Stan Rogers' Forgotten Song Surfaces
JJ
By LISA HRABLUK - Telegraph Journal
And I remember how my grandpa used to stare across the sea
And raise his fist to the south and turn and cry to me
Don't give up the land
Don't give up the land
Don't give up the land for a pocketful of gold.
- Stan Rogers, 1972
PETER Mesheau has found some long-forgotten Stan Rogers gold.
The Tory politician has unearthed an old recording he and some college friends
made in 1972 of the late balladeer singing A Pocketful of Gold, a
never-released song.
For the past 20 years, the audio tape has sat in an old shoebox in Mr.
Mesheau's home until earlier this summer when he decided to pull it out after a
poster advertising the annual Stan Rogers Folk Festival in Canso, N.S., tweaked
his memory.
"I got really excited about finding it and a flood of nostalgia hit me," he
says as he leans back in his of fice chair and begins to reminisce. It was the
winter of 1972 and Peter Mesheau was a long way from the halls of political
power.
Back then, the man most New Brunswickers know as the Minister of Economic
Development, Culture and Tourism was a long-haired,
tie-dye-wearing 19-year-old television student at Fanshaw Community College in
London, Ont.
One night while hanging out at the popular Smale's Pace coffeehouse Mr. Mesheau
and his friends heard the yet-to-be-famous troubadour perform A Pocketful of
Gold.
Already feeling homesick for the Maritimes, the song's references to the sea
and the selling off of Nova Scotia's land to Americans, resonated with Mr.
Mesheau and his friends - Janet Crawford, Bev Smith, Hans Durstling and Paul
Trotter, the lone Ontarian.
The group went to see Mr. Rogers, then a 22-year-old musician playing the
coffeehouse circuit, and asked him if he would record the song.
Their plan was to then return to the Maritimes, film images to match the lyrics
and then show the film in schools.
Chronically short on cash, the group were at first worried they wouldn't be
able to afford Mr. Rogers' performance fee but they soon discovered Mr. Rogers
had a unique proposal.
In lieu of cash, Mr. Rogers would record the song if the quintet brought him
back 24 bottles of Schooner beer, a Maritime product unavailable in Ontario at
the time.
Eager to have the song recorded, the group gaemly made the 20-hour drive home
for beer.
"We drove up in our Gremlin and we went to the Sackville liquor store, got the
beer, drove back and we cut the deal," says Mr. Mesheau, who remembers Mr.
Rogers typed up the contract on a portable typewriter in his London apartment
while they all sat around enjoying the beer.
Later they recorded the song on reel-to-reel tape and Mr. Rogers obliged their
request to record a few extra lines in order to lengthen the song.
That July, the quintet loaded up their 1966 VW van with 16mm film and spent
five weeks filming scenes of rural New Brunswick, PEI and Nova Scotia.
However because money was tight, only one copy of the film was ever made.
The film was shown in a few schools but Mr. Rogers never saw the finished
product and now both the 16mm footage and the Super 8 home movie of the shoot
have been lost.
That's all right with Ariel Rogers, Mr. Rogers' widow, who says Mr. Rogers was
not particularly fond of the song.
"It was a product of the time. It will never be published," she says.
Ms. Rogers heads Mr. Rogers' old independent label Fogarty's Cove Music and
later this month she will release from coffee house to concert hall, a
collection of 20 previously unreleased Stan Rogers songs.
Produced with Paul Mills, Mr. Rogers' long-standing bandmate and producer, the
new CD will feature music from 1973 to 1983 including the popular Acadian
Saturday Night and the last two pieces Mr. Rogers wrote.
The popular singer was killed in an airplane crash in Ohio in 1983.
Ms. Rogers says she considered putting A Pocketful of Gold on the new CD but
decided against it, largely because her late husband did not like the song.
Mr. Mills remembers playing A Pocketful of Gold and says they actually recorded
a version of it at Smale's Pace in 1972.
"It was a fairly early effort," he said, explaining it was born of Mr. Rogers'
anger that parts of the Nova Scotia coastline were being sold to Americans.
Born in Hamilton, Ont., in 1949, Mr. Rogers' parents were from Nova Scotia and
he spent most of his summers in Canso where he developed his strong love of the
Maritimes, a love that is reflected in some of his later work like The Mary
Ellen Carter, Barrett's Privateers and Cape St. Mary's.
As for A Pocketful of Gold, Mr. Mills says his old friend stopped performing
the song because as he matured as a songwriter, he felt the harsh lyrics no
longer reflected his point of view.
Mr. Mesheau agrees that the lyrics are of another era but, as he looks out his
fifth-floor window at the Legislative Building in Fredericton, an impish smile
appears on his face as he remembers that crazy, music-filled summer of 1972.
"God, what you can do when you're young," he says as he gazes over a desk piled
with files.
"If someone had a VW van and pulled up outside with an old Stan Rogers song,
I'd be tempted to pitch all this and go."
hbfb
hbfb
JJ <ski...@adelphia.net> wrote in message
news:yehB3.1512$W4.2...@server1.news.adelphia.net...
Roy A. Fletcher
with editing...
: From the New Brunswick Telegraph Journal
Who's this Mr. Rogers that appears often in the tale?
Regards. RAF
Karen Rodgers
wrote:
The late Stan Rogers. A great Canadian singer/songwriter.
Long lamented, and sadly missed even by folks who never got to meet
him.
Karen Rodgers
please remove -wx- from my email address to contact
me, thank you
Bob Millar
James Goneaux
wrote:
>Karen Rodgers (k-wx-rod-wx-gers-wx-@-wx-ho-wx-me.com) wrote:
>with editing...
>: On 8 Sep 99 06:17:47 GMT, uy...@vtn1.victoria.tc.ca (Roy A. Fletcher)
>: wrote:
>: >Who's this Mr. Rogers that appears often in the tale?
>: The late Stan Rogers. A great Canadian singer/songwriter.
>: Long lamented, and sadly missed even by folks who never got to meet
>: him.
>
>And I did. But that's another tale not worth telling.
>The point I was trying to make was that anyone who referred to Stan
>Rogers as Mr. Rogers casts serious doubts on their tale.
Yes, but the fact that the man has the tape, and Ariel basically
confirms the story is good enough to me.
Calling people "Mr." is editorial policy for some newspapers,
regardless of who. Which makes it interesting when writing about
Hitler...
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Free enterprise can be free of all sorts of things including ethics." P.J. O'Rourke
Jeri Corlew
>On 8 Sep 99 19:01:25 GMT, uy...@vtn1.victoria.tc.ca (Roy A. Fletcher)
>wrote:
>
>>Karen Rodgers (k-wx-rod-wx-gers-wx-@-wx-ho-wx-me.com) wrote:
>>with editing...
>>: On 8 Sep 99 06:17:47 GMT, uy...@vtn1.victoria.tc.ca (Roy A. Fletcher)
>>: wrote:
>>: >Who's this Mr. Rogers that appears often in the tale?
>>: The late Stan Rogers. A great Canadian singer/songwriter.
>>: Long lamented, and sadly missed even by folks who never got to meet
>>: him.
>>
>>And I did. But that's another tale not worth telling.
>>The point I was trying to make was that anyone who referred to Stan
>>Rogers as Mr. Rogers casts serious doubts on their tale.
>
>Yes, but the fact that the man has the tape, and Ariel basically
>confirms the story is good enough to me.
>
The song had been broadcast on the radio, and prior to today was available
as a Real Audio file at
http://www.radio.cbc.ca/insite/AS_IT_HAPPENS_TORONTO/1999/9/8.html
I believe there's a strong possiblity lawyers made it go away, 'cause it's
not there now. It didn't sound great to me, but it didn't sound bad,
either, but that's just my opinion.
--
Jeri Corlew
(Remove "XXX" to reply)