We had heard of her and her band while we were out touring. We heard of this Montreal singer who was burning the barn down with her killer songs and voice. We had heard that record companies were interested. I had met her a few times at a rehearsal hall out at PRO SHOW. We had heard that she got the record deal. We heard she had the hits and got the gold records. Then in early summer 1986 I ran into her (then) drummer and band leader Pete Marunczak, struck up a conversation and 5 minutes later I was in the band. It was that simple.
The Big Time
A couple of weeks later I was standing beside her on stage at EXPO 86 in Vancouver. I looked out at the audience, saw them clutching their tickets, singing along and heard their applause, I looked over at Luba singing her ass off and said to myself…”this is it..this is the big time”. It was. Two weeks before I was driving a rented U-Haul truck, loading and unloading my band’s gear…setting it up….sound checking…playing the show…tearing it down…loading it back up and driving to the next town to do it all over again. Now I was riding in a tour bus from city to city, taking airplanes to gigs, signing autographs, and having a manager, a tour director, a technical crew, a sound engineer, a lighting engineer and staying in fancy hotels. No longer planning how long the drive was to the next town so we could have time to eat AND setup in time for the show..now I was handed a tour schedule with everything already planned. All I had to do was rehearse and play. it was heaven.
It was also a lot harder than I thought it would be. For the first time I saw just how hard a real recording star had to work. It was the first time I realized that she had her whole life to prepare her first record and now she would have just under a year to prepare the next! Yeah…it was no free ride. When I joined the band she had two albums out SECRETS AND SINS and BETWEEN THE EARTH AND SKY…both had hits on them…both were gold records. She had two Junos already and she still had to turn in early to write songs and be ready for interviews the following day. The pressure was always on to keep that success going. The record company, the managers and the A&R men were constantly after her to produce new music. meanwhile we were touring. Because of the nature of the venues in Canada and her level of success there weren’t many places that fit the bill for us to play except huge arenas like THE FORUM in Montreal, MAPLE LEAF GARDEN in Toronto, BLUE BOMBER STADIUM in Winnipeg, THE SPEEDWAY at CALGARY STAMPEDE in Calgary, THE FORUM at ONTARIO PLACE, THE METRO CENTRE in Halifax…big places but not enough to keep us touring all year. The down time was welcome by all except me…I was used to playing all the time and I was restless. Lol…I would still go to John Abbott College cafeteria to visit my mom and get a free lunch!
Our management wanted to keep the band working and hastily arranged for a tour of Canada and on some of the dates opening for HONEYMOON SUITE. It was a little odd because the two bands shared the same kind of success and it should have been a double bill…but it wasn’t. On that particular tour there was some smaller venues that we had not played before but we welcomed the work even though fitting our gear in some of those places was hard on the crew. The band was Luba, Pete Marunczak on drums, Mike Zwonok on bass, Mark Lyman on guitar, Michel Corrivo (Corriveau…but we all thought Corrivo looked cooler) on keyboards/accordion, Dorian, Jean and Kingsley Sherwood on vocals and me on acoustic and electric guitars/vocals and saxophone.
As often happened Luba travelled ahead to the next city in order to do some promo interviews. On this particular day she had travelled to Northern New Brunswick for some in person radio stuff. The band travelled on our tour bus for a lengthy drive from SMOOTH HERMAN’S in Sydney N.S. to FREDERICTON. We never made it. On dec 4th, 1986 at 8:04 pm our tour bus left the road and crashed at the bottom of a ravine destroying the bus and injuring several band members…two of us critically. I was one of them. The tour was over and I was hospitalized for weeks. My injuries were serious enough for the surgeons to consider amputating a leg which I begged them not to do. They acquiesced and a more experienced surgeon was brought in to operate. I had metal plates and screws applied to attempt to correct a comminuted spiral compound fracture of my tibia and fibula. I was left with the metal plates, a leg brace, elbow crutches (for mobility), over a year of physical therapy, an addiction to prescription pain killers and a minor lifelong disability. My bandmate Michel Corrivo was injured more severely than I in the crash and went through many of the same procedures. In my particular case, due to the nature of the comminuted fracture and the missing bone. The effect was a very slow healing process with high risk of infection, the specter of amputation lingered for over a year.
Luba was devastated that her band had been through this and felt a deep responsibility for us and for not having been there. Strangely the first thought I had in the crash was that “uh oh…the tour is over”. Once I was able to walk again I wanted to get back to touring. The band was on a roll because hits on BETWEEN THE EARTH AND SKY were spinning on the radio and management wanted to capitalize on those hits. I was afraid the band would go on without me because I was not very mobile but they insisted I stay and I was glad for it. We went on tour the next summer with a replacement keyboard player while Michel continued to heal. During that tour while in Toronto capitol records awarded LUBA and it’s band members a PLATIMUM RECORD award to commemorate the sales of over 100,000 units of BETWEEN THE EARTH AND SKY. Luba insisted that I too receive a platinum record…despite the fact that I wasn’t in the band when it was recorded nor did I play on the record. She said “well he’s in the band now and he gets one!”.
The Forum
On that same tour after the crash I got to live my lifelong dream. The same dream that all young rock musicians with a band always have when they are dreaming of being a rock star…”I wanna play The Forum“. Well, that dream came to fruition albeit propped up by crutches a stool and some pain killers…but it was sweet. My friends whom I had played in bands with were there, my mom and my brother Mike were there, my wife was there and it was great! Then after the show I chuckled and asked “now what?”.
The Next Tours
Over the next 4 years we changed management, we toured and recorded a lot. We taped several TV specials and Luba kept winning those Junos. As I mentioned earlier…this band worked hard and absolutely nothing came easy! We changed management and travelled to England. Our new managers had their eyes on us expanding into the U.S. and had us recording at THE POWER STATION and ATLANTIC STUDIOS in New York City with Joe Chiccarelli and Jimmy Vivino and in L.A. with the likes of Mike Campbell of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers as well as Peter White of the Al Stewart band. We experienced some personnel changes while in New York that saw some of the original band members leave. Once the album ALL OR NOTHING was completed we needed to hold auditions and hire new members. We toured hard across Canada with Luba, Michel Corrivo on keyboards/accordion, Rick Byer on bass, Michel Pepin on guitar/vocals, Jimmy Scotland (of GLASS TIGER) on Drums and Dorian Sherwood on vocals/percussion (on some tours we had Larry Hughes also singing vocals) and me on guitars/vocals and saxophone. We played everywhere…big halls and small. The band was sounding the best it ever had, Luba was writing, singing and performing the best she ever had and ALL OR NOTHING (in my humble opinion) was the best work she and we had ever done. After all that hard work (seemingly uphill all the way) we were tired and the band was imploding. I left at the end of that tour.
Luba had an enormous impact on my career. She not only accepted me in the band without an audition, she opened the door so wide and accepted all kinds of musical suggestions and ideas from me that in a reasonably short time I felt less like a hired gun and more like an important contributing member of her band. She also had to endure my odd sense of humor. It was a tremendous experience. I was 31 years old.