April 24, 2003
Ottawa Citizen
By Norman Provencher
After three decades of touring, Cape Breton's Matt Minglewood has plenty of
stories about friends, fans and life on the road. Some of them are even
printable, writes Norman Provencher.
Matt Minglewood, the blues guitarist from Glace Bay, Cape Breton, has made a
fair living as a touring bluesman and he says he gets equal pleasure playing
for a few fans in a little club or close to 1,000 at a big city concert venue.
He's at the Rainbow in Ottawa Saturday.
He doesn't have the Rolls yet, and probably never will, but all things
considered, the music business has been pretty good to Matt Minglewood for all
these decades.
Nowhere near as good as things should have been, his hard-core legion of fans
will tell you, not without justification.
But the pride of Glace Bay, Cape Breton has raised a family, sent the kids to
college, set himself up with a comfy home where he can play with the grandkids,
play beer-league hockey a couple of times a week and pretty much live a full,
more or less normal life when he's not out being a disciple of good music and
late hours.
There's another side benefit to life as a road dog, one with no cash value
perhaps, but something you keep forever: an international network of friends
and fans and stories.
Ah, the stories: Unlike his Dr. Jekyll character, Roy Batherson, (his real
name) Minglewood's Mr. Hyde is a flat-brimmed Stetson-wearing, mullet-sporting
bad boy who's left tales that have become legends, stories of wine, women and
song, stage-diving and crowd surfing (not always intentional, but before it
became fashionable), carousing and fast getaways.
"Yeah, there are some stories, but the big story right now is trying to make
sure the wife (long-suffering business and personal partner, Babs Batherson)
doesn't see the casino signs," Minglewood jokes over the phone from Windsor,
Ont.
The Windsor stop is part of his Minglewood 2.0 incarnation, an up-close,
intimate, solo acoustic set of stories and songs. Minglewood is quick to stress
it's not as touchy-feely as it sounds.
"This all started last year. I was doin' a friend a favour," he huffs about the
show that has received glowing reviews wherever it's been put on. "My buddy has
a bar and he was lookin' for something steady. I thought I'd help out, but it's
not a big place and the band wouldn't work."
As we mentioned, Minglewood has all these stories -- which we'd be more than
glad to share, if this weren't a family newspaper -- so he thought about
putting together a couple of sets telling the origins of some of his more
popular tunes.
The storyteller routine didn't help out his buddy's bar, but a star was born,
nevertheless.
"The folks were coming out to the bars for the full-strength Minglewood thing,
I guess," he laughs. "I can't blame them. I like that, too.
"But I was really getting into this solo thing and started to book it into
theatres and stuff, restaurants and bars that were more intimate, where
everyone was there to listen a bit."
The storyteller persona isn't as out there as it might first seem. Ever since
he started, Minglewood's music has come from that undefinable excellent place
where the blues meets rock and country. Today they call it Americana and other
things, but back then it was just known as loud and rocking.
Born in Moncton, he might have been a trucker or a coal miner when he came up
in the swinging '60s, but Minglewood joined up with fellow East Coast madman
Sam Moon and went through a variety of band incarnations until 1976, when he
struck off on his own with The Minglewood Band and a self-titled independent
album.
In 1979, Minglewood landed a deal at the old RCA records, and the band's
self-titled first record included a cover of Marshall Tucker Band's Can't You
See. The album Movin followed the next year, while Booker T & The MGs bassist
Donald "Duck" Dunn was hired to produce the band's third record, Out on a Limb,
in Memphis.The records each did about 50,000 in sales -- gold record status in
Canada -- but Minglewood was antsy and moved to a CBS label in 1982.
That, Minglewood admits, was a screwup."I gotta say when we moved to CBS from
RCA, that just brought things to a screeching halt. We were riding high there,
not superstars, but going in a real positive direction. (The record company)
wanted to head somewhere else, although I guess I'm still not sure where.
"It was a disaster."He backed out of the deal and started again from scratch,
landing a deal on the Warner imprint, Savannah Records, and put out Me and the
Boys, in 1985, probably his single most successful record to date, at least
financially. The song Living Outside the Law hit top 20 in Canada, while good
ole boy Charlie Daniels covered the record's title track.There were other
popular singles from the album over the next couple of years -- Georgia on a
Fast Train, The Far Side of Town, and a cover of Some Day I'm Gonna Ride in a
Cadillac, written by the pride of Aylmer, Charlie Major -- but Minglewood says
he already knew he'd better be ready for serious roadwork for the rest of his
career.
"Things were changing, and not for the better," he says now.
"The record companies were changing, radio was becoming almost automated and me
and a lot of other guys weren't part of that anymore, it looked like."
And so it went. Nonstop roadwork, mostly across Canada but into the U.S., too.
Basically anywhere they'd have him."Well, you gotta travel to work in this
business and, fortunately, I love my job. It doesn't matter how big the room
is: I love to get out there. I can go from 700-800 people in a Calgary show,
down to a couple of dozen in a Red Deer bar the next night. Doesn't bother me
and it gets the music out to the fans, and I get my payback."
He finally released a new record a couple of years back, Drivin' Wheel. The
title track is by Ottawa institution David Wiffen, which was a well-received
return to his blues-rock roots.
But Minglewood -- who brings "the full-strength experience" to Ottawa as part
of the Atlantic Scene Festival -- is even more hyped about an upcoming live
record, Live at MingleFest, an annual East Coast party which, like it sounds,
is an outdoor festival featuring Minglewood and buddies. This edition, for
example, featured Minglewood's pal Jeff Healey -- "ol' Jeff calls himself
Minglewood's rhythm player and I don't bother to correct him."
"It's the hardest thing, any musician'll tell you that, gettin' the energy, the
heat and the music of a live show down on record. But right away I knew we'd
nailed the sucker good."
Matt Minglewood plays the Rainbow, 76 Murray St. in the Market, Saturday as
part of the Atlantic Scene Festival
Tickets are $15.