How It All Started (or, How I Got Into Their Pants)
You're in the middle of God-know's-where huddled in a van full of guitar cases and equipment, speeding down the highway trying to get to a show on time, with only a teardrop of gas in the tank, huddled next to people you only know because you all happen to make a living by the marketing and sale of sound waves that travel through the air. How did you get there? How did they get there? In this installment, your friend and his, Aaron Chapman relates how he ended up in the Town Pants...
I'm occasionally asked how in blazes I ended up being a third leg. Which is to say, how did I end up being the third member of the Town Pants. Here's a brief story how I met the Brothers Keogh...
To start off--in truth--I'm more like the fifth member (which I guess might make the lovely Shona La Mottee the sixth) in this many legged pair of musical trousers known as the Town Pants. Founding member and accordionist Jeff O'Halloran who moved away, and of course boomy voiced guitarist John Leroux who still graces the stage with us from time to time are the real third and fourth members.
Now, how they started the band, or the precursor Van Daemons Band I don't really know. You'd have to ask them. I think they just started singing and playing Clancy Brothers songs at drunken Keogh family gatherings in Ottawa (maybe the word "drunken" in that last sentence is redundant). Either way I guess they decided to seek their fame and fortune out West and moved to where yours truly was born and raised--in Vancouver, B.C.
Back in late 1997, I had pretty much quit playing music. I had left my old band The Real McKenzies earlier that year. After five years of rigorous touring and the general hijinx of playing in that band--I figured I pretty much had my fill. I still had plenty of friends in the scene, and still involved working now off-stage in a crew capacity as a tour manager for Nomeansno and the Hanson Brothers. But it's easy to miss playing music. If you haven't done it for awhile, you start thinking about it and its like lusting after sex with an old girlfriend that you know would be just as good if you went back.
But, suffice it to say I really wasn't interested in playing music around then. One day a friend of mine told me about an advert he figuried would be right up my alley that he'd read in the "Musicians Wanted" column of The Georgia Straight, the local weekly entertainment bible. The ad read "Tin Whistle player need for rowdy Irish drinking music band" or something like that. I had played the Tin Whistle in the Real McKenzies a bit and figured it was a set-up by one of them as a gag, or perhaps by some nut. .