Night Drive-Travels With My Brother.  Garnet Rogers recalls the decade spent with now legendary folk singer Stan Rogers...a more politically incorrect tale of tirals and tribulations, dives, fights, alcohol and above all great songs.

Night Drive-Travels With My Brother. Garnet Rogers recalls the decade spent with now legendary folk singer Stan Rogers...a rough and tumble, politically incorrect tale of trials and tribulations, dives, fights, alcohol and above all great songs.

Garnet Rogers: “Night Drive”- the story of Stan Rogers and the rock and roll struggles of a folk trio

It has to be true because you just couldn’t make this stuff up.

Garnet Rogers is a singer-songwriter. He was the long-time band mate and brother of the late Stan Rogers who is now a legendary folk singer in Canada.

But that was far from the case during his lifetime.

Garnet has written a long book about the trials and tribulations of trying to make it as folk singers doing original material in the 1970’s.

It’s called Night Drive.

Listen
Singer songwriter Garnet Rogers
Singer songwriter Garnet Rogers © Bruce Dienes)

Imagine something like a combination of the Blues Brothers meet Spinal Tap: crazy situations, unimaginably inappropriate gigs, rotten promoters,  wild bar fights, copious lashings of alcohol, no money…and imagine that as a folk trio bent on performing their own original songs.

In the years since Stan Rogers untimely death in a jetliner fire at the Cincinatti airport in 1983, a sort of mythological legend has been built around him, as the music became more and more popular; sanitized so-to-speak, to be better able to “market” him

Garnet said he wanted to set the record straight, or at least as he remembered it.

Stan Rogers performing *The Mary Ellen Carter*, from the feature documentary *One Warm Line: The Legacy of Stan Rogers*
Stan Rogers performing *The Mary Ellen Carter*, from the feature documentary *One Warm Line: The Legacy of Stan Rogers* © Kensington Communications via YouTube

That story almost always leaves out the fact that Stan was not alone, but was part of a band with Garnet and that he was a complex character who didn’t suffer fools gladly. In fact he narrowly avoided a charge of attempted murder.

Night Drive is a hilarious (now)  superbly written look at their crazy struggles to make it in the music business as a folk band performing original material..which at the time, almost no-one wanted to hear.  Most struggling bands will readily identify with horrible dive gigs, rotten promoters, and so on.

Politically correct? Not a chance!

Garnet (left) and Stan Rogers with David Alan Eadie on bass at a Calgary Alberta folk event.
Garnet (left) and Stan Rogers with David Alan Eadie on bass at a Calgary Alberta folk event. © stanrogers.net

Everyone will appreciate the gritty writing and the seemingly unbelievably crazy stories.

There were dangerous gigs in rural villages and northern mining towns, in horrible pissy-smelling tap rooms with the “Ladies and Escorts” signs over the door. Safe as long as you were a country act, had a pedal steel and knew the words to the “Green, Green Grass of Home,” and were able to diplomatically turn down the drunken girl who had stood in front of the bandstand and ripped open her pearl buttoned cowgirl shirt as a prelude to courtship and do so without offending her large and surly boyfriend.

 “You sayin’ you don’t think my girlfriend is purty enough for you?”

There was no good answer to that question.

If you said “Yes,” you got savagely stomped into cat meat.  If you said “No,” you got savagely stomped into cat meat.

circa 1970s: Garnet Rogers (left) and brother Stan who was six years older.
circa 1970s: Garnet Rogers (left) and brother Stan who was six years older. © stanrogers.net

 

Then there’s the story of one typical gig in a very dodgy part of an American city.

Stan said, “We’re screwed. There is no gig. She told me that there was no point in renting a hall or doing publicity, because no one knows us anyway.”  Jesus.   We were almost completely broke, and many miles from home, and what was to be our major “anchor gig” had turned to shit. The small  troll -like person was hovering outside the van, shifting her weight from  one foot to the other, wringing her hands and waiting.

 “Who’s your friend?” I asked.

 “That is our promoter.” Stan said.

And later after a bizarre performance in her dingy apartment to her two drunk and farting friends…..

“You’ll never work in this town again!”

I fled down the steps, taking them four at a time squealing “RUN AWAY! “ like the Knights of the Round Table in the Monty Python movie.  I vaulted the iron gate at the bottom of the steps with the whisky bottle in one hand, and leapt out on to the street. The van was already moving with the side door slid open.

It’s a big book, about 700 pages, and it’s available from Garnet’s website (below). If you love the music of Stan Rogers, you’ll want to buy it. If you love Garnet’s own music, you’ll want to buy it. If you are in an unappreciated struggling band, you’ll want to..well borrow it from someone who did buy it. And, if you love a roaring good tale with no politically correct holds barred, you’ll want to buy it

Garnet Rogers website

Stan Rogers site

YOUTUBE- GARNET ROGERS- NIGHT DRIVE

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