Toronto Mike'd: The Official Toronto Mike Podcast - Ron James: Toronto Mike'd #1081

Episode Date: July 12, 2022

In this 1081st episode of Toronto Mike'd, Mike catches up with Ron James before Ron kicks out five more jams. Toronto Mike'd is proudly brought to you by Great Lakes Brewery, Palma Pasta, Canna Cabana, StickerYou, Ridley Funeral Home and Duer Pants and Shorts.

Welcome to episode 1081 of Toronto Mic'd. Proudly brought to you by Great Lakes Brewery. A fiercely independent craft brewery who believes in supporting communities, good times and brewing amazing beer. Order online for free local home delivery in the GTA. StickerU.com. Create custom stickers, labels, tattoos and decals for your home and your business. Palma Pasta. Enjoy the taste of fresh, homemade Italian pasta and entrees from Palma Pasta in Mississauga and Oakville.

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Guaranteed. Over 100 stores across the country. Learn more at cannacabana.com. Today, returning to Toronto, Mike, to catch up and kick out more jams is Ron James. Welcome back, Ron. Nice to be here in this post-COVID paradise.

Post-COVID? That's not what I read this morning, Ron. Well, there you go. It's coming back, isn't it? I try to stay optimistic, but how many waves are we going to get, you figure? This might be eternal, my friend. It'll outlast us. Now, the nice, not the nice, but the thing I've detected by reading up on this, and I'll point out, as far as I know, I've never had COVID. Have you had COVID? I have not. So we're the last two. Yeah, the last two holdouts i've got a dry cough i tested myself

three times i'm clear could have been anything could have been anything so ron i've been reading that every uh like every variant seems to be two things they seem to be it seems to be more contagious than the previous variant and it seems to have uh be a little defanged like have less teeth be a little less aggressive so it's getting more mild and more contagious i just read about like a i don't know they call it a b5 i think the b5 is like super contagious like uh like this is the is as contagious as our most viral illness, which I think might be measles or something, but super viral. But, you know, if you're up to date on your vaccinations, you should be okay.

Well, I'm just trying to get my fourth. You're north of 60, right? 64, bro. How come you haven't had that fourth yet? Flirtation with mortality. I like to live on the edge. Oh, you like to live dangerously. Yeah, it's my Keith Richards moment, you know?

I haven't started swinging a quarter bottle of Jack from my hand when I walk through airports. Actually, I just got busy, you know, when I was feeling good and then I went on the road again. But I picked this cough up crossing Canada. I had a dozen dates in BC and I thought, why don't I drive? There's a nice section of the Trans-Canada I haven't driven from Winnebago to Dryden.

And you know what? I could have done without that. I could have done without it. You would have been a happy man on your deathbed if you realized you missed out on that drive. Across the top of Superior, I mean, to really get that drop kick to the census of how huge Superior is.

It's a vast inland sea, man. I mean, the first tour I put, it was around the frozen lip of gitche goomy in the wintertime and i was driving it now in the summer and my camping gear and stuff just a couple weeks ago wow i thought wow man uh how did i how did i do this 25 years ago pulling a living from the big wide open i was playing community centers and school gymnasiums and church basements then. You were young and dumb. You didn't know anything. Well, I had people to feed, man.

You know what? That's an amazing motivator, having to feed children and feed a family. Like, they never underestimate that motivation. You'll do almost anything for money when you have mouths to feed.

Almost. As long as it's not your own mouth. You'll go, no, I hear the cough now. Okay, so you've tested, you don't think that's COVID. It's nothing. But does that ruin you?

If you have to go, like how long is a Ron James stand-up if you're going to Stratford? Okay, so could you talk for, like I'm going to make you talk for three today. No, just kidding. Yeah, yeah. No, no, no, no, it's all good.

I've got my Manuka honey, my green tea, you know. Okay. I'll do the backstage thespian, thespian pre-Shakespeare routine. I'll do my vocal warm-ups and my me-ma-ma-ma-ma-mos. But anyway, it'll be fine. And this is, I mean, let's shout it out now. And there's no congestion.

There's no lung stuff. I can smell my food. I can smell my house. Well, as long as you can smell the lasagna, I'm going to have you take home with you. I've got some Palma Pasta lasagna for you. Did you get lasagna your last time you were here? I did not.

I got squat. Nothing. Is that right? You didn't even get a can of beer, man. Is that right? No. I'm shocked by myself. I don't know how that happened,

but you will leave here with fresh craft beer from Great Lakes Brewery. You're taking home some beer. You'll love it. And let me know what you think. And you're also going to leave here with that lasagna I promised you from Palma Pasta.

Very good. And I apologize. I got to see what time. When did you come? Maybe you came on a little early last time. Maybe before I had all these wonderful sponsors. I don't recall you having all this. Hey, how long has it been?

Do you have any idea? Actually, I know. No, I don't know. Four years ago. At least four years. I'm glad I'm receiving no paraphernalia from the Ridley Funeral Home. Well, you are, actually, because measuring, you never know when you have to measure something.

You ever been, like, on the road, and you've got to measure something, and I don't have a measuring tape? Wow. That's Ridley Funeral Home measuring tape. Isn't that a cool idea? Yeah. Just handy for you, you know? And, you know, yeah, there'll be a discount for you when it's your time.

I'll talk to Brad over there. No, no, no, no, no. I'm going to get one of those little, I saw saw them advertised somewhere where was it i was reading the guardian and uh sure they uh they just curl you up and they put you in a bag in the ground and a tree grows out of you okay that's the organic uh yeah that's the way to go which the uh can of cabana might be doing something like that okay just make sure you stay on that mic though i know you're sorry it's like aored by the green there. I have a joke that has to tell you.

Okay, talk about weed. Do you smoke weed? No, not anymore. I smoked an awful lot of it in my day, but I didn't buy it. People gave it to me. Right. You know, I'm from a day where I had it.

There's a toque for you, man, because it can be cold on the road. I want you to be warm. That's a toque. That's courtesy of Cannacabana. It won't be undersold on cannabis or cannabis accessories. Look at the swag I'm leaving here with. I want you to be warm. That's a two. That's courtesy of Canna Cabana. Won't be undersold on cannabis or cannabis accessories. Look at the swag I'm leaving here with.

I'm glad you're here, buddy. I loved your first visit. Loved it. The second one? No, the second one was on Zoom, which I loved because you kicked out the jams and the feedback was amazing.

Oh, that's good. So the feedback was great because they loved you talking about the songs you loved. And that's why I said, look, Ron's coming back and we're going to catch up. But I loved you kicking out your 10 songs last time so much.

I'm like, I wonder if he's got five more in him. So I'm just going to tease the audience that later in this conversation, we're going to kick out five more jams. I was worried that I may have repeated some. I didn't even double check that, except if you did repeat, I would consider that like greatest hits.

Like, let's do it again. All right. Cool. It's not like how many people are going to listen back to back, but okay. So before more, we get more Ron cause people are like, Mike,

shut up. We want to hear Ron James here, but I want to tell people that if they want to hear like earlier visits on Toronto, Mike, uh, by Ron James, uh,

the episode they want to go to that first one is episode two 96. Mike chats with standup comedian, Ron James about The episode they want to go to, that first one, is episode 296. Mike chats with stand-up comedian Ron James about moving to LA, returning home to hone his craft and finding his voice. Dude, we talked for two hours that day. Wow. Two hours and four minutes.

And that's amazing. And then you did come back via Zoom during the pandemic. We caught up. That was episode 939. We caught up. And then we played 10 of your favorite songs of all time i do recall that so that experience like when i kick out the jams of someone i love it because i get to hear why do you love these songs but often the person kicking out the jams will like really enjoy the experience like i what was it like for you to

to share these songs with the universe? Well, I mean, I have a real eclectic taste in music. And I really like Alt Country. Steve Earle, his son, Justin Towns Earle, I thought was brilliant. I don't have a song by him on here. Jimmy Dale Gilmore, I loved his album years ago. Guy Clark. Chris Christopherson put out an album

that was just excellent about 15 years ago. And all the Rick Rubin produced albums of Johnny Cash. American Recordings. Oh, brilliant. Amazing. You know, that last album of his, and I've got one of the... No, I was going to put Johnny Cash singing it, and instead I put Neil Young, brilliant. Amazing. You know, that last album of his, and I've got one of the... No, I was going to put Johnny Cash singing it,

and instead I put Neil Young singing it. Okay. Well, we'll talk about that one. That fifth one, he sounded like Lear. And he was, I mean, you know, the rendition he did of Hurt by Nine Inch Nails was just phenomenal, as was the video. Yes. And there was something haunting and gothic about the man in black in Darius.

As Chris Christopherson said, he's a walking contradiction, partly truth and partly fiction. I don't know if they make them like that anymore. And of course, you can't be enamored of aspects of country music unless you're enamored of the South and its genesis and gospel,

and that's why I've got an Elvis song in there. It's going to be amazing. Now, Ron, I think even if they do make them like that anymore, because they probably do, but they probably, in this fragmented universe with a million different sources, the Man in Black was famous in that monolithic culture we had.

It was radio and television and, yeah, newspaper. And that was it, really. And Johnny Cash was super famous, and everybody knew that name. And it's very difficult to cut through and reach that level of fame in 2022. I'm not quite sure what fame is today. And it has an entirely different connotation in Canada. Fame in Canada means you're working. You're feeding yourself.

Exactly. Fame might give you the opportunity to say no, where in the early days you just said yes to everything and did every commercial or every guest spot that showed up. But, you know, I hear people bandy the word celebrity around these days a lot. And I thought that was never applied to us. I mean, celebrity is an oxymoron here. a celebrity to me meant that somebody gave me a seven and a half pound sirloin tip moose roast after a gig in attacoke in ontario and i thought you don't get perks like that play in vegas somebody gives you a brown paper bag dripping blood in las vegas it's probably got the head

of a teamster in it so those were the and this is the soul note and the heartline hum I speak of in the book All Over the Map, which is the antithesis of a show business memoir. Even though I do talk about meeting Chubby Checker when we went down to do that series in LA. I don't do a chubby impersonation, and I wish I did. Anyway, he lip-synced the twist 25 or 28 years after it was a number one hit. And he started talking to me after the show. And he said, I'm going to try my best. Okay. Have you ever had mock chicken? I said, pardon me?

And Chubby had real glassy eyes, and I don't know if it was from melancholia or medication. And I had nowhere to go. It was against the wall in the studio. And I remember thinking, I'd much rather be a Sardinian shepherd now, leading my flock over the hills than dreams of greatness in Hollywood.

Anything but being pinned by Chubby checkers poisoned american dream you ever had mock chicken i said yes i have he goes i'm gonna tell you something i used to work at a chicken plant before i became famous and i was noticing that they were using, they were throwing away all different parts of the chicken. Yes. And I told my manager at the time, I said, we should take those parts of the chicken and mush them all up and make mock chicken out of the chicken we're not using. And my manager looked at me and said, are you crazy?

Ain't nobody going to want to eat a bag of chicken dicks. And you know what that old scoundrel did? No, Chubby, what? He stole my idea. Today, he's a billionaire, is the inventor of mock chicken, and Chubby, billionaire is the inventor of mock chicken and chubby he's still singing the fucking twist now isn't that poignant bag of chicken dicks that's actually the name if i ever start a rock band i'm gonna call them bag of chicken dick that's amazing come on baby ain't nobody gonna want to eat a bag of chicken dicks amazing dude. Dude, I'm glad you did the impression too. But by the way, congrats. You mentioned Ron James all over the map. I want to congratulate you because it's nominated for the Stephen Leacock Award.

That's amazing. Yeah, that's pretty cool. Thank you very much. I'm in some pretty stellar company. My buddies Mark Critch and Rick Mercer are in that category as well. Heavyweights. Yeah, they certainly are. And I mean, you know, you got to be able to pump out,

pump out the funny consistently to be on TV as long as Rick was for 20 years. And Critch has more or less taken up the mantle with his own series now. And having created and starred in two series, it's a Herculean task. When you get the life you want, you don't have a life. And that's what you have to commit to. But there's something, there's a narcotic about the level of that work and dedication that drives the life force. It's war and it's rewarding,

and you're surrounded by a great team, all taking the ship in the same direction. Gerald Lunds, the producer of all Rick's stuff, is a phenomenal producer. I don't know who's producing Critch's show, but I had an excellent producer with Lynn Harvey, who did all my specials but two. I don't know who's producing Critch's show, but I had an excellent producer with Lynn Harvey and, uh,

who did all my specials, but two. And, uh, anyway, and the series as well. So it's fun. It's,

it's fun, hard work, but when you're in the scrum with a writing room and all systems are go and you're, you're pumping out, I mean, we wrote 21 pages of standup comedy each week and we only used uh 11 pages of it wow so you always wrote double it's like those west coast carvers who can pull a mask out of a lump of cedar you see the mask on the wall but then what you see on the floor are all these chips

right right no great analogy and i would i will say this like if you you poured your heart and soul uh into this uh 275 pages this ron james all over the map very good by the way uh imagine you did that you know 100 you that's all your voice man and like crickets like at least you recognize people are like this is worthy of a ste Stephen Leacock award. Like, that must be validating. It must make you feel good. It does. You know, it is a great validation, especially when I reflect on my marks in English my first year in university.

I'm sure that professor just kicked the lid off their coffin, right, with a D+. Shout out to Ridley Funeral Home. But I, the reason, the reason I was able to finally achieve it and complete it was a lifetime of dedication to the science of funny. And the longer you stay in the game, the more comfortable you become in your own skin. And the inner sensor isn't as loud anymore. I started out in Second City in the early days at 110 Lombard Street, but first in the touring company, and initially it was very exciting, just so, you know,

finally being in a tribe of like-minded individuals, actualizing your dream, you know, a van full of main stage wannabes traveling the highways and byways of Ontario in the dead of winter through blizzards of yet he wouldn't wander which I still do in the winter out west but getting down to main stage then it became a question of the pursuit of fame rather than the work because there was always somebody famous dropping in to see the show they were in shooting movies and the standard for excellence was on tv once a week which was sctv itself so you were always trying to at least as a younger man i mean he's only 24 or 25 right i mean you were trying to to live up to the standards of people who already had 10 or 15

years in the trenches and television shows under their belt so um the book is a testimony, I think, to life being all about the long haul. And it's also an embrace of the virtues of people and place and those who fly below the red carpet radar in the big wide open. It's about people who told me their life stories and took the time to share them with no monetary value to it

other than the currency of the soul. And the currency of the soul is hard to quantify these days. I mean, how often do you hear, you know, famous comedians being interviewed or being written about, it's always about how much they're worth, you know, what's Seinfeld worth, et cetera, et cetera. And, uh, you know, Seinfeld's got that show, um, you know, uh, coffee and cars with comedians,

right? Right. I wanted to do my version, getting shit-faced in canoes with Canadian comedians. Where you're just, both comedians are pointed in opposite directions in the canoe and you're passing a pint of rum back and forth and not getting anywhere. I'd watch that. Wouldn't that be funny?

What are we doing today? Well, we're just in the pond at High Park, just paddling for a while here. Right, getting into your pond. See where we're going to get. What did you say? And we're just telling stories. Anyway, it was, yeah,

and to be acknowledged that I was on the right track with my stories and with the tone of the book. I had an excellent editor too. His name is Tim Rostron. And he was the bright light for me in my experience with Random House. And he encouraged me. He said, you know, you can explore

the emotional depth of the narrative as well as the jokes, which is why I wrote that story about my uncle who was homeless and drunk on the streets of toronto for almost three years in the late 60s and eventually um won his sobriety back but he was a he was a crusty old cantankerous cape bretner where i was born i mean he was a he was-fighting casualty of the coal town road, right? And anyway, he had a stroke, and I went in to see him at the old folks' home

where we managed to get him in, and he'd been prostate in bed for about a year at this point. His eyes still blazed with that agate blue fury. And I walked into the room, and he looked at me. He goes, he didn't even say hello. He said, holy Jesus, you're some frigging bow-legged, boy. And I said, oh, don't hold back. And he said, I'm not holding back.

I'm telling the truth, boy. You're frigging bow-legged. And then this old guy, I'm standing in the room talking, and this other guy walks'm standing in the room talking this other guy walks past the front door and he stares in the door at my uncle in bed prostate now and my uncle looks at me and says that's the son of a whore that stole my slippers boy and i said does he have alzheimer's he said no but he fucking well will if I gets a hold of him. And so that's the kind of people I'm from. My father was funny right up until he had 48 hours left.

We took him into pallet of care, and he was this feisty little 5'3 Newfoundlander that blew around the house like an atom from a slingshot. He was always on the move, working on his property and taking great care and pride in it when you consider he was from this pimple of granite on the southwest coast of newfoundland where life was short and seagulls were supper he and claude were semi-feral wildings who roamed the bogs and woodlands living on bake apples and duck eggs and whatever they could suckle from a grazing moose cow. And

anyway, he was in bed and I went to see him. And just as I walked in, this beautiful young nurse was administering a catheter to the end of his Johnson. And Dad looked up at me and he said, Ronnie, look what this beautiful young nurse just picked up for me at Canadian Tire.

Huh? 48 hours left and Buddy's still swinging for the fences. That's amazing. But that's stand-up. That's the life force. That's the spirit that I think, I hope, prevails in the book. And it's about lessons learned as well on the road, right? And how it's not always about the money, it's always about the work.

And I get a chance to laud some excellent comedians who were instrumental in inspiring me toward a standard, right? Mike McDonald was very kind to me in the early days. I remember him critiquing my set after I asked him to take a look at it. I'd only been in country for about a year and a half, and this seasoned pro who I saw ignite that Bay Street yucks in the 1980s. I'd never seen anything like it. And guys who remember those sets,

I'd never seen anything like it. And guys who remember those sets, you know, the incendiary fury of those sets were burned into their mind's eye forever. Mike. And then the other Mike, I was over at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. I brought my first one-man show up and down in Shaky Town over there far too early.

I mean, I was in a study hall that I rented from the University of Edinburgh. I mean, the last time those doors were open, John Locke was in there right in the midterm it reeked of the gloom of the tomb there was an odiferous quality of ancient cholera in the corners it was odious and I mean I had that living shit kicked out of me

I got three good stars in The Guardian. The rest of it was an uphill battle. But I remember the first day I went over there and I had my mortarboard outside advertising the show with three different faces on it. Three different faces. I walked outside. It was my face of different stages of my life in California.

And there were two Scotty Stades hands there. And I looked at my middle face, and this was at about one o'clock in the afternoon, and someone, some Glaswegian piss tank who traveled up the road for a taste of the fringe had vomited a dollop-sized, had vomited a softball-sized dollop of human honk on my middle head. And the Scottish stage fans were standing there and they said,

someone puked on your face. That was the first day of rehearsals and I thought, Jesus, I don't have to see the Oracle of Delphi to know that this run's going to suck. I had two people come once. One was asleep. The other wasn't paying attention. And then I had seven people show up who had expected to see Waiting for Godot performed by a Bangladesh puppet troupe.

Anyway, they took a wrong turn, and they ended up listening to me deliver a monologue about a Canadian in Los Angeles. But when I was over there, there was this place you could advertise five minutes of your show by doing a set. It was a place called the Bear Pit. And I mean, it was right at a Thunderdome. The only thing missing was a midget on a pulley. right at a thunderdome the only thing missing was a midget on a pulley and there was three tiered high at about 120 degrees in there of garrulous profane loud and boisterous scottish liquor pigs uh throwing beer cans and everything and i saw this canadian comedian mike wilmont Mike Wilmont step on that postage size stage and own that room for five minutes.

He just destroyed. And I was only in stand-up for about a year and a half at that point. And I watched him and I said, well, how do I ever have work to do? So if there's other comedians out there listening who have just started and, you know, you're doing your amateur nights, you're playing the clubs, or you want a headline, you have to watch the pros. You've got to watch the headliners. My buddy Pete Zedlacker, who wrote for me

and is now part of the Snowed In Comedy Tour, when we were writing this, he'd work on my specials and the series with me, along with Scott Montgomery and Paul Pogue. He would go to these amateur nights, and he'd be the anchor, of course, just to work out new material, and the kids wouldn't stay and watch, right? And you have to stay and watch.

And I just did a wonderful little series created by a stand-up comedian from actually uh halifax but i saw him here 20 years ago his name is nathan mcintosh and he's been playing the comedy cellar in new york city for the last 10 years which is the best club and the most unforgiving club for standards in that country and uh he recalls a show out in he was doing the winnipeg comedy festival and this guy just bombed terrible he bombed terribly to quote nathan i mean that guy, he was up there eating his own dick. This is trapped.

It's an excellent little show. You have to watch it. John Doyle was raving about this. He was. It's on FIBE, F-I-B-E. It's wonderful. It was directed by Jonathan Torrance, written by Nathan McIntosh. And for John Doyle to say in that, I mean, he's crucified me and he's deified me. So he's always fair, right?

And when I got slaughtered, I deserved it. And when he gave me compliments, I guess I felt I deserved that too. But he said, there's not a word wasted on the script. And I'm so happy to plug this show because I've been in so many comedies over the years. And, you know, I mean, you've done so many crappy ones and uh you know it paid the rent it fed you in years gone by uh but this particular show made on a shoestring budget is really really funny the actors are great trina corcom who plays his mom is great anyway we got um nathan it's talking about standards here and so nathan watches guy die. And then afterwards, he's not bothered by it.

He's partying, dancing, laughing. And I remember when I had a poor set at the Winnipeg Comedy Fest. Last time I did it, it must have been about 20 years ago now. And, oh, it just gutted me because I've got standards. And the people at the top of their game have standards.

And there's no way I could have tanked and enjoyed myself afterwards. So it's got to be about the work. It can't be about the party and the camaraderie. The camaraderie is a bonus, but the best camaraderie is developed through respect for a job well done. Ron, I'd like to play a clip for you. So recent episodes, people know Jeff Woods on Sunday night was pure fire. It got awfully sexy.

If you're in the sexy mood, Ron, you want to listen to Jeff Woods on Toronto Mike from Sunday. And then yesterday morning, who came over? Leo Roudens and Rod Black came over. And I'm telling you, Rod's gunning for your job. He was hilarious. It was a lot of fun, a lot of laughter. But you're off to

a rip-roaring start yourself, Ron. But I often record to people for other podcasts because I produce other people's podcasts. So here's a voice addressed to you, Ron. Let's listen. Hey Ron, it's Dean McDermott,

little Ronnie Canada. I am such a fan of yours. You are so funny and you have to do your, um, none of it, Eskimo, Robert De Niro. I don't know if you still do that in your act,

but when I saw that, I laughed my ass off you're a funny motherfucker and thank you for all the laughs you're awesome ronnie uh how nice is that well you don't say eskimo anymore though bro you say inuit right huh right all right but you know i will happily do bobby uh as an Inuit seal hunter. But unfortunately, oh, we've got the mic. Yeah, here we go. Yeah, I'll do that.

Sure, there we are. You ready? Ready? This is the kind of quack quack in the Chita Quay. Ah, ah, it's in the quack quack in the Chita Quay. Ah, ah, you fuck. You're going to poke your head out of the hole or what? You're going to poke your head up? For those who are listening, most people are not, you know, they're going to listen to this.

I got to just tell the listenership that Ron James looked exactly like Robbie De Niro. You look just like De Niro. I mean, that face just transforms. I had De Niro in the basement, everybody. Amazing. Amazing. And Dean McDermott, I've been spending a lot of time via Zoom with Dean because he lives in California. But he was very excited when I mentioned in passing that Ron James was dropping by. Tell him thank you very much. I'm really honored, Dean. Thanks, buddy.

Shout out to Dean McDermott. Todd Taylor sent in a note. He says he's got his ticks for Saturday, his tickets for Saturday. He's got his ticks for Saturday, his tickets for Saturday. He can't wait. So let's not waste any more time to tell the people that they can see you Saturday in Stratford. Tell me how this came to be. You're in Stratford Saturday night. I am. Stratford at the Avon Theatre.

We've got 800 tickets sold as of today with an 1,100 capacity. And I'm over the moon about that invitation. capacity and i'm over the moon um about that invitation i actually did a benefit performance uh at the avon theater in january 4th 2020 before covid came calling and unbeknownst to me stratford had been the idea had been percolating that they uh bring some stand-up to uh the tom pattison theater which was the new multi-million dollar theater they built. And anyway, a couple of them happened to be in the audience. I reached out to them. They got back to me.

We were on board for a show 2020, and then delayed, delayed 21, and here I am now. And it's been a joy to work with these people from beginning to end they're excellent and uh you know i'm sure that there was a business decision as well because two cans of red bull backstage for me is a hell of a lot cheaper than mounting the pirates of penzance but it's a great old vaudeville house and every vaudeville house every theater that was built for vaudeville and around that era carries an energy in this country that's absolutely incredible

uh whether the royal in victoria the burton cummings in uh in winnipeg the elgin in the winter garden and to um the capital and monk boy, they're just, and of course, the spirit of the people that had been there prior to you and that had tread the boards, that metaphysical spirit of past performances really does carry. But it's great because stand-up, you know, populist has undergone a negative connotation as of late. But stand-up and comedy have always, as Groucho Marx said,

been eating at the little table. All right? And for a festival as prestigious as Stratford, whose background is the Bard and Shakespeare and the glory of the spoken word, to recognize my calling enough to validate it as an art form, means the world to me because that's what we've been fighting for for a long time. And it is. It's an attention, a meticulous attention to detail. It's speaking truth to power. It's tipping the apple cart, not riding in it.

to power. It's tipping the apple cart, not riding in it. It's that visceral and symbiotic connection between the performer and the audience. This is what we missed so much during COVID, was that communal experience. I think $60 billion was lost worldwide. And somebody standing on stage in front of a microphone delivering jokes to a live audience is a comedian. Doing it alone at home in your living room and you're as good as Rupert Pumpkin in his mother's basement. You need, this is the art form that needs reaction, that needs laughter to validate it and it's the thing that separates us from the rest of the animal kingdom.

And it's essential. And I think during COVID, that's everything that we missed. Look, there's two things that people missed during COVID. It was each other in the beginning before everything, before the cancer metastasized into this uh bizarre and fragmented volatile uh minority of uh well i'm gonna incur some wrath here the trucker's convoy i mean hashtag freedom my ass you know look if you care so much about freedom, how many went over to fight for the Ukrainians? I think they're fighting for freedom, aren't they?

Grandmothers and kids stuffing beer bottles with Molotov cocktails. That's freedom, buddy. And by the way, my uncle was in a convoy in World War II. It was called the Battle of the Atlantic. He was in the Corvette Navy protecting merchant marine ships laden with explosive petrol and war munitions bound for Murmansk, Russia to fight the Nazi hordes, never knowing when a German's U-boat torpedo was going to plow into

the bow and end his 21 years in a watery grave. That's a convoy, and there was nary a bouncy castle in sight. Well said, well said. And you've got this got this you know that craven liver-lipped opportunist pierre poliev saddling up to the truckers and uh candace uh bergen too and she didn't have her mega hat on uh she brought them everything but casseroles and chocolate chip cookies it's like come on enough man you're not going to run the country by anarchy and pat king's manifesto as to how canada should be run wouldn't pass mustard in a grade seven civics class and maybe we should introduce civics again as a mandatory course in junior high so we don't have more seditious anarchists who were basically come on bro a january 6th cover band influenced by the same bogus alex jones fiction who's gone bankrupt and disappeared

thank christ fox news hysteria uh megaphone dystopian bullshit that was perpetrated by Breitbart and the rest of those clowns with a little dab of QAnon madness and a healthy dose of pseudo-scientific malarkey perpetuated by fundamental Christian fanatics and their prostate at the altar of that biblical acid trip called the Book of Revelations, written 4,000 years ago by some vitamin-depleted, dehydrated mystic Rome in the desert who wouldn't know the voice of Yahweh from a talking cactus. And look, it's a January 6th all over again. You know, they held the nation's capital hostage for three weeks on diesel fumes and shitty sing-alongs. And they were influenced by the same bogus, amoral Republican effluence that slid from the bowels and the streets of Washington on January 6th that metastasized into a flesh-and-blood mob of mouth-breathing, batshit crazy, Trump-addled zealots in MAGA hats and Duck Dynasty camouflage looking to put the coup in cuckoo.

I had to get that off my chest. Ron, any time, buddy. Honestly. Woo! I would, round of applause, but, you know, the sound of one hand clapping, amazing. Now, wait, just to get back to that July 16th. Okay, so you're at the Avon Theater. This is a rare opportunity to see you at the Stratford Festival. I just want to say, you mentioned Elgin Winter Garden Theater.

I was recently there to see Cynthia Dale put on a one-woman show. Oh, boy. And Cynthia Dale and Peter Mansbridge live in Stratford. And, of course, Cynthia often performs at the Stratford Festival. So you've got to get Peter Mansbridge in that Avon Theatre. And Cynthia Dale. And who else do I know there? Ron Sexsmith.

All the great Stratfordians. And It's Worth the Drive Torontonians. Get your butt to the theatre. Where do they go to buy tickets? They Google this? What do you want them to do? Stratford Box Office. Going to have everything you need right there.

Stratford Box Office. Yeah, just go to the program. You'll see. Just Google Stratford box office. Going to have everything you need right there. Stratford box office. Yeah, just go to the program. You'll see. Just Google Stratford Festival. My noggin will come up. Excuse me, and away you go. July 16. Okay, I got a note here.

You'll explain this to me. Theodore1922 tweets at me. I hope he's wearing his Theodore1922 finest. It's a bit hot for a wool jacket and tie. Miss you, Ron. She's lovely. She dressed me for the last two specials. Okay.

I was trying to figure out what it is. Is it a hat or something? I was trying to figure out what's a Theodore 1922. She has great taste, and I still have your clothes, even though I've had no reason to wear a suit jacket very much over the last two years. Right, right. Okay, so you did your impassioned. I love what you said about the convoy. I would like to just make my passion plea here to the government of Ontario and ask that since we are in this new wave of very contagious COVID, the B5 variant, and I have dodged it somehow.

Even though I'm living my life, I'm going to concerts, I'm out and about, I'm going to Jays games. Somehow I've dodged this bullet. I'd like to keep dodging it somehow. And I'm hoping we can, us guys who are under 60, I'm talking as a guy who's not quite 60, can we please have our fourth dose before the kids go back

to school in September and then let's get it in our system now. Now is the time to let people like me get our fourth vaccination shot. Great plea. I mean, people's memories are very short. You remember how poor the rollout was here for the vaccines initially right under doug yeah you know and and the apathy was appalling there's only 40 of us voted last time so he you know come on i mean the guy had a better grasp of supply and demand when he was selling hash from the back of his father's cadillac in etobicoke right and uh look, if you happen to be at the emergency room or if you happen to be wanting to do any number of emergency issues here in Ontario and you're not seen for 48 hours, maybe vote next time. But all the premiers and justin are getting together in

victoria today aren't they to discuss this necessity of health care right and to get that together uh look man uh reflecting back on on some of the darker moments of covet i mean eight canada led the world in elder deaths and uh who's who's been held to account for that has the board of chart well been held to account you know i mean i i hope there's a day of reckoning uh for these guys you know they'll be they're only 10 15 years away from sitting in the home chewing on a piece of jigsaw puzzle anyway playing with a ball of string. Maybe they'll have their due. I can imagine the nurse. Hi.

If I look familiar, it's because my grandmother died in this old folks' home while you were lining your pockets with her life savings. My name is Nurse Karma, and karma's a bitch. Because look, man,

baby boomers, that's me. We're 20 years away from roaming the home in our lead Zeppelin onesies just a single long away from taking a stairway to heaven, man. baby boomers, that's me. We're 20 years away from roaming the home in our Led Zeppelin onesies, just a single long away from taking a stairway to heaven, man. Got to get our shit together. And they won't be able to put us on ice flows then either because they'll all be melted.

So, you know, I don't know. It just seems that when it comes to empathy and compassion and the necessity of taking care of what was the greatest generation, my parents' generation, whether liberal or conservative, they just didn't give a rat's ass. Ron, we're going to get to these jams in a moment here, but quick, quick pause.

Am I sounding too strident? No, no, I love it. You're bringing the heat, and I absolutely love it. I think we should do this more often, like not every four years. Okay. Every four months you get over here. Okay, so I want to thank StickerU.com, though,

because they've been amazing sponsors of this program for years. Ron, if I did not give you a Toronto Mike sticker last time, I'm going to fix that right now. Excellent. More swag. Bring it on, man. All right. There's your Toronto Mike sticker, courtesy of StickerU.com.

That'll be going on the front of my computer so I don't mix it up with another computer next time I'm at the airport. Oh, I would imagine you're in the airport. Don't you love that? All those Macs coming out, they're all the same? They all look exactly, yeah. You stick that on there and you know, the one of the Toronto Mike sticker,

that belongs to FOTM Ron James. You did, somebody did a tweet about helping to dress you. So let me just give you some advice that if you want to look good in comfortable, rugged clothes, Dewar is your best friend. I've been wearing Dewar pants and shorts and shirts all summer. Dewar is D-U-E-R.ca, but they have a retail store on Queen Street West.

And everyone listening can save 15% right now with the promo code Toronto Mike, all one word. And you can use that in person or online at Dewar.ca. Thank you, Dewar, for helping to fuel the real talk all summer long and making conversations like this of Ron James possible. And last but not least, Ron, I think we were talking about cannabis earlier, but you mentioned you don't smoke anymore.

But if it's edibles or you want to drink your, you know, I like a gummy from time to time. A gummy from time to time. Well, you can get that at Canna Cabana. They got 100 locations across the country. They won't be undersold on cannabis or cannabis accessories. And we love can get that at Canna Cabana. They got 100 locations across the country. They won't be undersold on cannabis or cannabis accessories. And we love the good people at Canna Cabana. So shout out to Canna Cabana.

I have more questions for you, Ron, but I'm going to like sprinkle them during the jam segment. Right on, man. So here we are. You know how this works. I'm going to play a bit of the song. Sure. And then we're going to talk.

You're going to love it because they're your songs. And if you didn't love it, I'd say, why did you choose that song? So here we go. Your first, and again, only five today because we did ten last time. Maybe next time we'll do another five, but here we go. Your first jam. Oh, get up!

I left my home in Norfolk, Virginia, California, home of mine I straddled that greyhound and rode him into Raleigh and on across Carolina I had more trouble to turn into a struggle halfway across Alabama Well, the town broke down and left us all stranded in downtown Birmingham Right away I bought me a through a through trade ticket right across Mississippi I was on that midnight fire out of Birmingham smoking in the New Orleans Somebody helped me get out of Louisiana, just helped me get to Houston town There are people there who care a little about me And I've only had to pull more down Maybe

Should you have bought me a silk suit And put luggage in my hand And I woke up high over Albuquerque On a jet to the promised land Working on a team on stake All the carties flying over to the gold estate The pilot told us in thirteen minutes He would send us to the terminal gate

Swing low, chariot come down Easy, pass it to the terminal zone Put your engines in, cool your wings, and let me make it to the telephone. Los Angeles, you may know a four, but you know that one a four, 10-0-9. Telephone's my home, this is the promised land, cause me and the poor boy's on the line. Elvis Presley's Promised Land. Elvis Presley's Promised Land Well I will tell you

that was originally that was originally written by Chuck Berry I didn't know that Wow Yeah Chuck Berry wrote the Promised Land and the guy playing guitar

is Scotty Moore and I love the way that bass comes in right off the top but this has got a nostalgic and I love the way that bass comes in right off the top. But this has got a nostalgic I have a nostalgic deference for this particular song. Back in university during variety night shows Winter Carnival

me and my buddies did this one and we went down to the local mortuary and got a demonstrator coffin and elvis had just died oh sorry just no closer to the mic elvis had just died in in uh in 77 right right or was it the summer of 76? No, 77. 77, right. Summer of 77. Anyway, and so we walked down the aisle to the music of Funeral for a Friend being played, my friend. And it sounded real cool. And nobody said, well, what are they walking down there with their dark glasses and holding a coffin for?

Anyway, I had my Elvis suit on and i jumped out and i said this is my first live performance since i died last august and then they went into the promised land and we killed because the only thing they'd been seeing in this particular variety show for years on hand was you know granola folky singing fire and rain you know the rugby team dressed as women doing a kick line right amazing so you were uh you always always an elvis fan i was actually it was my era and i almost put kentucky rain in here because i really like the way that song starts and i find certain elvis songs to be haunting kentucky rain in particular i don't know maybe it was the time. Well, you save that one for next time, because I think every time you visit, I'm going to make you kick out five more. Thanks, bro. I love doing this. For all eternity, until we drain the swamp.

And he was such a totem, a Gary's totem of the American dream toward the end. But can you imagine what Hank Snow must have felt like when Elvis opened for him? Right. And Hank Snow, of course, Liverpool, Nova Scotia. Yes. They've got the museum down there. I mean, the guy was basically 4'10". He could walk under a kitchen table and not hit his head.

Or he could even walk into the TMDS studio here and not hit his head, because, Ron, you even would hit your head on this studio. Nice burn. I appreciate it. Oh, I didn't mean, you know, I'm not a tall man. That's okay. We're in the same boat here, Ron. Hey, I can take it, man.

Hi. I had Leo Roudens down here. I think he's 6'9". He was down here yesterday. You had a 6'9 dude down here. Yesterday. Yesterday, yes, sir. Former NBA player.

First Canadian drafted in the NBA draft, actually. What a good dude, man. And he did not hit his head. But, you know, again, I'm not one to judge anybody. Did we pick the same music? No, he didn't kick out the jams. Actually, one day I will get Leo in here to kick out the jams. That sounds cool.

I love how we started there. And we got four more great jams coming. So let's get right to it. Oh, Christ. Woo! there and we got four more great jams coming so let's get right to it Thank you. I've been driving all night, my hand's wet on the wheel There's a voice in my head that drives my heel It's my baby calling, says I need you here And it's a half past four and I'm shifting gear When she is lonely and the longing gets too much She spends a cable coming in from above

Don't need to pause at all We've got a thing About some old radar love We've got a wave in the air Radar love It's golden earing. That's radar love. Can't beat those guys.

Wow. Who doesn't love radar love? It's got that backbeat in the drums, man, and guitar playing is excellent. That was a pre-game locker room song that we always played during football games way back in the late 70s, mid-70s, when I was playing in high school.

Love it. Ron, love it. And it's very appropriate for the road, seeing how much time I've spent on those widow-making strips of asphalt these last 25 years. How's that going for you, man? I try to drive as... Obviously, I'm not touring the country,

so this is easier for me than for you. I try to drive as little as possible. Well, that's an astute choice because I just drove from Sydney and Vancouver Island to Toronto. Yeah, I brought my camping gear and I camped in Yoho National Park and then I've always wanted to see Grasslands National Park, which abuts the Montana border in southern Saskatchewan. That's Wallace Stegner country. That's where Sitting Bull and his Sioux came seeking sanctuary after the Battle of the Little Bighorn,

and homesteaders pulled a living from 160 acres of gristle-hard prairie in a land so mean it could eat you at the turn of the century. I don't know if your listeners have spent a Saskatchewan winter, but the cold is a will-killing cold. It's a cattle-killing cold. And then the summer and the wind and the sun. A remarkable type of human being. And some of these folks came I mean, yes, some came from old world backwaters, leaving oppressive monarchies.

But other people came from England. I was talking to one guy whose great-grandfather came to Homestead in southern Saskatchewan, and he ran a tea shop in London. I mean, you don't get calluses working a tea shop in London. And he pulled a living from the land. And I've just always been enamored with history and geography and its mythic connotations in terms of Canada and storytelling. And I was a big fan, became a big fan of Cormac McCarthy

when I was living in Los Angeles too. I discovered Blood Meridian down there. I began reading him and then opened a door for my interest in the American West with The Great Plains by Ian Frazier. And, of course, Gus Vanderhaag, one of the great Western writers in Canada, has a new book out. So, yeah, I try to

read a lot of stuff. But let me ask you, have you found that and your listeners too, have you found that your ability to sit and concentrate on reading a book has been compromised by social media? 100%. It's unbelievable. I don't know what it did.

We rewired our brains somehow. But it happened so fast. Well, yeah, it feels fast, but it was probably several years of rewiring. I think it's once the smartphone entered the universe. Remember when your phone was just a phone, right? But once the smartphone and everything's just right there all the time,

it's like, absolutely, it's tougher to... And there's the other thing, too. I never felt like I was wasting my time when I was sitting with a book. But now I always feel like I have so much more to do. Well, you know, I see. So I'm much like yourself, Ron. If I could put myself in the same arena, although I don't ever get nominated for any Stephen Leacock Awards,

but I'm always creating via my own stuff. There's so much creation going on all the time that now it's like I almost need to get an audio book and play it at two times the speed, so I'm taking that in

through one channel. Meanwhile, while I'm kind of producing and working on the other, I run my own digital services shop here. I'm a one-man gang, as they say. See, that's a lot of work. That's a lot of work.

Well, you would know. Yeah, yeah, yeah. When you're running your own ship, it's a lot of work. I don't entirely run my own ship. I mean, when I start moving, when the machine starts moving, there's been a great person in my corner,

Keith Thomas, he and his family live in London, and he's been my great person in my corner, Keith Thomas-Sakina's family live in London, and he's been my IT person for the last six years and really grew my Facebook page and was instrumental in mounting my life from my living room specials. And then, of course, there's Jill Spitz, my publicist, who is just, she's nuclear. She's incredible. And then I've had the good fortune to have an excellent live show producer who I've written about in the book. His name is Terry McRae

and he works out of his home in Eastern Ontario and he and his sons, I mean, they take out Murray McLaughlin and Lunch at Allen's. Right. And myself, Derek Edwards, and uh he and his sons i mean they take out murray mclaughlin and lunch at allen's right and uh myself uh derrick edwards uh and uh blues dude i forget his name so i mean i'm not exclusively alone and then when i do write i usually write with a couple of pals uh paul pogue and Chris Finn, and both have exemplary and long, illustrious pedigrees writing comedy.

I mean, Paul wrote it just for laughs for 13 years. He wrote on my show for 14. Chris Finn wrote for this hour's 22 minutes for 10. Rick Mercer for 17. So these guys know their stuff. And it was really great for our mental health to zoom to during COVID. It was just the three of us trying to make sense of the chaos we're all walking through and the language of laughs was just so crucial.

That's what I love about comedy. Stand up. It allows you to connect the dots and make sense of it all somehow. And instant feedback like instant instant feedback yeah instant feedback and i i'm um i'm i'm aware that that can have its liabilities in real life right and i try not to i try not to let that instant feedback energy of the stage anymore, at least, pervade my walking life. But I am, you know, I'm a little more conscious of the endgame now, right?

Mortality is no longer an older man's worry. You got buddies getting cancer. You got, you know, parents dying and friends that you used to see all the time. You just see them on Facebook and stuff. Right. And so one of the nicest things about the stage and about the work is it gives me that sense of community

that somehow because of our nomadic existence these days where people are spread all over the place, you're cohesive and together for those two hours. It's a great feeling. And, you know, when I came back from Los Angeles, I wanted to make it work here because I chased the American dream in an earlier incarnation and I learned a great deal down there.

Had I not chased it, I would never have actualized my Canadian one and taken that page from Joseph Campbell and followed my bliss. But comedy and stand-up open, they open your mind. And the longer you stay in them, the more comfortable you become in your own skin, the clearer you see your line in the sand, what you'll suffer and what you won't, where you can go with your funny. But you're always learning too.

It's a lifelong learning curve. And I don't think I'll ever have it figured out. I remember Gary Campbell, the head writer for my show, my series, and who also was one of the writers for Kids in the Hall for years and Mad TV. He said, I never know. When I look at a blank page, he said, I never know where the funny is going to come from, but I know I'm going to find

it before the end of the day wow you know in here on another note here so we're listening to radar love a song you love and it's got that long break in the middle there's a long break and it's just instrumental so that's kind of like lower in the mix you've got that going on meanwhile you're telling me about your road trip and you're you're you know ron james just going and i'm listening to it and i can i can visualize like imagine you know you did one earlier about the the convoy and you know you've got these topics where you've got these kind of like monologues of sorts and i could hear you know ron james monologuing over music you know shatner used to like do songs. I'd love to do that.

Right, like I can hear it. And so when you listen back, I don't know if you'll ever listen back to this episode, but when you hear yourself monologuing, riffing there over top of the Radar Love, you're going to be like, that's it. I'm telling you, imagine like two to five, five to seven minute bites of these, you know,

Ron James on these various topics. Let's do it, man. I'd do it. I'd do it in a heartbeat. Let's discuss because you'd be amazing. You're already such a great writer. I travel. Let me see if I can remember one.

Let's see. It's just hard to jump into the middle of no one. Well, hey, no, listen, don't force it. Here, it'll come because you're gifted here. So let's get to the third jam and then, you know, if they strike you, they strike you.

But I'm trying to think here. Look at that. Okay, so the last song. Oh, I see. Okay, I'm just looking at the timestamps because that Radar Love has got that long break.

Yeah, that's a long one. It's perfect for that. Okay, here we go. Your third jam, Ron. Ah. Every night And when that moon Gets big and bright It's supernatural delight Everybody Dancing in the moonlight

Everybody Here is out of sight They don't bark And they don't bite. They keep things loose, they keep things alive. Everybody we're dancing in the moonlight. Dancing in the moonlight. Everybody feel a warm and bright.

It's such a fine and natural sight. Everybody dancing in the moonlight We like our fun and we never fight You can't dance and stay uptight It's supernatural delight Everybody we're dancing in the moonlight Dancing in the moonlight Everybody Dancing in the moonlight. Everybody's feeling warm and bright.

It's such a fine and natural sight. Everybody's dancing in the moonlight. Dancing in the moonlight. Isn't that a great song? Absolutely. You know, it's got a pagan vibe to it. And I put it in there because I dated a woman for several years and that was our song. And whenever I hear it, I think, oh, she danced in the moonlight.

Oh. Yes, she did. That's the best part of music Ron is it takes you back to that time in your life it's like the closest thing we have to a time machine indeed that and smell yeah you're right

those are the two senses the one thing is who's the original artist King Harvest I would have lost a bar bet I don't think I could have pulled that out of the top of my head who is the original artist? King Harvest. King Harvest. See, I would have lost a bar bet. I don't think I could have pulled that out of the top of my head, who is the artist we're listening to here. That's King Harvest.

Excellent, Jam. Amazing. Now, listen. I was going to ask you about this, and it's going to, maybe it'll be a mood killer, but I think it's important we remember these people. And this comes out of, okay, so last week, I had a gentleman over here named Mark Weisblatt

because he comes over once a month for three hours we cover everything that happened the previous month in the zeitgeist. Wow!

It's every month. So the first Thursday of every month he drops by at 2 p.m. and we do three hours and it's always three hours and it's always killer. But we were talking

just anecdotally there's a stand-up comic based out of Toronto but actually now he's moved to New York but he was just anecdotally there's a stand-up comic uh based out of toronto but actually now he's moved to new york but he was he was just uh anecdotally sharing the fact that he doesn't know anyone from his high school who's passed away but you know several people from this the comic the stand-up comic world around his age group that died like early early deaths was it um addiction or was it just sometimes sometimes it's suicide

sometimes it's addiction it's it's a variety of causes but those two would be kind of up front there but uh then i started thinking about no not that young now i'm thinking of people who died earlier than they should have like i'm thinking bob saget norm m, Norm MacDonald, and Gilbert Godfrey. And I'm wondering what you think, Ron. Do you think comics die younger than the average populace? I don't know if we do per capita. I don't know how it measures accordingly. But I think because they're in the public eye, it becomes that much more apparent.

But there is an unsettling attrition rate for one reason or another. And I can think of other guys too. What was his name? Mike McDonald, you mentioned earlier. Oh, Mike was, yeah, Mike. He got back at him, but then there was, oh my gosh, that guy that was so good several years ago. He was a real alternative act. He was so great.

Well, it'll come to you. No, head, oh gosh. And I'm not fixing this in post, Ron, no matter how much you beg. So, uh, you can wait for that to come back to you. Anyway, there's, uh, you know, there's, uh, you know, there's a list of them who've, who've come and gone too soon. And, uh, it, yeah, I don't know. I don't like to, I try not to dwell on it too much because it's, it spooks you. The road is hard.

I mean, you know, I. Do you find you drink more on the road? Maybe. I used to. I don't drink that much anymore on the road. You know, I, I had a couple of, you know, I went through my phase of having more pops than I should have, I suppose, during COVID like everybody else, but I never day drank and I don't like a hangover anymore.

I have too much to do. I have too much to accomplish and that gets in the way of it. And not yourself necessarily, but there are others on the road who would be perhaps, you know, I'm not talking cannabis here, but harder drugs. Well, it's a real, I don't know how you can function on hard drugs. I don't know how musicians do it. I have to be sharp for my shows.

The only thing I have these days is Red Bull. And then after the show, I'll probably have a beer and then a glass of wine with my meal. And I crash. That's pretty well my routine. Right. And I used to run all the time before my knees went out on me. And I didn't like running, you know. You got to start biking, Ron.

No, I've got a bike. I've got a bike. I've got a nice Cannondale, and I bike a lot. Okay. And so that's good. My work here is done. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But it's, the work, it's, the road is hard. It's lonesome.

But it's, the road is hard. It's lonesome. And I don't know if it's, I don't know if it's easier if you're in a high-end hotel. I stay in much better hotels than the, you know, highway shag and shacks I used to stay in around the tip of Superior. But it sounds like you're camping, which I think would be good for your soul. Well, I did on the way back. I did on the way back. And yeah, no, no, I don't camp during the nights of the shows. And it was, yeah.

You know, camping's a lot of work. You've got to work five times as hard in order to get everything cooked. But it's nice. It's fulfilling. Yeah, it feels good. I like it too. Yeah, yeah. To be out in nature and be close to the mountains and go hiking and things,

it's, if I can do it, I do it. And I've got a little spot in Nova Scotia, excuse me, down by the ocean. And so I'll be heading there after Stratford. And that's always good because there's deer around, there's hawks, there's wildlife. The great whites are making their way up now. There's all kinds of them, which is a sign of a healthy ecosystem.

Sounds amazing. Yeah, yeah. So I, and you know, you'll go around to someone's place and you'll have a couple of pops. Uh, but, uh, I don't go at it the way I used to. I mean, I'm from a day where a hashtag was something you got from getting too close to the hash knives. So I've done my fair share. And I think partying and drinking on the road is really, um, uh, a younger, a younger man's pastime.

I'm not into it anymore. Well, I'm wondering if you have any specific memories you could share about the three I mentioned, Bob Saget, Norm MacDonald, and Gilbert Godfrey. Did you cross their paths at some point? No, I didn't, actually. 0 for 3. 0 for 3.

And admirers of their work i miss gilbert uh when i was at the laugh resort because i remember he played there uh and uh norm i believe happened to be at just for laughs when i was there one year but i never saw him and bob saget no i didn't and because i wasn't part of the American circuit, but the Canadian comedians who have opened for these guys have nothing but great things to say about them. And, you know, comedians as a rule are decent people. And we have respect for everybody else who's been in the trenches

because you know how hard it is. When you're a foot soldier and the trenches are funny uh everybody's got to come up the same way everybody's got to have the crucible of amateur night right everybody's got a bomb everybody's got to feel that soul-sucking release uh when the audience just isn't giving it to you, man. When the light is glaring at you like the judgmental eye of God, and you've got no spit, and there's sweat on the palms of your hands, and then you get your shit together, and the next week you kill. The road takes no prisoners, and comedy doesn't suffer fools. And it's hard work and uh those who those who labor uh at our calling understand that and uh cheap laughs are one thing i mean

once you learn how to get laughs it's what what you get laughs with that separate the pros from the amateurs. And I think to get back to one of the phrases I heard in my early days at Second City, I think Del Close used to say it is play to the top of your intelligence. In other words, don't shortchange yourself and don't try to be smarter of your intelligence. In other words, don't shortchange yourself and don't try to be smarter than you are. But mind you, just hearing the word improv now

loosens my bowels. You know, I just don't want any part of it. And then you'll see how quick and how sharp Colin Mochrie is on his feet, and it's almost supernatural. Wow. And you watch old clips of Robin Williams too. I mean, the guy in his day.

But another guy who left us far too soon. Far too soon. And he had his own psychosis. And the guy that really inspired me in the early days before I became a stand-up was Billy Connolly. I saw his first HBO special. I was at a work in California at the beginning of what would be a very long run.

And this tartan wizard came on stage and just threaded the needle, just channeled the energy of his fractured tribe. He was flying. And I said, I have to get through that door somehow. I have to learn this. I have to embrace this. Because I think most of us who go into comedy, we were funny growing up.

We were funny in the classroom. But it's an exponential leap from being funny in the kitchen and classroom to being funny as a professional. leap from being funny in the kitchen and classroom to being funny as a professional. And when you watch the best, like Billy, who had a Dickensian existence as a kid in Glasgow, and he just seemed so joyous on that stage. And I've seen him live several times now he's suffering from parkinson's and he's writing his autobiography with his daughters but i went to guelph uh my daughter was going to guelph at the time and it was her first year there and i picked she's 33 now so it would have been what gee whiz 21 21 years ago she was 21 years maybe 21 years ago. She was 21 years, maybe 21 years ago. And we drove to Hamilton to see him. And at the age of 64, he did two hours and 20 minutes.

Wow. And it was explosive. It was beautiful. And I thought, boy, I want to be doing two hours when I'm 64. And I'm doing two hours when I'm 64. Well, this is going to tie in nicely to your next jam, but Long May You Run. No, this is Four Strong Winds. No, I know, but same artist.

Oh, see. Thank you. Thank you. I think I'll go out to Alberta. Weather's good there in the fall. I got some friends that I could go to work in for. Still I wish you'd change your mind if I ask you one more time but we've been through this a hundred times or more

four strong winds that go lonely seven seas that run high all those things that don't change Come what may If the good times are all gone

Then I'm bound for moving on I'll look for you if I never back this way. If I get there before the snow flies and the things are looking good. You could meet me if I sent you down the fair It's just so haunting. Ian Tyson and Sylvia wrote that in 1964. And, of course, one of the more iconic voices of rock and roll. And Neil Young actually set that song up by saying when he was a kid being raised in Omimi,

he used to play that on the jukebox and he'd play it all the time. And Alberta has been so good to me. Alberta built me a house in Toronto. When I was filling the wind spear in the heady days of the oil boom, I mean, every time a car blew up in Baghdad, there were two new trucks in every Albertan's driveway. And I know there's this great contention now between the West and the East. There always has been, but it's metastasized into a virulent anger. And look, I've seen the country.

I've traveled it from north to south. I played Fort Mac smack dab in the oil patch. I played as far south as Lethbridge, all points in between. My daughter gave me a birthday card when I turned 50. It had a picture of carol channing and justin timberlake on the front one of these cards she built herself right and in the it said sure they're famous and then on the inside was a picture of me cross-eyed just goofing around and it said but did they get six sold-out shows at a Red Deer?

650-seat theater. And let me tell you, I would get from time to time snide remarks that somehow my audience was older or I was perhaps not as cutting edge as I should be on that

stage. Not as urban. And if you want to step beyond the myopic perimeter of the big smoke and embrace a wider world of wonders, you have to put your urban prejudice and your urban attitudes about what

people are like beyond the perimeter of the GTA. Then you'll learn more about what makes the country tick. I remember Bill Maher saying once, I play the Midwest, people won't play the Midwest. And you have to play all these places where you're not preaching to the converted. Because you'll learn things. But that doesn't mean I'm going to pull my punches

about the convoy when I'm playing Tamara Leach's hometown in Madison Hat. It's my job to speak truth to power. You know, someone yelled out in Cranbrook, they said, don't hold back. And I said, why would I hold back? It's my job not to hold back. And I've told the party line enough over the days. When you do corporate gigs, you have to do that. And you never want to lose the room either.

You never want to be so strident that it becomes a sermon. My mandate is to respect the people who paid 60 bucks for a ticket to laugh and i like them leaving the room feeling a hell of a lot lighter than when they walked in it's life's hard the journey's a heavy load people get broken hearts people lose people people are suffering people have a tough go and it's okay for them to forget about it for two hours and laugh so that's why i like to have an eclectic buffet from the political content to you know midlife dating and sense of mortality, hockey, land on all sorts of spots, food fads, diets, whatever. But there's room for everything.

And there's room for every kind of voice in the big wide open. And I was just fortunate enough to start stringing my trap line, if you'll pardon the metaphor, several years prior to it getting glutted. And I learned a great deal about Alberta. And my second special, Quest for the West, we shot it at the Jack Singer, and it was a wonderful experience. But in those days, you could make fun of Ralph Klein and Kretchen and Harper on stage.

And people could take the joke without feeling personally offended. And that's where populism has changed everything. Are you ready here for your final jam? And I just am going to hope I play the right version because I got specific instructions of which version to play. So I might play this. And you can just tell me, Mike, you screwed up. You got the wrong version.

And I'll shut her down and find the right version. But let's see how this goes. Let's go. down and find the right version but uh go ahead let's hear how this goes ah so great ¶¶ So great. Bruce Springsteen, live in Dublin album. Where the road is dark and the seat is so where the gun is cocked and the bullets cold. Miles are marked in blood and gold. I'll meet you further on up the road. Further up the road, further up the road.

Meet you further on up the road. Where the way is dark and the night is cold. Meet you further on up the road. Where the way is dark and the night is cold. Meet you further on up the road. How great is that? So we're live in Dublin. Bruce Springsteen, Further on Up the Road. I close my shows with this as the audience leaves. And stumbled on this album.

Must be 10 years ago now. And he does a different version of Atlantic City on there. And he does a wicked version of Spirit in the Night. Yeah, for people looking for this, this came out in November 2006, I think. But it was live at the Point Theatre in Dublin, Ireland. Looks amazing, man. I've got to listen to this whole thing.

Sounds phenomenal. Wow. So what is it? You always love The Boss? Yeah, yeah, of course. Of course. Yeah, yeah, of course. Key, Steve Earle, Johnny Cash, Guy Clark,

Justin Towns, Earl, they've sort of been my road saints. And I like Springsteen's album, a few albums ago, To the Wayfarer, that was a real good one. And there were some middle albums I wasn't fond of. A bunch of them seemed to come out at once that surely didn't inspire me. He's prolific, right? It's like Dylan that way.

There's always a new one down the road. Have you heard Dylan's song on the Titanic from The Tempest? No. The Tempest album? It's 17 minutes long, man. Sounds like Dylan. That's right okay and bruce can go long too even this uh actually this is not too long for a live uh bruce track but you're six minutes at least but good stuff man okay so when you're on the road you'll stick on some springsteen and then

you got these long drives it sounds like you're driving a lot. And I listen to books. Right. I do a lot of listening to books. I'm listening to a good one now called The Big Lie. It's a guy who was in the Obama and Biden campaign, a lifelong Democrat, is laying the groundwork for what the Democrats have to do in order to beat the mega megaphone universe. There's only two Democratic billionaires that own television channels or media companies. And I think there's 14 or 15 that are owned by Republicans. They like the tax breaks. Like the tax breaks. Like the tax breaks, and

they can get the message out, man. Wow, that's ironic, isn't it? Scary times. You know, we kind of touched on it here and there, but many, many years ago, a friend of mine just put on social media something like, the world is on fire, and if you haven't noticed, you're

not paying attention. And I sort of felt like it was a very melodramatic post to see just standing alone, the world is on fire, and if you didn't notice, you're not paying attention. And I sort of felt like he was being, that's a very melodramatic pose to see just standing alone. The world is on fire and if you didn't notice, you're not paying attention. But I've always think of this because I laughed it off. I think I even made a joke to my wife, like, ah, it seems okay to me. But man, I think he might have been onto something, man.

It's just, maybe it's just we're so aware of every little thing now. I think that's it. There's an excellent article in the New York Times today where, ironically, it's the affluent countries in the world who think it's going to hell in a handcart. And it's countries like Kenya and Indonesia who feel their life has never been better.

It's all perspective. It's all perspective. And, come on. on i mean we're so spoiled if we could walk on water we complain we got our feet wet right this generation uh it's uh we don't have the patience for minute rice anymore it's everything is instant and i don't know what more we want i mean everybody was talking about supply chains being compromised. I'd go to the grocery store and be able to buy eight different flavors of apples. You know, there's still 12 different flavors of yogurt you can buy. I don't know.

But this simple solutions to complex problems and the worldwide conspiracy that there's nanobots in my bloodstream for Bill Gates's mind control for the New World Order. They're welcome to my mind any day of the week. Because, brother, I don't know what the hell's going on up in there 97% of the time anyway. It's important. there 97% of the time anyway. It's important. I think it's important to step back and breathe, maybe take joy in the little things. It's why I camped across the country. I just wanted to sit and look at a campfire and have a drink of Irish whiskey and a cigar and feel that it's not so bad.

It's okay. It's okay. Just make us laugh, Ron. Make us laugh. And you'll be doing that July 16 at the Avon Theatre. There's still tickets available. This is part of the Stratford Festival. By the way, with all the serious talk we have now about the work and about the road and the music and such, when I hit the stage, I've got a simple mandate.

If the ushers aren't wiping the seats down after I'm finished, I haven't done my job. As you get older, too, you begin to want to make the moments matter. Because that's what we missed. It's not more stuff. More stuff doesn't matter. It's the soul collateral that does. Everything else is a spoiler on a Dodge Neon. And we didn't even

get to, I was going to ask you what you thought of the Matt Murray deal. Didn't even get to that. Do you have any quick thoughts before I read the extra here? Is this an upgrade over Jack Campbell? This trade was finalized yesterday. We'll see.

We'll see. I'd like to make any predictions about the Leafs. No predictions. Look, they're supposed to win the Stanley Cup in September. Hogwash. Right? That team, I watched that team all season. That team's not winning any Stanley Cup this year.

If walking into the Air Canada Centre with the strut of a pimp on a catwalk in their multi-millionaire 27-year-old set of clothes means that we're going to have a parade on Bay Street. Put your chairs up now. Otherwise, look what Tampa Bay did.

I mean, they beat them in the first run. I know they ended up blowing it at the end, but still. They got there, and that's the third year in a row they got there. Third year in a row they got there. We haven't got there in my lifetime, so there's a little respect for you. I want to see the Leafs win the Stanley Cup in color. That's my thing. I can remember watching them in black and white, man.

That was an ideal Saturday night for me. You'd play shinny in a frozen pond in the afternoon, then go back to the house, have a bath, put on flannel pajamas, and eat a plate of beans

watching the Leafs play the Habs in black and white. Hey, kids, here's the old guy talking. Oh, Canada. Beautiful. Ron, like I said,

long may you run, and I look forward to the next time you drop by, and we'll kick out five more jams, and we'll just string these along until your final breath at the age of 101. I look forward to the next time you drop by and we'll kick out five more jams and we'll just string these along until your final breath at the age of 101.

I look forward to it. Thank you. Thanks for the swag too, man. And that brings us to the end of our 1,081st show. You can follow me on Twitter. I'm at Toronto Mike. Ron, you're at Ron James Comedy. What is the last word there?

It's Ron James something. I can Google it quick if you don't remember. Do you know your Twitter handle? Oh, Jesus. I'll do it real fast. You know what? I don't play Twitter that much. The best bet is to get me on Instagram and Facebook.

Okay. So look for Ron James on Instagram and Facebook. I know the youngsters don't play the Facebook. That's the purview of the boomer, isn't it? Absolutely. I don't like Facebook. I don't play the Facebook. That's the purview of the boomer, isn't it? Absolutely. I don't like Facebook. I don't like Instagram either. Look, I'm on Twitter too, and I've got to start doing it more.

It's the Ron James Show, if you want to follow him. There you go. That's it. Just in case one day he wakes up from his slumber and he stays in there. Exactly. The Ron James Show. You can follow Great Lakes Brewery. They're at Great Lakes Beer.

Palma Pasta's at Palma Pasta. I'm going to get you your lasagna out of the freezer before you go. Sticker U is at Sticker U. Dewar are at Dewar Performance. Ridley Funeral Home are at Ridley FH. And Canna Cabana are at Canna Cabana underscore.

See you all tomorrow when my special guests are Bedouin Sound Clash. Remember them? Yeah, the wind is cold, but the smell of snow warms us today And your smile is fine, and it's just like mine, and it won't go away Cause everything is rosy now, everything is rosy, yeah Everything is rosy and great Rose and gray