Professionally, socially and by pure geographic coincidence, I have come to hear a mega iPod full of bar bands.
I grew up across from a motel/bar on Bob Dylan’s Hwy. 61 in Thunder Bay. Acts on the way up (Rush in 1973), down (the late Kurt Winter, ex of The Guess Who) and just getting by (most others) serenaded the neighbourhood from Finnegan’s.
Nick Sinopoli knows the gig. Now 45, he has spent a career in the Canadian rock music industry.
“Not bad for a guy nobody’s ever heard of,” he said laughing, as he heads into a Toronto studio this week to record cover songs for a solo album. He went from being a roadie for Frank Soda at age 17 to touring with his own Alice Cooper cover band (Just Alice) over thousands of kilometres on North American blacktop in old vans to get to places like Finnegan’s.
The current destination made it all worthwhile, he says.
Nick is the long-locked front man for The Carpet Frogs, “Canada’s Premier Party Band”, according to thecarpetfrogs.com. No argument here, or from no less than Guess Who leaders Burton Cummings and Randy Bachman.
After the Winnipeg band’s reunion ended, they hired the Frogs as the Bachman Cummings band. The relationship started 10 years ago when they shared the stage with Burton at a benefit.
They’ve played with and for Bill Clinton, Elton John and Tom Cruise along the way. The 2008 tour that played to 115,000 people at a festival in Tennessee continues next month with dates at Casino Rama.
There are gigs with Burton alone on both coasts later.
To stay sharp, the Frogs play “only two bars,” as Nick says. One is Crossroads in Stouffville, as a thank-you to owner Steve Fitzpatrick who was behind the band from the start. Expect fans from across the GTA to pack the place tomorrow night to hear Led Zeppelin and Beatles covers note for note.
They close the CNE Monday.
Jim Mason is editor of The Sun-Tribune.