The First 30 Years

(From Penguin Eggs Magazine Winter 2001)

The Calgary Folk Club currently hosts its 30th successful season. A misty eyed Les Siemieniuk supplies the history lesson, class.

Johnny Worrall, The Wild Colonial Boys’ lead singer, steps up to the microphone and sings that song – just as he has done ever second Friday at 8 p.m., from September to April, for the past 30 years. AS he launches in to the chorus – “And it’s no, nay, never” – once again, on cue, as they have done for the last 30 years, the full house responds with The Wild Rover’s mandatory clap, clap, clap.

Another night at the Calgary Folk Club is officially underway. After a 45-minute set by the Boys, and a break for beer and sausage rolls, Garnet Rogers takes the stage. He is not exactly sure, but he has played this club at least a dozen times over the years, both as a solo act and with his late brother Stan. The 30th season largely consists of audience favourites from the past.

It’s hard to imagine this local music community was ever without the Calgary Folk Club. But in 1972, a wave of immigration brought Welshman, Mansel Davies, and his wife, Anne, from Birmingham, England to teach in Calgary. Mansel, a guitarist and bass player, had toured with the likes of The Corries and The Ian Campbell Group around Europe. Davies was soon teaching guitar for Calgary Adult Education. He also hooked up with local lawyer and bass player John Martland and Sheffield native Johnny Worrall. Together they formed The Wild Colonial Boys.

But where to play? In 1972, Calgary really was a cowtown, not the big, sophisticated Cow City it has become. Besides the ski hills, the music venues were few and far between. In Birmingham, Davies, with Ian Campbell, was heavily involved in The Jug O’ Punch, a famous folk club there. “It was a great part of our social and Mansel’s professional life,” says Anne. “He played there all the time.” One of the good things about being immigrants in the Promised Land, anything was possible. So they started their own club modeled on the Jug O’ Punch. The Wild Colonial Boys became the house band and now had a regular place to play. Drawing from a built in audience of guitar students and teachers, the doors opened in September of 1972.

“The boys thought of it as a one-off. We didn’t think it would last,” says Mansel.

The initial hall was a log cabin owned by the Calgary Sports Car Club, featuring a septic field into which five gallon buckets from the washrooms had to be emptied throughout the night because there was no running water. “Usually, the men just went outside in the snow and some couldn’t be trusted to carry the buckets all the way to the proper spot for dumping,” says Anne.

Beer service and non-North American bathroom standards not-withstanding, the place was packed and necessitated a move to a larger hall very shortly. Three moves later, the club’s current home, the Dalhousie Community Center, continues to sell out its 400 seats on a regular basis. Initially, Calgary musicians were booked. Mansel and Anne then looked to Edmonton and surrounding areas for their performers. As the club grew and prospered, Anne says, they realized they could actually book anyone they wanted from anywhere. So they did.

Garnet Rogers played the folk club first with Stan in the late ’70s. At the time, he remembers, “They paid you well. They gave you $500, which was a lot at the time and helped you set up other gigs in and around Calgary so you could afford to come out (West.) And they treated you well. You got a sound check, a decent place to stay, that was rare then.” Garnet reckons musicians playing the independent music scene owe a lot to the Calgary Folk Club.

Besides being an exceptional place to play, it is also a good place to listen to music. There is no bar service during performances so the focus remains on the music. And it has grown into a social event. People have sat at the same tables with the same people for years. Some bring their own food and they decorate their tables at Christmas. And as with most folk clubs, it would cease to exist without the volunteers. It started with the wives and families of the band members, but grew in numbers and professionalism. Suze Casey, who now handles the booking, first attended as an audience member in 1978 and started by stacking chairs at the end of the night. “We’ve built a community,” she says. “It’s become more than the music. It’s a place like the world should be, when you’re here.” Casey, a former schoolteacher, now works professionally in music. She learned her trade at the club.

On a personal note, I arrived in Calgary in 1981 to take a job as a music producer with CBC Radio, which included producing Simply Folk, a national folk music program. I was from Winnipeg, home of a great folk festival, and had lived in London, England, but I had never seen a year-round folk music scene like the one in Calgary. Over the passing years, the success of the Calgary Folk Club had spawned others: The Rocky Mountain Folk Club, The Nickelodeon, The Saturday Night Special, The Bow Valley Music Club, The Lethbridge Folk Club and the Fort MacLeod Folk Club. There were even two in arch rival Edmonton. All operated on the same format – a community hall, volunteers, a house band, and a featured act. As the producer of a folk music program, I had landed in the best possible place as international folk acts passed through every weekend night on a regular basis. Live recordings from the Calgary Folk Clubs were an integral part of the show’s nine-year run.

But all the history and stories aside, the best thing the Calgary Folk Club has done in 30 years is to provide a loving atmosphere for the music to effect the audience. Everyone I talked to researching this story had a magic moment where things rose above the norm because of the performances.

Mansel says of the first time Stan Rogers played the club, “He was so good he was too big for the stage. I’ll never forget that night.”

Anne was particularly moved by the transformation of Rita MacNeil as she took the stage. “She was a different person than the one I talked to earlier. It was magic.” For Susan Casey, Odetta took her to that special place. And once, as a radio producer on the job at the Calgary Folk Club, my engineer and I let the tape run out because we were both so totally mesmerized by June Tabor and Martin Simpson. And Tom Paxton, after having played the club, wrote them a letter suggesting they write a booklet on how to run a folk club because, in his opinion, it was the best run club he’d ever encountered. The Calgary Folk Club – it’s all about the music and it has touched a lot of lives. Here’s to thirty more years.

les siemieniuk