Strange Way to Live. Carl Dixon
a team to the Sault school “field day.” They decided who would be on the team by having all the kids in the school line up at one end of the schoolyard. Whoever got to the other end first was on the team. I was first or second, so I got to go to my first “track meet.” That began my lifelong interest in running.
Again in grade six, a bunch of us were fooling around at recess. I had no concept of my own strength in relation to any other kids. A guy named Todd, one of three tough St. Louis brothers, got me mad and I became interested in wrestling him. He put me on my back, sat on my chest, held my arms firmly by the wrists, and sort of laughed at me. I was shocked at how easily he accomplished this, because up until then I’d thought we were all about the same in physical development. After that I set to work on learning how to get strong.
In a magazine article a year or two later I read that singer Tom Jones did fifty push-ups every day “to keep his sexy body supple and strong.” That became my benchmark.
The Haliburton school track was covered in fine white sand when I was young, and I ran races on that barefoot. That was my first experience of winning races in the 100-metre, the 400-metre, and the relay. I was a fast runner before I had any upper body strength.
In high school music, the concert band would exchange trips with other school bands. One time a Peterborough school band came to stay, and a young man named Danny brought his guitar on the trip. On a Saturday afternoon Danny sat in our music room and sang and played Gordon Lightfoot’s “Bitter Green” to enchanting effect, right there, sitting on a desk, without artifice or hesitation. It hit me hard that somebody who was about my age could sound so good and was so easy about it. I was envious, but I marked it in my mind as something to try.
We had our turn on the exchange to Peterborough. I had long hair, so the guys from the other school brought me along to their rock band rehearsal. I didn’t know what to expect. My memory is clear as day of them set up outside next to the swimming pool, playing the Doobie Brothers’ “China Grove.” I was excited and awed. How was it possible for guys just a little older than me to sound so much like the magic men on the radio? It made me feel like maybe I could get there too.
Creem, Crawdaddy!, Rolling Stone, and Hit Parader — even Canada’s short-lived Grapevine — were music magazines I devoured from the time I was twelve, learning about new bands and their music. There was a huge amount of information and detail to be gleaned, not only musical but societal and political. I’m sure that much of what I took in then still informs my thoughts and actions. The tone of those magazines was irreverent, but it was also committed to the idea that music matters, and so do the people who make it.
(I’m sad as I recall that in the ’80s, while on tour with Coney Hatch, we were asked by Creem to do a photo shoot in Detroit for the legendary “Boy Howdy!” beer. This repeating feature was a spoof, offering a goofy bio of a different band each month to accompany a photo of the band holding cans of the imaginary brand being “promoted.” I was in a bad state of mind at the time from stresses on me and on Coney Hatch, which I will describe elsewhere. These worries made me scowl my way through the session rather than having fun. It all felt wrong to me at the time. The Boy Howdy! feature on Coney Hatch never ran.)
Nineteen years old, a campfire night at my girlfriend Gwen’s cottage. Her dad Harry and his WWII vet buddies were sipping beer around the fire and someone mentioned, “Carl’s got his guitar here. Get him to sing!” This stirred the interest of the veterans, but I was unsure. I was very new at performing and a little uptight. I feared this wasn’t really my crowd. I was persuaded by Gwen to sing a nice little song I’d written for her called “By My Side,” so I strummed the intro and set about carefully singing my song as sweetly and nicely as I could.
When I finished, there was silence around the campfire. Harry muttered “Well ...” and then one of his army buds set about chastising me.
“Why did you sound like that? That’s no way to sing! If you’re going to sing, lad, then sing, fer chrissakes! Why is he so quiet, Harry?”
“Well ...”
“Exactly! You’ve got to let it come out, lad. Here’s how you sing properly. What about it, boys?” and the man started into a loud, rousing version of one of their wartime favourites. The other men quickly joined in with their “outside voices” and it was pretty impressive. I was feeling my timidity acutely. Five minutes earlier, I’d sort of fancied myself musical hot stuff. Compared to these men, I sounded small and afraid.
When they’d finished ringing the air, the old boy turned to me and said kindly, “If you’re going to sing, lad, let them hear you.” So after that night, I did. Embarrassing lessons last the longest, don’t they?
I graduated high school thinking I would go to university and be a phys-ed teacher. Music was my preoccupation, but it wasn’t a job, was it?
That plan went up in smoke when I discovered that all phys-ed students had to dissect a cadaver. No thanks. I took the classic “year off from school” instead. Worked some and put time into playing more gigs with a band I’d formed with school chums: Boots.
My father started to be really concerned that I was now fixin’ to be a musician. “You’ll end up playing spaghetti houses for fifty bucks a night ... or backing up strippers!”
Unsurprisingly, to an eighteen-year-old that didn’t sound too bad. A spaghetti house would mean good eating, at least. As for strippers, they used to perform before the bands in the old rock bars, so — nyah, nyah — I never had to back them. Well, maybe once.
My early work history wasn’t all musical and in fact took me through a very mixed bunch of low-skill jobs, such as babysitting; collecting roadside beer bottles on my bike; a bit of farm labour; working at a summer lodge; office cleaner; chicken catcher; brush clearing; groundskeeping. As I got older I had a stint as a city parks worker; some ditch digging; temp mail sorting at the post office; night shifts at Sears shipping terminal, loading and unloading the trucks; more brush clearing on Base Borden in winter; anything to make money, really. Later on, in lean spells I did dry-walling, electrical work, some light construction, painting, renovating, concert system set-up and tear down, running laser light shows, and various manual labour calls.
Boots at Kempenfest, Barrie, 1978. Blair Duhanuk in the background.
Photo: Carl Dixon
The only career I’ve ever considered aside from being a performer is to become a teacher or coach. My favourite job in my youth was as a youth counsellor at a teen drop-in centre.
Being a coach and a teacher is very appealing to me; the feeling of passing along knowledge and skills to eager young people is very fulfilling. In addition to mentoring and teaching music and singing, I’ve also coached youth soccer and hockey. The energy of youth is great to be around, and before my car accident I could keep up just fine. I may have to let them win more often now (just joking). I sincerely hope that I have helped some young people gain confidence and learn some things.
follow the bouncing bean
So what does an eighteen-year-old music-compulsive reluctant student do with a year off school? At first, finding more gigs for my band became the imperative. I’d joined with fellow Barrie North students in a group we called Boots for no particular reason. We got going with a small number of beginner-level shows. We had no idea about anything except learning our favourite songs; an example of the sort of job we’d get in those days was to play for the Barrie Dog Show for $100. By the third song people ran from various points of the park to scream at us to “Stop, stop! The dogs are all freaking out!” Critics.
I was working two “straight”