I don’t live in a Northwestern BC small town anymore, but at the Mark Perry concert (held in the small towny St. James Church in Kitsilano on Nov. 5) it was as if I’d never left. His songs pulled me straight back to Smithers and the Bulkley Valley, a place I lived and loved in 20 years ago.
Transported to dances at Glenwood Hall, driving all night in the summer under Northern skies, the big Skeena River, black ice and backroad waves (as in greeting a fellow traveller with a lift of a finger off the steering wheel, even if you don’t recognize their car).
I don’t know how many times I’ve seen Mark Perry play, but my partner Tom says that was the first time in 30 years that he didn’t diss the accordion. Maybe Mark’s mellowing out, but he still tossed out some cringe-inducing jokes and made fun of himself and people from Toronto and that’s one of the reasons we like him. He also tells great local tales, like the one about the ladies who wandered into the hall up on the High Road while he and his band were getting ready for a gig. The ladies marvelled over the barrel wood stove and the plank floor and he wrote it all into one of my favourite songs:
And we danced here
And we grew here
So many things in life
We all went through here
Twenty-something, living in a shack by the river with a wood stove that snorted heat into a snow-covered meadow. Happy days. My hippy-back-to-the-landlord had no potable water, a root cellar and an outhouse, but also an outdoor hot tub. We’d jump out and make angels in the snow. My fridge still displays a snapshot of so many naked people crowded into that tub. Hey, maybe it’s a song idea for Mark?!
Mark Perry's newest album, Northwest, is out. He plays at the Calgary Folk Club on November 12 and in Nanton on Nov. 13 at the Community Hall.