Ok, maybe not all.
Certainly nothing for you voyeuristic types to see, so move along now.
Suffice it to say that
me and Sam once spent the night in a sleeping bag together on the floor of a
ramshackle shed on the rocky shore of Lake Ontario, near Cobourg. It was the
early 1980s, and we’d driven there to check on his property, which consisted of
a falling-down old house and the aforementioned shed, which was like a palace
in comparison to the house.
To be frank, there wasn’t much to see. But to
Sam, the place had huge potential. With boundless energy and enthusiasm he went
to town with a pry-bar, tearing out nails and ripping out boards, preparing his
derelict house for the better future he was certain it was going to have. He
was a man with a plan. I couldn’t see it myself, but I wasn’t about to say so.
You don’t get between a man like Sam and his dream.
On the way home, we
saw a small wooden boat for sale on someone’s front lawn and stopped to take a
look. Sam thought it was a dandy deal, so by the time we pulled away I’d put a
down payment on it. This, in spite of the fact that I knew virtually nothing
about boats, and―unless it would fit in my bathtub (which it wouldn’t)―had no
water to put one in either. I never saw it again. When I got home and came to
my senses, I wrote to the seller and told him to keep my money and sell the
boat to someone else.
I might have begrudged
Sam that little reversal of fortune, but I never did. Our romance cooled after
that all on its own, and we went back to just being song-writing buddies,
hanging out with Marg Davey (now Meg Tennant), Ian North, Tom Phillips, and Bob
Wiseman, among others. I can still remember filing out of the Bloor Street
United Church in the dark, each of us carrying a guitar, and then standing on
the sidewalk in a huddle deciding where to go for beers. We’d find a place and
sit around a big table and talk and laugh. I was a young single mother in those
days and had more than my share of troubles, but those nights, hanging with the
boys, I was just a girl in love with everyone and everything.
In 1993, I came back
to Toronto for a few days from my new home in Montreal. There was some music
event and Sam was there. After the show we left together, each of us carrying
our guitars like old times. I remember that he was walking on my left and was
wearing a brown plaid shirt. He looked like he always had, with that longish
auburn hair, red beard and wire-rimmed glasses. He was tall, so I had to look
up at him as we went along. He was speaking very earnestly, as though he had
something urgent to impart to me before it was too late. I remember I was somewhat
distracted at the time because I was embroiled in a new relationship, but I
heard what he said. I’m paraphrasing of course, but it was basically this:
“You and I―people like
us―we have to stick together and keep writing... keep writing our songs and
singing them. It’s really important that we do that and not give up on it.”
And that’s what Sam did.
Even after he was very, very sick, he kept writing and singing his songs almost
to the very end. His dear friend Bob Wiseman has taken on this project to try
to bring those last songs out into the world for us to hear, and I think it’s a
noble cause and one well worth supporting if you can.
Sam loved beautiful
losers. I think he looked at them the same way he looked at that falling-down
house on Lake Ontario. All they needed was a little of his love and energy to
be made whole again. And he never short-changed anyone.
TO DONATE TO THE INDIEGOGO FUNDRAISING CAMPAIGN (and no amount is too humble or too huge) please go to: https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/quack-quack-the-swan-songs-of-sam-larkin
