Date: Sunday, November 3, 2019
Time: 7:00 pm
Location: Market Hall Center for the Performing Arts
Almost 40 years ago, Hank Fisher and Ken Ramsden, two pathologically creative Peterborough residents, produced a remarkable musical coupling from which staid North American music lovers who saw them are still reeling. The result was performance art which incorporated everything from classical music to bluegrass gospel street preaching, in a spontaneous, antic conflagration best viewed through welder’s goggles. Their interactions generated a kind of whimsically-comic, high colonic, and anyone who saw these shows was forever changed...
Peterborough locals, as well as Trent & Fleming alumni from the 1980's, may remember the weekly Wednesday night 'Red Dog Howls' at the Legendary Red Dog Tavern which featured Washboard Hank, the Reverend Ken and' The Lost Followers' Band from the Church of the Open Bottle. If you attended the Red Dog Howl you saw...appliance healings....student essay and exam blessings... Oktoberfests on roller skates....and even “Male Bum Cleavage Contests.”
Hank and Ken toured all over North America, in true Rabelaisian fashion, by whatever means were available, putting on 'Gospel Gumbo' street shows from Vancouver to Calgary to Edmonton....from Nashville to Memphis... and from Oregon to San Francisco. Their stage names sometimes varied depending on the proximity of various law enforcement agents, high grade medicinal spirits and quality pharmaceuticals, and thus, among other less complementary terms, they were also known as “The Duke of Washboardom” and “The Parson of Panhandledom.” In many ways, they were to the folk idiom what Gonzo was to traditional reporting.
Accompanying Hank and Ken for this unique reunion will be Hank’s outstanding backup band, the Wringers, comprised of Tyson Galloway on Upright Bass and Sean Conway on Lead Guitar and Mandolin. The program will also feature The McDonnel Street Gospel Quartet, featuring authentic vintage/roots gospel songs from the 1930s and ‘40s era, with tight harmony vocals and a traditional acoustic sound, as well as a rare screening of Terry McEvoy's award-winning, Red Dog Tavern documentary film, "Amateur Night.”
Master of Ceremonies and radio personality, Sunshine Sean Eyre, will open the festivities at 7:00 pm sharp, when this subversive creative lunacy will spew forth, like a visceral digestive eructation in a cathedral. Tickets are available in advance at the Marketplace Box Office Online at https://tickets.markethall.org, or by phone at 705-775-1503.
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