musical interlude

RAE HOLLOWAY

I wish I was a Lord Mayor, Marquis or an Earl

Then blow me if I wouldn’t marry Old Brown’s girl.

I hate talking in between songs. Like it’s the worst thing about a gig. I’d like to be this mysterious singer who just gets up to the mic, sings a song, and disappears into the music. But people like it when you talk. They want to have a story to go with a song—if you wrote it yourself, why you wrote it, what it’s about. Like a song is about anything. If it’s a cover they want to know why you picked that one, what it means to you or whatever.

I’m doing a mix tonight, some originals and some folk songs. Got away with not talking between the first two but as I finish up the last chorus of “Old Brown’s Daughter” they look like they expect me to say something.

—So, um, that song always reminds me a bit of home, because I grew up over a store. Only it wasn’t my father, it was my grandmother and great-grandmother who ran it. Holloway’s on Rankin Street, it’s, um, it’s still there. We lived upstairs over the shop….

See, this is what I hate about talking, I don’t know where this is going. I have to figure out some kind of segue from Old Brown and his shop and his daughter to the next song in the set which is one I wrote, all about love and betrayal. It’d be good if I had some cute story about growing up in the shop to tell, but all that sticks in my mind is being eight or nine years old and Nanny Audrey telling me to get out, stop hanging around the shop, go outside and play. Then coming back in hours later, cold and numb-fingered. I wandered around the neighbourhood looking for adventure or kindred spirits and never found either.

That’s when she’d hand down the sentence: You go upstairs now and have your bath before supper. Damn, I could write a song about that bathtub. It was huge, with steep, gleaming porcelain sides that rose up like glaciers from the narrow bottom. This long finger of rust stain spreading out from the drain hole. It filled really slowly and I never knew how long it would take to get it full enough to be comfortable, because the hot water gave out long before then.

Looking around at this crowd here tonight I bet half them are the types that buy up old downtown houses cheap and renovate them. You meet people like that everywhere these days, and boy do they love to take you on tours of their houses. And they’re beautiful, no doubt about it, these old places down on Gower Street and wherever, with the high ceilings, the original tile work around the fireplace, the refinished hardwood floors. Then you get to the bathroom and there’s this old claw-foot bathtub and they have to tell you the story about how they found it, how they got it all rigged up with a shower and a curtain around it. Such a find, such a steal, you wouldn’t believe. Sometimes they even tear out perfectly good built-in tubs and showers to replace them with the old fashioned tubs, and all I can think is I bet not one of you people grew up having to take a bath in a claw-foot bathtub.

I’d sit there in three or four inches of water, half froze, and then when I’d shivered enough I’d get out and dry off and Nanny Audrey, if she was upstairs from the shop then, would nod at me like I’d ticked an item off a list. Nanny Ellen would say, Did you dry off good my love? You don’t want to catch your death of cold, these chilly nights.

I used to imagine if I had a mother, she’d be someone who would fill up the bath—a proper tub, like Vicky’s family had—and make it warm and bubbly, with bubble bath or something, and dry me off with a big towel afterwards. Wrap my hair up in a towel like a turban, like I saw Vicky’s mother do with her hair when I slept over.

All this, about the bathtub and towels and all that, is flashing through my head like a silent movie, when what’s actually coming out of my mouth is some foolishness about corner stores and how they were the heart of the neighbourhood and blah-di-blah-di-blah. It’s not like I’m going to tell them about getting a bath when I was nine, am I? Time to wrap this up.

—So, um, yeah, I didn’t love everything about growing up over the store, but it’s certainly not something you ever forget. And, um, as far as I know there was never anyone hanging around the store asking for my hand in marriage. But if there was, it probably would have ended something like this…

D minor chord, and I’m past the talking part now. On to the singing. The easy part.