THE OLD MILL SUMMIT INTERVIEW

David & Jim Henman - Old Mill Tavern
Dartmouth, N.S. March 20, 1999
with Steve Marsh, Darren DeWolfe, and Kevin White

On Saturday 20 Mar, 1999, we had the pleasure to spend 2 hrs with both David & Jim Henman. Needless to say (although we will), it was a real thrill to meet a couple of local/national rock n'roll legends! It was great to talk with them and to actually meet the people that are your heroes. Putting a face to a name (especially from David & Jim's viewpoint) is another bonus. Chatting with them via the internet is definitely not even close to actually talking and meeting with these two guys. A wealth of untapped information is still there and hopefully we scratched more than the surface, during our rendezvous.

The Old Mill tavern in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, Canada was chosen as the meeting spot because of its significance in April Wine history. We'd like to thank the Henman's for their time, patience, spirit and friendship. It's a meeting we won't soon forget and we look forward to any future meetings or endeavors from both of these fine musicians.

The following interview is transcribed from a recording made at the Old Mill, with permission from all concerned. It's very factual and quite interesting, although due to noise in the place, overlapping of conversations and some general rock n'roll confusion, it is not 100% as it happened. However, it's damn close. About 90% of the text is as it went down, but there are some corrections here and there. From a historical point of view, this is of interest to all April Wine fans.

ENJOY
 
David: Our first rehearsal was December 1, 1969 so that means that the meeting that Jim and I had here at the Old Mill must have been a month or so earlier. We came here one afternoon to drink beer and mull over our dissatisfaction with our musical careers.

Jim: I always assumed that it was the Lord Nelson Hotel in Halifax because we were going to Saint Mary's University at the time.

David: You had said, "David, I'm frustrated, we gotta talk." So we decided to go for a beer and for some reason we ended over here in Dartmouth. If I'm not mistaken, you were the one who instigated this, you called me and said, "David, let's get together and we'll talk." I don't really recall this place now, seems to me it was much larger than this, but you know how memory changes things. (The place actually underwent 2 or 3 major changes since' 69).

Jim: I don't really remember it either, it was too long ago. Although I remember the gist of the conversation. We were at the time, in a band called Prism and things were going slowly. So we said "let's get a band together and get out of Halifax".

David: So we said, who else can we get. Jimmy had said that Myles was up in Cape Breton in a band called East Gate Sanctuary with Pam Marsh. And I had a band called Prism that Jimmy had played bass in for a while. We were working with this other fellow named George, who was starting to drive us crazy. So we were like more than ready to try something new, something different. Jimmy said, I'll call Myles, I think that you said that you could talk Myles into leaving East Gate Sanctuary or something?

Jim: Actually what I said was, this is what we want to do, da da da, they were staying in Antigonish at the time, so I went down there, stayed awhile and he said he'd let me know. After that I came back to Halifax. Myles agreed to come to Halifax, and when we picked him up at the bus station, he had two green garbage bags full of clothes and a guitar.
Myles and I had grown up together in Waverley (suburb of Dartmouth). We both went to Sidney Stephen High School out in Bedford. It's now a Junior High School

Darren: The common wisdom was that Myles had attended Prince Andrew High School in Dartmouth and that a teacher had reported that Myles was one of his students there.

Kevin: ....and that the song "You won't Dance with me", "that Joe told Fred" part of the song was based on some students at that school.

Jim: I don't know anything about that. Sounds incorrect, since we lived up at the end of the Waverley Road, quite a piece from Dartmouth, I don't think that line of thinking is correct. Myles was a couple years behind me in school. He went away for a year during that period, but we were in a band then, called "Woody's Termites". Myles left for a year, went up to Toronto or Brampton I think, and he came back with some new ideas. Lights shows and sound and all kinds of stuff that he'd seen while he was up there for that year. That's where he first got his image of rock shows.

David: Was that before "Woody's Termites"?

Jim: No, when he came back, he came back with Woody's Termites. This does get a little confusing here (laughs), but Myles then left and we got a new guitar player in called Lionel Wanes for a year, and then Myles returned until the demise of Woody's Termites. That's when he went with East Gate Sanctuary. I then did a couple bar band things, but nothing concrete. That's when Prism came about, with David and Ritchie.

Jim: When David and I left April Wine, the sound changed so dramatically. I don't know about David, but I don't care to go back to far and look at some of the stuff I've written. Hopefully, as time has gone on, you've matured and your craftsmanship is much better.

David: There is an embarrassment factor as well. That makes me curious about the song "You Won't Dance with me"? I understood that the song was a combination of about three songs. Three slow ballads from "Woody's Termites".

Jim: That's true, it is. One called "Why", one was called "You Won't Dance With Me" and the other was "Girl". We used to play them at the Bedford Fire Hall. At that particular time, most of the songs we wrote were slow ones. We were just starting to learn how to write. It was more difficult to write a fast song I guess. "haha". In your heart, when you're 16 or 17, really what you wanted to sing to were girls. Myles had 3 or 4 nice ballads back then. Actually there's another one around that he's never done anything with. I was talking to Dougie Grace a while ago, and he called me on the phone and said jeez, a song just came to me. He sang it to me on the phone and I said that's one of Myles' old songs.
 
Steve: I recall people saying they saw early April Wine at local schools and venues in Halifax and Dartmouth. What were the early days like?

Jim: That would've been before we had an album out.

David: Yeah, I think we played quite a bit before we left Halifax. Ritchie has all the dates of every gig we played as April Wine.

Jim: Not as much as we would've liked, but at that time if you had no single out or some kind of radio play, there was no demand.

Steve: Did you get any support from the local stations, like CJCH?

David: That was the reason we left. It was because nobody wanted original bands. If you played original music, the common cry was "hey, play something we know". It's different today. That's why bands like Sloan and so on are coming out of Halifax.

Jim: I don't think we had anything at that time that you would call commercially viable anyway.

David: No, but there was a reason for that. We were originally very anti-commercial. "Fast Train", turned the tide. Myles drove us in that commercial direction, but our whole credo was that commercial music was bubblegum.

Darren: That song was interesting, because people immediately began to respond to it.

David: Yeah, well it drove us as writers in a new direction. We thought, "Oh, well I can do that".

Steve: Next thing you know "Drop your Guns" pops out and ...

David: Exactly!

Jim: My memory of that period was that I personally wasn't studying how to craft songs, and I don't think you were. But I saw that Myles was, what I actually saw was a man who was working for 10 hrs a day with a piano and a guitar, although Myles wrote mostly with the piano. He would work 10 hrs a day at his musicianship, his craftsmanship. I would assume, looking back now, that was how Myles learned to craft pop songs. He was reading books on it; Clive Davis, I know that was one that he read. It obviously worked for him. That's what he did, he studied it, and he went to the "University of Songwriting."

Kevin: What is the story of how Myles and the Henman’s parted company?

David: It sort of evolved that way. I mean, first of all, you've got to remember how we grew apart. Jim you can corroborate this as well. When we formed the band, my recollection is this. We had no intention, when we formed the band, of being a band. Our intention was, as I recall, maybe this was all in my own head, but we figured it would take us about 6 months to be as big as the Beatles and that would then launch our own solo careers, haha...

Jim: I think, if I recall properly, there was some mentality of solo careers at the time.

David: Something like that. But what it really shows is how naive we were. You put a band together, in no time you'll be as big as the Beatles, and away you go. So my memory is that it wasn't intended to be a band, first of all. So you know we really didn't think that way. I don't recall ever having that "all for one, one for all" mentality that a band has.

Jim: Yes that was a problem that we did have from the beginning. We didn't have the direction, a solid direction among all 4 of us.

David: We weren't all on the same page, originally.

Jim: We didn't write together. Matter of fact, one of the things that I missed in the last 25 years, was that I didn't write anymore with David, I didn't write anymore with Myles. We didn't write very much, as it was, together. It was a very solo thing. Even though we were in this business type of thing, we didn't work as a team.

David: You and Myles had a bond because of growing up together and obviously my brother and I had a bond. We had two camps almost. And then, once we got to Montreal, we'd been in Montreal for a year and a half before Jim left. It was starting to drive him crazy and he needed to get back home. More or less.

Jim: I needed to get out of the situation I was in, which was the whole trip. The rock and roll lifestyle. If I had continued in that direction I would've been dead.

David: Jim was the first to leave, August 1971. We had recorded the first album in 1971, Jimmy would've left in August, and the obvious guy to replace him was Jim Clench. He was in a band called, the Coven. They were living in a cabin next door to us in the Laurentian's. We'd been befriending them and that band was starting to fall apart. Jim was the obvious choice at the time, we were both managed by the same people, and then the ultimate demise of the original band came about, I mean Myles and Ritchie were always pretty much at odds. They had distinctly different personalities and different styles, musically and everything else. Ritchie is very precise about everything. He's organized, punctual, etc... and Myles is diametrically opposite to him. So there was always that sort of personality clash and then, the main thing was, April Wine was a democratic band. Myles has never disputed this, because I more or less brought this up to him. April Wine was a democratic band. I think Myles had way too much drive. Can you imagine Bryan Adams or Alannah Myles in a democratic band? I think it was really eating away at him that he had to go through this process. To a certain degree he wanted to be the boss, although as time went on, it was more a question of pursuing his views. He had a vision, he had a direction, and he knew where he was going.

Having to do everything democratically, bureaucratically so to speak, having to go through this process of getting everybody to agree and so on and so forth, I think was driving him crazy. I think he needed at that point, he reached the point where he needed to go in the direction he had to go with or without the band.

He more or less expressed it to us like this. We had a meeting in Toronto at the end of the first cross Canada tour. We were at an outdoor patio in Toronto, he had already talked to Jimmy Clench and Jimmy was onboard. So the meeting was with me. Myles had already decided at that point that he wasn't going to be working with Ritchie, they just didn't get along together. So he was looking beyond that. The meeting was with me to say ok, we're going to disband April Wine as is. Myles said Jimmy and I want to do this or whatever and do you want to do it. I don't know what I said right away, but I probably said let me think about it. Obviously, I said let me talk to my brother, we did everything together at that time. I decided at that point, where it was going in a new direction, more or less, it was made clear to me that it was going to be Myles' band. It was going to be his show, whether it was called April Wine or whether it was called Myles Goodwyn or by another name, it was going to be Myles' show. And I would be more or less a hired gun. And I was still 23 at the time or 22 and I said to myself, I'm still young. If he's going his way, I'll go mine. Everybody said to me, when everybody heard what was going on, this is going to be successful. Stick with it for another 2 or 3 years, get the benefits of it and then you can get the musicians to start your own project. They may have been right or wrong, who knows. But when you're 23 you don't think in terms of what makes sense. I was thinking of what I wanted to do now.

Jim: I can't speak of that. But when I heard what was happening. I said Ritchie man, I do know that in terms of experience the most important thing we were looking for was radio play. There was only one guy that was able to see the direction to that. And could plan towards that and would know what would work and what would not. That was Myles. I couldn't do it and David and Ritchie weren't doing it. Although David could, but at that particular time he didn't. So naturally he was the one that was going to be used by the business, the radio stations and the record company. That's what Myles gave and he started on that road and he kept on that road. I didn't, therefore I was on the outs, so to speak.

David: I had gotten onto that track after Myles. I came up with "Drop Your Guns", so I had a quote unquote "hit" under my belt, so I still had some degree of respectability within the band for that. So that was probably part of the reason I was asked to stay.

Jim: I expected you to stay, and I can understand the loyalty you felt towards the band.

David: Well I wasn't just gonna dump my brother, as well, so there was loyalty there. Also, there was a sense of liberty. I felt the same way with the band Cats and Dogs, we recently disbanded after 3 years. Anyway, so when I got the news we were disbanding, it was like Oh! Now can I go in another direction. You know it was like, I had the same sort of feeling when April Wine disbanded the original band, and I decided not to go. It was like, ahhh, a whole new vista has opened up. I can do something new, I can try something different. And also I was thinking, OK Myles is going down his road, I'll go down my road and you know, we'll see where we meet.
 
Jim: There are certain characteristics you need in the rock business. You have to want to work for it, to stay focused. It's part of your personality and the work ethic that you were brought up with. And what you want. What your goals are and what your motivation is.

David: I think I had the same motivation. Right after April Wine split up, I buried myself in Ritchie's basement, and I was working 10, 12, 14 hours a day. I had to be dragged upstairs for my supper.

Steve: Had you thought about putting your own album out?

David: Oh yeah, right away Ritchie and I put another band together called Silver with a bass player. Yet another trio. And we recorded a single that wasn't released at all. It wasn't very good, it wasn't a great song or anything. I think it was called "Serpent in the Street". Silver sort of evolved into the Dudes.

Jim: Nice band, I likes the Dudes.

David: Ooh I wanted to mention that, there were two reasons why April Wine didn't continue with me and Myles.

#1 is because I had the same kind of drive as Myles, not as strong, but the same kind of drive where I wanted to push, make things happen, have a vision, so on and so forth.

#2 and this is probably the more important one. Myles and I liked each other, respected each other, have never really crossed swords with each other, and never had any animosity between us. But at the same time, we never really bonded. Myles and I never really had like a tight bond. We partied together, did stuff together, liked each other, but there was never really...

To Jim: You and Myles are bonded forever.

Jim: Yeah. I was, in a way, the instigator of April Wine

David: Absolutely

Jim: Yeah, I was the focal point and then two years later I leave, haha, but that was my pattern. Stay with a band for 2 years and then leave.

Steve: Did I hear about an original reunion in Quebec last year?

David: April '98, Easter weekend, first time in 26 or 27 years. It was April of last year at my brother’s place and Jimmy was traveling up that way.

Jim: I flew to Montreal from Toronto and I wanted to stay a couple nights with Rich. You were gonna be in town.

David: I was gonna be in town, Ritchie, you and we thought well where is Myles. So we called Myles and said let's get together. Somebody had called Myles and said that the Henman's were going to be in town. And he had said, oh that would be great. In fact, when I knew for sure that Myles was excited, I heard from somebody on the internet, a fan, that Myles had brought it up to somebody that the original 4 members of April Wine are getting together. Then I knew he was interested.
I didn't say anything about the meeting but afterwards I posted to the April Wine list. We had a get together in Ritchie's backyard, just the 4 of us with wives and girlfriends. We had a very casual, no reason to be here other than what the heck, here we are.

Jim: Actually, Ritchie is a great collector of stuff, memorabilia, etc... and he brought out all this stuff none of us had seen in 30 years. Had a good laugh.

David: Talked about things that we did, brought up some memories, all clean ones. Yeah it was brief, it was from 2-5 pm. Myles had commitments afterwards and so we had the 2 or 3 hours. Before we split, we lined up against my brothers back wall and we had pics taken. Afterwards, that was when the post was made to list, almost a year ago now.

Jim: After 30 years, it doesn't seem like a long time, although it's a landmark. It's amazing that this band has kept the name going.

Question arose regarding potential plans for 30th anniversary.

David: Aquarius has nothing to do with April Wine, nothing whatsoever. That would be Myles' call. Myles would have to have the inspiration to do anything. I don't how much time Myles spends being sentimental about April Wine, but...

Jim: None

David: Very little

Darren: How did the band's name, April Wine, Come about?

David: I came up with the band's name. All we were trying to have was:
#1 we wanted a name that was non-descriptive;
#2 we wanted a two word name, because all the bands at the time were THE... the Beatles, the Stones, the Ventures, so we wanted to get out of that box of THE things.
So we wanted a revolutionary name that was non-descriptive and so I had the name April Wine that I was passionate about and nobody else had an alternative. Nobody else had a better idea and no one was against it, so we called ourselves April Wine.

Jim: My recollection is that, David and my birthdays were in April and we both liked wine. haha

David: My recollection was that I was very much a romantic and that had a romantic context. I was writing romantic songs, I had an imaginary girl friend called April, haha. And I just liked the sound of it. It had a nice flowing sound and feel to it. I probably pushed it on the band, I was a pushy guy. Haha

Jim: You were, still are, ha ha. Remember we used to play some Led Zeppelin stuff. And April Wine didn't kind of fit that image, and we didn't want it to.

David: We loved Led Zeppelin, but we thought it was a stupid name. It kind of pigeon- holed them. Led Zeppelin couldn't play country. The name Pink Floyd was non-descriptive. That kind of appealed to us.

Kevin: I've noticed that Myles dedicated "Don't Push Me Around" to David during his 1988 Diamond Club, Toronto show during his solo tour.

David: Myles does that, Myles does that as a show of respect as it were. If one of us is in the audience at an April Wine concert, he'll acknowledge that, and I've been at concerts where he'll say and a few words and I go (ducks).

Darren: I have a show, where he mentions during the intro to "Just Between You and Me", that "I'd like to sing a song that I wrote for my first wife and dedicated to my second wife".

David: I've been told many times that during the various tours when they played "Drop your Guns", Myles would introduce the song and talk about me. Which is a sort of nice characteristic of his, to show respect.

Darren: Are you on the new Jeannie Beks CD?

Jim: No, unfortunately with my latest work I've been doing, I didn't have a chance to do anything for...

Kevin: Are you doing anything with Jerry Rideout nowadays?

Jim: No, Jerry and I haven't done anything lately, but that was my first stab at getting back into writing. I'd stayed away from it for years. That would've been 1992.

David: Do you know what Jimmy's doing now?

Jim: We did a musical, called Death: the Musical. I haven't had time to play lately because this play is demanding so much rewrite. (Jim plays with a 3 piece folk style band)
I'm trying to talk David into doing something. To get back into musical theatre. He has a great ear for theatre.

Darren: Ritchie played in Cruiser. I have the LP.

David: The vinyl? Really I've never seen the vinyl. It's a great album. More along the lines of progressive rock, similar to 10 CC, Supertramp, that kinda thing. To me it was. Cruiser was a very meticulous band. Interesting band.

Jim: You weren't involved with them?

David: No not at all. No, in a sense I was. (In the sense that) Cruiser recorded the album and went on tour, opening for Burton Cummings in the Maritimes. During the tour they got a phone call saying that London records had gone belly up and that their manager had been committed to an institution. So, the bottom dropped out. When they got back off the tour they tried to hold it together, they began work on a second album but it wasn't going anywhere. They disbanded and it then evolved into a project that involved my brother and I. I was brought in, invited in on the new project. The goal was to move to Toronto. We spent a year working towards that goal and at the point where we were about to move, and I had already committed myself, my wife at the time had found a job in Toronto and the principle guys - Wally and Tom Rathie basically chickened out. It was called project X. We also had a cover band with the same guys called Dancer. That disbanded and I ended up in Toronto. I liked Cruiser, I saw them live once or twice and I thought that they were a very tight band.
 
Steve: I recently got the 451 album with Jim Clench.

David: Yeah, 451 was an improvement on BTO. I thought the BTO stuff was pretty awful.

Jim: Jimmy is a good writer. I always liked Jimmy's songs. His sound isn't necessarily identifiable with the April Wine sound, so I can understand why he hasn't had more tracks.

David: He's also not a prolific writer, he writes one song a year.

Jim: When we were at the reunion last year, I went up to see him. I was working on a project and I said Jim, where's your songs man? And basically he said, I got a few but not too many.

David: I understand the new April Wine album is going to have Jim Clench singing Jimmy Clench songs and Brian Greenway signing Brian Greenway songs. That's my impression. That's what I heard.

Jim: When I was in the studio last year, I heard a couple of tracks and they were good. I think they were Myles' songs, that sounded like his sound.

David: I don't think there's any question that the album is going to be mainly Myles' songs. But I think the idea was to go backwards, to where the band was doing some of Brian's songs earlier.

Jim: Like I said, Jimmy has a great rock n' roll voice. When he does put out a tune and it's polished, it's a great tune.

David: Myles told us that the next album was going to have more involvement from the other writers and the other singers.

Darren: One thing I admired about Myles was his ability to take established songs and make them his own. "Tell Me Why" comes to mind."

David: Yes, "Tell Me Why" was a good cover.

Jim: Well that's what we were honed on right, doing covers.

David: Well if you were more or less an original band, then the idea of taking a cover song and doing it like the original song was kind of pointless.

Steve: I wanted to ask you guys about the Halifax scene at the time when April Wine was just coming up.

David: Dutch Mason and Ritchie Oakley were there, Doug Billard. Doug is now a postman down the street from where I live.

Jim: And you know who else? Remember FOX. I just met the guitar player this week. Incredible guitar player. Can't remember his name.

David: Yeah, I remember the drummer from FOX. Bobbie Fisher. I used to run into Bobby Fisher every once in a while. Pepper Tree were good, Timmy on drums. Bob Quinn is still around. Saw a poster at St. Mary's and he's doing some sort of seminar.
Do you remember the Jewish guy, the guy who used to book us around here? Gold berg or something.

Jim: Yeah, I remember him.

David: he, for the last number of years, has owned Sunrise Records. Ran into him last year, he happened to be at a Cats and Dogs show. Sunrise is like Tower Records or Sam the Record Man.

David: Remember the Great Scots?

Jim: Yep

David: There's two Great Scots albums you can get now I'm going to get them for Ritchie for his 50th birthday.

Jim: They have a reunion every year.

David: I heard that.

Jim: A friend of mine is the brother in law of Bill.

David: Bill Schnare. Bill taught me a lot of guitar. I heard that and I thought that can't be, because the Great Scots didn't do anything and then the Great Scots evolved into the Beavers. The Great Scots wore kilts and the Beavers had the beaver haircuts. Well I thought that, they never did anything, why would they have a reunion?

Jim: Well they went to the States. I think what happened was that one or two of them were forced into the draft. They either had to be drafted or to leave. Actually, I think they got drafted.

David: So, obviously Billy Schnare is still around?

Jim: Billy's down in???? (unable to make out audio) his sister is married to a friend of mine, Cathey Schnare. They live out in Timberlea.

David: I'd love to run into Billy Snare. He taught me his favourite chord; this was back in 1966, or 67. I adopted his favourite chord and made it mine; it was an "A" minor variation.

Kevin: Is there any authorized or unauthorized biographies of April Wine?

David: You guys would know more than we do, haha.

Jim: I mentioned it to Myles.

Darren: I said this a year ago to David [that David should write the book] because he's been published.

David: Somebody would have to do it with Myles authorization. To do an unauthorized biography, I couldn't get behind it. What would be the point? Without Myles involvement, there wouldn't be any point for me to do it. I couldn't get excited about it.

Jim: Somebody had sent me a CD booklet (from the box set).

David: But that was unauthorized and Myles hated that.

Jim: Keith Brown did it. I thought it was pretty well done.

At this point we pulled out the booklet and David and Jim had a look and eventually signed it.

Darren: Apparently there were two versions of this booklet.

David: And Myles had it re-done? Maybe?

Darren: Yes. The first one had a part where Myles stole a car or a truck.

Jim: He did. My brother was with him.

David: Which brother?

Jim: The blonde one, haha... Good times.

David and Jim have a laugh at the old photos in the booklet.

Kevin: So whose feet are on the cover of the first album?

David: I always heard that it was the art director, Bob Lemm; there's always been lots of jokes about whose feet they were.

David signs the book "On a Cold Road" and mentions that.

David: I haven't read the book yet. I have 6 copies. One for everybody in my family and myself. And then I realized I had an aunt out in British Columbia. Her son visited me just before Christmas, so I gave my copy to him to give his mom.
Looking at the book “I look like Pee Wee Herman there", laughs.

Steve: What's the latest on the musical, Jim?

Jim: Well contracts are finalized. It's in the fall, Bette MacDonald is in it. She has a TV show, it’s not bad. Actually I'm going to try to get Donald K. Donald to come down and see the play.
 
Darren: Jim, so are you still working in the medical profession?

Jim: I am, I still work for the lab. I retire in a couple years. I took the package so I could start getting back into writing. That's what I love doing. Studio work, I'm not that crazy about being on the road too much. I don't know what it is. I mean David loves it.

David: I still like the road.

Jim: Not that I wouldn't mind doing something, but this last couple years, the most important thing was getting this musical together.

Darren: Where else but Halifax can you see a Celtic/Punk group or an Afro/Celtic belly dancer? Haha

Jim: I think it's the same as it's always been. It's difficult to make a living at it, it’s difficult. Because our population base is so small.

Conversation turned towards "Death: the Musical". Jim could not tell us details before official announcement."

Jim: I've kept up the writing side, but not recording. I have tapes and tapes and tapes lying around. Some have completed songs, some have half songs, some have pieces. I now have a three piece jazz/blues act with Morrow Scott-brown and Jim Faraday.

Darren: If David ever comes back to the Maritimes, you should put a band together.

Jim: I'd like to write with him.

Conversation returned to an April Wine book of some sort.

David: The key would be getting Myles excited. There would have to have some connection between him and the writers.

Jim: I think there has to be an opportunity to do a book, like this year, this is the perfect year. Now if it was properly arranged, it would be a great year for a cross Canada celebration - a book and an album, a CBC film type of thing, who knows.

David: Here's another type of thing that could happen. If some CBC producers or people decided it was time. And went to April Wine and said, let's get together and do the whole thing.

Jim: I don't think it could be Myles going to somebody and saying, I'm going to do this. It's the kind of thing where an independent producer or promoter or something has to go to the business and say OK. I'd like to do this with you this year because, da da da...

David: Another thing too. Here's a perspective that we might not take into consideration. I wonder if Myles wouldn't look at something like that and say if April Wine gets in the Juno Hall of Fame, CBC gets involved, they do a book, they do a cross Canada tour, a video retrospective , da da da . When that's done, anything April Wine does after that is like anti-climatic.

Darren: Maybe there are some that feel they already peaked in 1984.

David: Yeah, but just the idea of doing that big splash, and then Myles thinking that it's all over, and then it's back to playing the bars again and it's all anti-climax.

Conversation turned to set lists.

David: Maybe he thinks in terms of April Wine fans as a group. They are there to hear the hits, so individual requests aren't a factor. Time winding down, took a few photos, online talk started.

Jim: I'm not online, but I've seen the April Wine Cellar. I thought it was well done.

David: The nice thing about the Internet is that you end up staying in contact with people you normally wouldn't stay in contact with. One of my internet buddies is Danny Marks, who was the guitar player in Edward Bear. So we’re always chatting back and forth on the internet. Normally we wouldn't have a lot in common, so instead of calling each other up, the internet is easier. Plus it's not intrusive. You don't call up somebody you don't know.

Conversation turned to Jerry Mercer.

Jim: I'm going to Montreal in 2 or 3 weeks. I'll try to get in contact with him.

We showed Jim and David the digital photos. They thought it was great to be able to see them right away.

Last 5 minutes was guitar talk, etc...
 
On behalf of Darren, Kevin, and I we would like to thank both David and Jim Henman for their time and a great afternoon. Very memorable session and hopefully we'll hook up at another time in the not so distant future. I'd also like to thank my wife, Tammy, for doing all the typing here. So if there are any mistakes, you know who to blame, ha.

Steve Marsh
Dartmouth, N.S.