An adventure on the wrong side of the tracks

On Saturday night, Elizabeth, Victor and I took a quick trip to Stratford to catch a local band playing a gig at a seedy bar. This is not our normal way of listening to music, but the difference was that we know all the band members, and this may have been their final gig for quite some time. The band is called "The Outsiders", but we know them as Bren, Liam, and Ben. Bren (lead guitar & vocals) is heading off to Hamilton to attend college, and Ben (bass) is off to Barrie for the same reason. Given the geographical spread, they will probably not be able to get together often enough for practices, never mind finding gigs.

The bar, Cactus Jack's Roadhouse, is literally on the wrong side of the tracks . . . less than 50 metres from the front door is the former CN mainline through Stratford. Given the proximity, it's surprising how little you hear the trains as they rumble through town.

The bar has gone through at least one ownership change recently, along with a name change (it used to be called The Wild Rose . . . the "Wild" being a pretty accurate indicator). The current owner is apparently trying to improve the tone of the place, but it's still pretty seedy.

We arrived just before the first set, threaded our way through the bunch of burly, unshaven, tattooed figures clustered around the entranceway . . . and those were just the women . . . and got seated near the stage. It took a while for the wait staff to find us, so we were several songs into the first set before we got any refreshments.

It's shows like this that remind me that I haven't been listening to popular music for a long time. I think we were listening to the fourth or fifth song in the set before I heard one I knew! It didn't help to have the lead guitar player announce things like "Okay, here's a really, really old tune. It'll take you back a long way. This was big in 1996!" I didn't even recognize the band names, never mind the song titles. . .for all I knew Bren was making them up as he went along: "That was the well-known 'Zarglefnark' by that great band 'Zá Frûmï'!

Still, we enjoyed the performance and survived running the gauntlet to get back out to the fresh air, so the night must be considered a success!