Bill Reynolds - Life Real Loud - John Lefebvre, Neteller and the Revolution in Online Gambling

Or, to take a different approach, as Lefebvre’s friends and supporters and fans have, you might see Al and Shelley’s criticisms as two more examples of a lingering resentment of Lefebvre, who does whatever the hell he feels like before doing something else. As if, because the guy has a lot of money, he can’t possibly be a musician we’d pay good money to see. That would be too much to bear. Skepticism can reign supreme outside the inner circle. Except in Lefebvre’s case, which is a special one, it’s more like “He’s already got more money than God, but, guess what, he can’t have my time.” And they could be right — maybe Lefebvre’s music isn’t that remarkable. They’re entitled to their opinions.

I run into another former Calgarian, Terry Tompkins, a musician now based in Toronto. We’re both heading to New York. I’m coming back from the Lefebvre tour on February 15. We meet at Billy Bishop Airport on Toronto Island. He asks what I’m working on. I give him a brief version of the Lefebvre story. He’s interested. When he hears the part about Lefebvre playing with expensive session guys, his first question is, “Is he a musician?”

I answer by telling Terry what our mutual friend Al said and then suggest maybe Al was being too harsh. I explain that I’ve put together my own sequenced collection of Lefebvre’s songs, which I’ve culled from the four CDs’ worth of material he’s pumped onto the market since 2008. These are twelve songs I really like, in the sense of being happy to hear them repeatedly. I’ve made a playlist in iTunes, given it its own cover, a shot I took of Lefebvre looking out over his land at Oldman Dam south of Calgary. So there are twelve out of fifty songs I like a lot.

I tell Terry I don’t much care for Lefebvre’s old-time rock ’n’ roll, the Texas swing, the fifties jive-rock — it all sounds a bit like constipated geezer rock to me. I prefer it when Lefebvre’s songs rock like Neil Young rock songs, but look, I’ve seen women dancing at Moby’s on Salt Spring to the music I call geezer rock, so they go over all right with a certain crowd. “That was a good time the other night, John,” Harold, his regular Salt Spring Air pilot, told him after the Moby’s show, adding, “A friend of mine said, ‘Wow, I didn’t know Grizzly Adams was fronting a band!’”

And Terry says, “Good for him! That’s exactly what I’d do if I had his money: rent the best studio and engineer, hire a really good producer, hire the best musicians, make the best version of my music I could possibly make.”

So did the professional musician Terry Tompkins resent the rich man John Lefebvre’s bid to become a professional musician at age fifty-nine? No. Terry echoed the thoughts of Toronto indie musician Steve Bromstein, who said exactly the same thing to me at a party. “If I had his money, that’s what I’d be doing. Good for him.”

Lefebvre has been itching for years to take some session superstars on the road to play soft-seat venues. The idea was simple. Fly into a town on the Cessna Citation II, put a trio of guys up in good hotels, don’t string too many gigs in a row, and don’t stay away too long. The logic was inescapable to the man with the money. Other working musicians might see a gap in the logic, and I found one by happenstance. After conducting a series of interviews with Lefebvre in June 2008, I headed back east on a WestJet flight. The airline seated me beside an old acquaintance, Neil Osborne, lead singer of Vancouver rock group 54–40.

Over the years I’ve interviewed Osborne quite a few times and always gotten along with him. He asked me what I was doing out West. At one point I mentioned that my subject, Lefebvre, had been looking into touring his CD. Osborne began to show skepticism. When his professional music career began, in the early eighties, Osborne’s band was grouped with the post-punk-era acts that showcased themselves at venues such as the Smilin’ Buddha Cabaret in Vancouver. Mostly, 54–40 was and is a rock band, not necessarily an indie-rock band, and in its 1986–96 heyday it was quite successful at selling CDs, touring, and getting regular airplay. One might call them one of the country’s finest singles bands: “I Go Blind,” covered by Hootie & the Blowfish in 1996, “One Day in Your Life,” and “Ocean Pearl,” among many others.

The band hasn’t had a radio hit in years, and its fortunes are on the wane, which isn’t to say Osborne and company are without popularity or get no bookings. They retain a smaller but dedicated fan base, issue new material every two or three years — the latest a catchy single called “The Waiting”—and still tour when requests come their way. They play the odd corporate show — the kids who went to college and loved their music are executives at companies and now have the pull to pay them well to perform at company functions. And they’ll hitch a ride on the summer festival and touring circuits. But they’re realistic about their middle-aged careers as Canadian rock musicians in a vast country that nonetheless is a small market. So when I tell Osborne of Lefebvre’s elaborate scheme for touring — and mention playing only soft-seaters — his healthy skepticism ramps up to disbelief. He shakes his head once, matter-of-factly, and says, “That’s not going to happen. I don’t care how much money he’s got. No one knows who he is, and no one cares about a bunch of session musicians. He’s not going to sell out soft-seaters, I can tell you that right now.”

I fly out of Newark International early Sunday morning to find out if it’s going to happen — with a little help from a former Eagle. I’m to meet Lefebvre at International Hotel & Suites in downtown Calgary around noon. My only preparation for this tour has been to send ahead a small package to him.

I spotted a white T-shirt in a narrow, crammed Soho shop called the Little Lebowski that I thought Lefebvre would appreciate. The store was preposterously dedicated to all things relating to The Big Lebowski , and there were Dude robes and Dude mugs with Dude lines like, “The Dude abides.” On the T-shirt there was an oversized reproduction of Jeff Bridges’s head. He was wearing old-school Ray-Bans, and the image was paired with one of the Dude’s famous lines: I HATE THE FUCKING EAGLES, MAN!

I send Lefebvre an email: “John, I am your sartorial spaceman — wait till you see this essential stage gear.” Lefebvre acknowledges receipt of the package, but he never responds to my request for him to wear it on stage. He won’t take up the dare even though the truth is Don Felder kind of hates the fucking Eagles, too — or at least the remaining two original members of the Eagles, Glenn Frey and Don Henley — for screwing him out of money and influence and the legacy. Yeah, Donny Felder would have found it pretty funny.

Lefebvre looks the same as the previous August, although his hair looks blond. He swears he hasn’t done a damn thing to it. He’s a lot heavier than when we met for the first time in twenty-five years, in June 2007. Eat, drink, and be merry is something a guy might fall back on when he’s uncertain about his future. He’s wearing old blue jeans, an orange T-shirt, and auburn slip-ons. Tonight he’ll wear exactly what he’s wearing right now, except with a formal jacket. No Lebowski T-shirt.

We congregate in the lobby at around two in the afternoon and file into a van, which gives us a lift about four blocks, which is nuts in an environmental sense, but then again Calgary is eye-stingingly cold. We arrive at the EPCOR Centre for the Performing Arts to meet various stagehands. They’re all pleasant guys. One of them, once he finds out I’m the writer in the gang, says, “You know that comedy book you always wanted to write?” He might have a point, depending on how Lefebvre fares tonight.