Band #4 - What's Old Is New Again. But Also Old.

Maybe 25 years isn't a long time after all

I’m on a quest to see 100 bands in 500 days before I turn 50 on September 17, 2025 to prove how young I still am. It’s called denial, and I’m really leaning into it.

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I didn’t go to a ton of concerts with my mom and dad growing up. My concert obsession isn’t particularly genetic. But we did go to a few shows.

One from 1989 stands out. Dad lived in California for a while in the mid-’60s when he was dreaming of being a rodeo star. Buck Owens, the country singer from Bakersfield, was huge at the time, and dad was a big fan. Owens co-hosted Hee Haw for almost 25 years starting in 1969. But his own music career went into hibernation through the ‘70s and ‘80s after his guitarist and best friend died in a motorcycle accident, and he retired from performing. In 1988, Dwight Yoakam begged Owens, one of his idols, to team up and record The Streets of Bakersfield. The song was a bust when Owens had originally released it in 1972, but Yoakam loved it, and this time it became a massive number one hit. Owens’ career was rejuvenated, and he hit the road again.

I most remember hearing a very extended version of Act Naturally, the biggest hit of his early career. The Beatles recorded the song on Help!, with Ringo singing, after Owens had taken it to number one in 1963, but Owens’ version was, and is, better. (Owens and Starr teamed up to record a new version of the song together in 1988. It was nominated for a Grammy, and has the most ridiculous video you’ve ever seen.)

It was a good show. Really good. But my 13 year old self mocked my dad about it relentlessly. I made sure he knew how old he was - I mean, he’d listened to this guy 25 YEARS AGO! As a teenager! Before there was electricity, probably! To me, it was the clearest sign that he was a geezer. Way over the hill. He was, after all, 42 YEARS OLD!

So anyways, I went so see Veal on Saturday night. It was a reunion tour for a band that broke up in 2004. I saw them live for the only time in 1999. Gentle readers, it’s sadly time to do some math. 1999 was 25 YEARS AGO! I am 48 YEARS OLD!

You can see the looming issue here, I’m sure. How was my dad such a washed up geezer at 42, but I’m so youthful that I’m often mistaken for a teenager at 48? We can’t blame genetics, obviously. It’s a mystery.

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I think often about nostalgia and it’s role in my musical obsessions. I often find myself now at shows of bands I have a long relationship with. It has, depressingly, often been 20 or 30 years since I first started listening to a band, or artist in a band. I have been together with my wife for 20 years this fall. I’m seeing five acts in the next six weeks that pre-date her - one by 15 years. It’s a trend.

In some cases these bands I see have been a band for all of these years. Other times it has been a one-off reunion like this one. Or there are hybrid cases, like The Watchmen or The Headstones. Both bands broke up because they hated each other and the business. After several years apart, both reunited for one show and liked it. And 15 or so years later, both bands are still together, and better than ever.

Often when I go to these shows, I think about why they make me so happy. And why I can remember so much about the last times I saw the bands.

I can put myself right into the room the first time I saw Veal. It was at the Night Gallery, an oddly long and narrow room atop a very steep set of stairs on first street in Calgary that hasn’t hosted music in years. They were on a bill with Cuff the Duke, and the room was crazy hot. Luke Doucet, the lead singer and guitarist, broke more strings that night than I ever remember seeing a person break. Eventually, it was close enough to the end of the set that he gave up fixing them, and just went with what he had. Bad ass.

I was back home for the weekend. My company had me working in Houston, and I was miserable. I told the friend I was with that maybe I would quit my job and go travel. He laughed at me. But a few weeks later he was still in that office I hated so much, and I was in Malaysia, so I laughed last.

We left the show before the encore, and headed for the Republik in a stumbling sprint to catch Feeding Like Butterflies - a band so good they were able to overcome the massive handicap of being from Edmonton. Those were, somehow, the first three bands he’d ever seen live. He said he was going to go to shows every night now. And that the slice of pizza he ate at 2 am was the best thing he’d ever tasted. He was very drunk. Great night.

1999 was a long time ago. The band is certainly not young anymore. I have a mirror - I know too well where I’m at. The friend with me tonight was in my class at school for the first time 37 years ago (and by looking at him you'd guess more like 57). Most of the crowd at the Palomino on Saturday night was easily old enough to have been at the Night Gallery that long ago night with me. I could have felt really old at this show. But I didn’t - just normal old.

I could have felt pathetic, like I was trying to grab desperately for the straws of my imagined glory days. But that’s not what these shows are about for me, and it certainly doesn’t feel like it’s what it’s about for the bands, either. I can go back to that night in 1999 in my mind, but I’m not deluding myself as I travel there.

I’m not some bitter old man stuck in some past where things were actually good, either. The music of the ‘90s and early 2000’s in Canada was truly phenomenal. But so is the music of this moment. Kids these days, musically at least, are just fine.

Ultimately, I think that there are three reasons I like seeing old bands play new gigs so much.

First, there is the journey. Checking in on the songs and the band let’s me check in on where I was, where I am, and how those places are so different - and so similar. Music flattens time. Great music is great music. What excited me then can excite me now, so then is now in a way. That makes music an anchor in life. A constant. It lets you be less scared of change.

Second, nothing brings me back to times or places better than music. I hear a song or see a band, and my brain unlocks what is attached to it. Where, with who, when, why - it’s all locked into the notes. I don’t like taking pictures, and hate being in them. But with music as my camera, I don’t need to.

Finally, in many cases - and this was certainly one - the bands are better than ever. More polished, more real, less dumb. They have put in reps, and it shows. Since leaving Veal, Doucet had a solid solo career, played guitar for Sarah McLachlan, and has spent the last 15 years in the spectacular duo Whitehorse with his wife. Veal went through bassists like Spinal Tap went through drummers, but for this show it was Lyle Bell, who is a prolific performer. He was in a really great band called The Wet Secrets, which performed in red and white marching band uniforms they got from a school in Red Deer. He was masterful. And drummer Brad “Chang” Meadmore has had more bands than I’ve had haircuts, and could play with anyone. These guys have honed their crafts for most of a century collectively by now, and it shows. Notably, all three of them were dressed head to toe in all white, as if they were playing on the center court of Wimbledon. It was a bold choice, but I’d say they pulled it off.

It was a really great set, and a great, and rare, chance to be at a show and not feel like the old guy in the room. Or at least not the only one.

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This is where I prove how uncool I am. If I were to list my top five living musical idols, Corb Lund would unquestionably be on it. He's a god of indie country music now, and one of the best entertainers working today. But before reinventing himself, he was the bassist for The Smalls, a band that was hugely influential to my late teenage years despite being from Edmonton. And he was a close friend of the late Ian Tyson, which is the coolest thing a guy can be.

So, at the Veal show, Corb was there. Standing four feet from me. And clearly on a date.

I have a very strict policy that I don't interact with musicians regardless of how easy it would be to do so. I've broken that rule twice, and it was varying degrees of humiliating both times, so I have learned from the past. I certainly wasn’t going to talk to Corb here, even though it would have been easy, and I could have thought of a million flattering things to say, because he was clearly off the clock. One has to be cool in these situations.

So, here's how I played it cool. So cool. I went to grab my phone out of my pocket to text Tricia and my friend Tim to tell them where I was standing. I knew they'd be impressed. But, in my excitement, instead of grabbing my phone and texting like I have literally a million times before, I instead somehow threw it forward with a good deal of force. Like a Motorola missile. Right into his date’s back.

She turned back to see what had happened. Then he turned back to see if her honour needed defending. We made eye contact, and I was kinda scared. I offered an explanation that was hurried and almost certainly didn’t consist of real words. Then I spent the rest of the show, and the rest of the night, and presumably the rest of this month, and this year, and likely this decade, replaying that nightmare in my mind.

I’m super great under pressure.

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I’m a huge believer in seeing opening acts, and both were intriguing here. Really Much is a a seemingly new local band that has two songs I could find, but they are both strong. And Night Committee lead singer Andrew Wedderburn was previously the leader of a band called Hot Little Rocket that I first saw in 2000. Their song Prop Plane is one of the great songs to ever come from this city.

In this case, though, I have to admit that I saw neither. I went to the hockey game instead. Thank goodness for bands that don’t start until 11, and venues just a few blocks from the rink. Though, as a Flames fan, coming to the show earlier would have been the wiser choice.

The Details: Veal, The Palomino, Calgary, Saturday, August 6, 11 pm.

Up Next: Serving up some Australian power pop on Thursday night

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