I've seen some videos that

are incredible, but for the most part, back in those days, videos weren't across the board incredible. They were quite clearly serial commercials most of the time. And, you know, it was a less interactive day and it was a less, you know, now in the internet, you can't imagine not having content that's visual. But back then, you know, you could still imagine not having a visual component other than live, you know. But you have your teenager in Moncton, for example. And I don't know why I'm picking a Moncton, but you know but you had you have your your teenager in monkton for example and i don't know why i'm picking a monkton but you're in monkton and there is no radio station that is playing that kind of music like it's top 40 only maybe and then uh but

you still get much music like it is a way to kind of reach that uh that teenager in monkton that uh it's like another channel to reach that guy or gal. Sure. But, you know, I would think that I think we suffered from possibly a wrong assessment of ourselves. But I think I think we suffered at the time from thinking the only real way to get this band is to be standing in front of us in a sweaty mosh pit and see us do our thing. And I think to some degree to this day, like the Tommy Douglas live streams on Tuesday, you know, I still feel sort of like the absolute perfect way to hear the songs I do are

either to see me do them like this one-on-one with an acoustic guitar, or to see me do them with my band, like most of the lower the Dugan assassins right in front of us. And that, you know, the recorded works will do, and they are, you know, from record to record, sometimes more successful, sometimes less successful capturing that. But I think back then we were really, really adamant that the only true elixir was to see us live. And, you know, and so smarter people or maybe more business savvy people would go, well, that's great. And that's ideal, but it's not ideal for

everybody in the world to see you that way. So you make some compromises and you do this other thing. But we were not at the most compromising points of our lives at 25 years old. And I got to ask the obvious, but any regrets at all about that or no? I don't know. I mean, regret, I don't know. If there are, I wouldn't phrase them in the term of regret because regret makes it sound like a spend time thinking about it or that I'm, you know, that'll go to my grave, you know, that'll put it on my tombstone. We should have done some videos, you know,

which is absolutely not how I work. So I think, you know, like anything, like anybody's life, you're going to look over the life and go, you know, that was successful. That was less successful. That was maybe a bit of self-sabotage, you know, did it feel good at the time? We did lots of things that was, that felt great at the time, but we're total self-sabotage, you know? So it's like all these years later, is it better for me to have a story where we wore, you know,

don't suck corporate cock t-shirts out of our industry? You know, that's better than what we probably would have gained from not doing that. Well well yeah you got to keep your uh punk cred like uh that's priceless well and i still smile and giggle as much as i did then at it now so i'm like how many things in your life can you say still give you joy 30 years later uh here's a song uh i hope it brings you joy i'm sure it will i'm gonna it's a cover of uh hope it brings you joy. I'm sure it will. I'm going to, it's a cover of another great lowest, the low song. Your hips are swaying. And your eyes are saying That you need two gamblers

For this game you're playing And I might want you Yeah, but I don't need you And you won't sleep in my bed No, you won't sleep in my bed No, you won't sleep in my bed anymore Now I've seen your guitars, so tell us what you think of this band, eh? Well, it's funny because this is another conduit,

sort of a happy accident story, which Mike's talking about the fact that I have a Propagandhi sticker on my acoustic guitar. I've had it on there for a very, very long time. And I met Chris Hanna and the guys in Propagandhi back in the mid to late 90s they became you know in my mind at the time unlikely rusty nails fans because I thought we were sort of you know I clearly because of the political connection stuff like that I know I knew

there was a through line but just musically it doesn't seem like an easy fit but Chris contacted me and then he would come out to see any shows that we did in Winnipeg with the rustyy Nails and we started writing back and forth. And then at a certain point, then I knew that they had done the Gamble cover and at a certain point, the record label that they run called G7, I said, Hey Chris, you know, there's no representation for G7 in all the little record stores in Toronto. And I said, if you want to send me the records, I'll take them around on my bike and I'll be your distributor, right? And make sure they get records in the store. So that was good. And I started to do that. And in lieu of paying me to be their distributor, he was just sending me the records that were on

G7, like freebie records. And so, you know, I listened to a lot of it. A lot of it was hardcore stuff. A lot of it was stuff from Europe that was sort of dark uh dark medley hardcore stuff that really sort of left me a bit flat and then one day i put on one of the records was called fallow by this band called the weaker thans and and i did a sort of a double take and i was like what the hell is this this is amazing right and so that was that's when i found out that john sampson of the weaker thans writer for the weaker thans used to be the bass player in propaganda at a certain point. And then all of these worlds kind of came together where where I got to meet those guys and I got to meet John and the band weaker than to became very, very close friends with those guys. And then because they were through town all the time, we go to their shows and we and we became quite tight.

So, you know, again, these kind of happy accidents happen. And what it is is you're just following your nose you know like your nose leads you you know your your nose being a metaphor for your ears uh leads you to the next thing and it leads you to the next thing and then before you know it you have this community around you that there was no thought in creating but you just found it you know you sort of i like to i always like that you said something about a um less loneliness or like the idea of being on a life raft together and you find the bands that, you know, it makes you, it makes getting through the difficult parts of life easier,

you know? Love it. And yeah, that's a great cover too. So I'm guessing now that two thumbs up for that one. Two thumbs up. I mean, like, let's face it, one thumb up that anybody would give a shit to cover your song So they get one thumb right off the bat Right Because it's hard enough

But the second thumb goes up if it's really good And all three of those I think are really good Now listeners of Toronto Mic will often reference An appearance by Gino Vanelli Did you enjoy any Gino Vanelli back in the I don't know Late 70s or mid 80s?

I don't know, but enjoy. I did park my car in the shade a few times on the advice of Mr. Vanelli, because it did look cooler. Now, right. When Gino was on, I'll get to the point of why I'm bringing up Gino. Mike, why are you bringing up Gino? I'll get to that in a quick

second, except to say that I realize I think I've become self-aware and sometimes I get focused on one particular thing and it's sort of like, that's where I want to spend all my time. Meanwhile, the person I'm talking to has a wide spectrum of things of interest.

Meanwhile, I'm laser focused on this one thing because for some, I don't know, I heard it on CFTR when I was nine years old or something. And I think I was going into that mode when I was talking to Gino in that I wanted to talk a lot about black cars and Gino,

I got the impression he wanted to talk about a lot more than black cars. And at some point he made, he said, he said, I should play the clip, but I'm not, I didn't pull it cause I'm, I was busy.

I should have pulled it. But he says, um, can we get off black cars already? This is Gino talking to me and i'm like oh my god he's right like i'm i'm doing that again that thing i do and i think uh i've done it a bit with you in historically in that uh because i played shakespeare my butt so many freaking times as a teenager sometimes i find i uh focus so much on this one album but

meanwhile i want to just say for the record before i bring up why I brought up Geno in the first place, for the record, the lowest of the low song I've actually played the most, I'd say, in the past five years, other than the fact that I close every episode of Rosie and Gray, is actually Black Monday. Black Monday is actually the song

and I would just like to say Black Monday's not on Shakespeare, my butt. No, it's not. It's not at all. So all that is me. We can go back and remaster it and put it on Shakespeare my butt if that will help you.

Would you mind? Would you mind? But why did I bring up Gino when I'm talking to Ron Hawkins? Their music sounds nothing alike. Well, because this whole time no one can see you but me but you've had a guitar

and you've been holding a guitar this whole time and one can see you but me but you've had a guitar and you're uh you've been holding a guitar this whole time and gino did the same thing except gino would like sometimes if he didn't want to answer a question i asked him he would just break into like like uh what's that one about the wild horses or some kind of a one some gino he'd just break into song he'd play black cars or something and you've shown great restraint, Ron, in that you actually focused on our conversation and didn't just break into a song, although that might have been cool. So, with no pressure at all on you,

because this has been a fantastic conversation, if you wanted to play something, you could play something now, but if you didn't, I will still love you. Okay, I'm going to play black cars. Wouldn't it be awesome if I, not even, we didn't even work it out, but I just knew how to play black cars. Wouldn't it be awesome if I... We didn't even work it out,

but I just knew how to play Black Cars and then I played it? Or even better, you were going to play that anyways. Yeah, so let's cut this out. I'll record it after we're done. You put it in here. I'll look like a genius.

You can record it ironically. But what I would like to do, this will be interesting too, is because I'm about to experience something I've never experienced before, which is that the Dugan Assassins, my other band that's going now, Jill's saying to me, great, so now you have like, don't start another band, okay, because now you have two fully working bands and a solo career. But we made a record over the last year on a four-track cassette machine in 1985 Tascam 246, which is a cassette recorder, a four-track cassette recorder. And I had one of those in 1985 when I started writing songs and messing about with recording. And I saw one online in a place called Reverb.com, which is, they sell all kinds of different gear. And it was supposed to be in mint condition and stuff.

And so I bought it because I was, I don't know why why just a moment of absolute nostalgia and excitement and I bought this four track cassette recorder so then I had it and I thought well maybe I'll just demo on it it'll be fun but I got it and it sounded really great and I said to the DJ hey you know we've all made records in studios and blah blah blah let's make a record on this four track cassette you know and the funny thing about it is possibly imagining that i would get some kind of pushback or whatever any musician i've ever mentioned about this they're like oh amazing right they're just so excited about the four-track so i got it first day i even started to play it there's some kind of like head cleaner smell and a kind of an ion electric smell that

comes off it that just transported me so it's so excited we, so we made a record on it and that record, we're going to put it out. I'm hoping it'll be out in maybe mid August. Amazing. And it's in the middle of a pandemic. So we're going to put it, of course there will be no physical iteration of it right now. That will happen like vinyl or something that maybe even cassettes because

it's a cassette record down the line maybe, but it'll be out digitally in August. And so it'll be out digitally in august um and uh so it'll be fun it'll be interesting to see what that's like is to release a record in the midst of a pandemic part of me thinks it's a crazy idea another part of me thinks you know there's never been a more captive audience and people are you know thirsty for new stuff and right so all that said this is a song that will be on that record this This is called Love is a Poison Thing. And it goes like this. Love is a poison thing.

The sweetest sour sting. A joker and a king. My love is a tragedy, theater of cruelty. You got that front row seat. You got that front row seat. But the actors aren't free. On a stage lost at sea. And the run's been extended indefinitely. Hail, hail vanity

Love is a bitter curse You know there's nothing worse For the last free man on earth When love is a guilty Better hope that blade is clean Cause the end comes quick in me And the peasants shade their eyes And they wrestle in the night

To see that fair falling bloody valentine So save yourself, if nothing else. Save yourself from all that heartache. Because love is a genocide. The enemy's inside And there's nowhere to hide

Our love is embarrassing Some psychopathic dream A guilty guilty plea. But it's lethal and sweet, so we rinse and repeat that same chalky outline on the street. Love is a poison thing.

Love is a poison thing. Love is a poison thing. Love is a poison thing. Woo! I wish I had more people here to clap. It would be more impressive. That was excellent. I wish I had my sound effects clap machine from Tommy Douglas Tuesdays.

Right. Where is it when we need it? Awesome, man. And so August is a new Do Good Assassins album. And that would be, if my math is correct, maybe you'll know better than me, but that would be like the 18th album. Like if we add up Lowest of the Low,

Ron Hawkins, The Rusty Nails, and Do Good Assassins, that's 18 albums of original material if we did the math. That's 18 albums of original material, if we did the math. That's right. And I made the braggadocious, if I can borrow a phrase from Mr. Donald Trump, the braggadocious statement that I would not play any song twice in the Tommy Douglas Tuesdays until I'd gone through the entire catalog, every song on every record. So I've done six shows no, I've done six shows

already and I think I've got another four in me before I have to double anything. Wow. I mean, one of the Do Good Assassins, I think it's a double album, right? Yeah. Do you know offhand how many original songs you've recorded? Well, I'm doing 19 songs

a night at the Tommy Douglas Tuesdays and it'll wind up being about 9 nights so that's what is that oh I don't do math on this show it's probably in around 200 180 to 200 songs now before I play you off

of a little ditty from Shakespeare in my butt I wanted to ask you about the painting real quick because I think everybody listening knows ron hawkins is a singer and a songwriter but maybe they don't know that you're also a a painter can you tell us about your painting passion yeah my painting passion comes out of i guess i'd always been interested all my life in painting um i drew as a kid like lots of kids do, and sort of voraciously until I was about 10 or 11,

and then it started to ease off. And I'd painted in high school as a project that I was forced to do, but I'd never really painted. And so I had spent my life, my adult life, traveling around, touring around, and I would never, you know, when I toured or traveled to Paris or Barcelona or whatever, I didn't generally go to see bands. I would always go and see uh visual art and galleries so I was always kind of obsessed with it and really into it and it wasn't until I started uh dating Jill in 1999 I think we were at

some we were we were at a gallery seeing some Frida Kahlo uh Georgia O'Keeffe thing and I and I said to her I think this was about 2001 I said to her you know i've always wondered what it would be like i always see it the physical action of painting it kind of intrigues me so she my birthday came up very shortly after that and she bought me quite a few like we were both broke and she bought me quite a few art supplies uh almost a an oppressive amount of art supplies because i started thinking like oh god i got like what if that was this flippant remark like now I have to do it but the minute I touched paint to canvas I got super into it and it felt like sort of like music does like a physical need to do and for the first maybe two or three years I painted almost every day amongst everything else yeah so and I think I

got you know I got pretty good pretty quick in terms of I found things I wanted to do. I mean, ironically, or not ironically, I guess tellingly, I tried a whole bunch of different things, but I really sort of focus on portraits. And I feel like it's because I'm a lyricist and I'm obsessed with what makes people tick in their stories and stuff. And if people want to see some of this,

because I was looking at it the other day and you have a great, like for example, Amy Winehouse or Johnny Cash, like these are really cool portraits you paint. Uh, it's, is it ronhawkins.com? What's the, yeah, ronhawkins.com. There's a gallery and you can literally flip through and see some of, uh, of your very cool work. So, uh, and because I have no secrets, you know, you can see, you know, you can pretty much see stuff from 2001 right up till now. So you can see how, uh, I wasn't great. The progression,

you can watch the progression, which is, uh, which is very cool. Uh, Ron, man, I gotta say,

uh, this was awesome. You gave me like 90 minutes and, uh, heck, if you want to do this every, every week, just let me know.

Sure. Toronto Mike Wednesdays after Tommy Douglas Tuesdays. Oh, don't tease me. It sounds too good to be true. Maybe not every week, but certainly I would be into doing it over, you know, till the pandemic is gone. Till there's a vaccine for this. Till there's a vaccine for podcasting. You should write a song, Until There's a Vacc that could be the uh the song you could write during this

pandemic here but uh oh man i just can i just as an aside see i saw somebody's uh comment sort of op-ed piece about brian adams freaking out and as much as i agree that you know he needs to seriously apologize for the sort of racist content at some some point at the end, the guy suggests that maybe he should write a song that apologizes or write a song about how we all have to come together. And I was like, Oh my God, please don't, please don't do that. I get that. I get that. That might, you know, like I, I just don't the idea of like everybody's suddenly writing songs about how frontline workers are heroes and how we all have to come together really makes my skin crawl i'm with you and i also what i what i don't

like is that a lot of people are talking about how like oh you know the suddenly these nurses and doctors are like superheroes and i always think like well weren't they already like superheroes like before covid19 they were saving our lives and extending the lives of our loved ones like this i'm just saying yeah they were they were superheroes before uh covid showed up on the scene but uh anyway when it leaves i guess when it's gone they will put their clothes back on like clark kent reverse clark kent and we'll and they'll see you know yeah and we'll go back to taking them for granted and being like oh get out of here you mean theub. You mean the good old days. All right. Thanks, Ron.

Honestly, amazing. And can't wait till I can see you live in concert again. That's what I can't wait for. All right. Thanks, Mike. Total pleasure. And that brings us to the end of our 648th show. You can follow me on Twitter.

I'm at Toronto Mike. Ron's not on Twitter, but Lowest of the Low are on Twitter, at Lowest of the Low. Our friends at Great Lakes Brewery are at Great Lakes Beer. Ron's not on Twitter, but lowest of the low are on Twitter at lowest of the low. Our friends at Great Lakes Brewery are at Great Lakes beer. Oh, by the way, follow Ron on Facebook.

He's on Facebook and Tuesdays at eight o'clock are the, he's going to perform live for you. So yeah, follow him. Great, Great Lakes beer at Great Lakes beer. Palma pasta is at Palma pasta. Sticker. You is at sticker. You, the Sticker U is at Sticker U.

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