Al Hooper & N.B to T.O
“Well I left N.B and headed out for old T.O”
You gotta go where the dough is. An inflated urban centre, skyline peppered with skyscrapers. Somewhere there’s jobs to be filled by individuals of all ilks, not just those afforded the luxury of a post-secondary education. Regular jobs. Hard jobs. A place where opportunity lays to whomever is willing to come and grab it. Such romance. So you point your wagon toward the biggest & baddest centre of ‘em all - Toronto. T.O. And whatever else it’s called today.
It’s precisely where Al Hooper and so many other pickers, grinners and hammer-swingers from the Maritimes and beyond landed. The Big Smoke. Hooper settled in Toronto and was a main-stay on its stages in the days before the six-nighters… in a time pre-dating the hardcore Honky-Tonk this record pays tribute to. Al’s group, The Blue Diamonds were a “show band” in the truest sense. The fellas would swap instruments, lead dances, open-for and back-up Nashville stars with a consistent effort to truly put on a ‘show’. I was lucky and remain thankful for the chance to interview Mr. Hooper for Season 1 of my podcast, The Northern Report a couple years ago. Al was kind to share his story and went pretty deep into it with me. Quite a remarkable life he led for 60+ years in Country Music that saw him release more than 50 albums and become a member of the New Brunswick Country Music Hall of Fame. You can find the interview here: AL HOOPER on THE NORTHERN REPORT PODCAST
OK, back to the barrooms… and Toronto which had plenty of ‘em. Filled with country music, too! There were far fewer options available back then for those searching to numb the agony of every day existence. Combine that crushing pain - backed with flowing glasses of draft beer - complete with a side of some of the purest Honky-Tonk music known to man and right there is a sturdy enough recipe for your local tavern to support live music on stage 6 nights a week, every week. Hooper quickly became a star of the barrooms that the folks from back home would frequent and his fans soon branded him, “The East-Coast Ambassador”. Singing’ to a room full of Maritimers, many of them new or recent transplants, every night. They all made it out; out of the fishing boats and the mines and into the bright lights of Toronto and the dim lights of its toughest taverns and bars. Al made it out, too but he made it on to the stage. Joined by other boys from down east, they could pick & sing all the familiar traditional & regional songs from back home along with the country hits-of-the-day. Al wrote his own tunes along the way with none bigger or more popular than his signature song, ’N.B to T.O’.
I knew in the earliest stages of the song selection for, Lost Country that we’d be cutting N.B to T.O. The song, its story, the writer - it was all too perfect to ignore. In its original form as title-track to Al’s late 1960’s Paragon Records release, the song itself is a little less dirty and Honky-Tonk than its counterparts we chose for my record. But then again so was Al. He did it all in a seemingly classy fashion over the course of his great career: Performer, Songwriter, Agent, Promoter, Venue Owner. I’m happy we paid tribute to Al and his song on this record and I’m saddened he passed before we got the chance to share it with him. If memory serves me correctly, Grant’s lead guitar parts on N.B to T.O were the final pieces of the puzzle cut for the record. Initially, it was all Mike Weber playing fills on Pedal Steel in each of the 3 verses. As fantastic as that pickin’ was, we felt a different flavour was required - enter Grant Siemens. For as much praise and credit as Grant gets for his elite level talent, I maintain he’s an under-rated guitar picker. Or at least a misunderstood one. Possessing great versatility and vocabulary, Grant puts different parts of his playing in to the 2 verses he took for guitar fills. The tune ends strong with some nice interplay between Grant & Mike. Overall, it might be the greasiest we get on Lost Country. Nice to change it up here and there.
Hope you dig it.
Hope you dig it too, Al Hooper.
Much respect, sir.
SB -
My living room
Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada
Thursday, November 30, 2023
1:24 PM