Watercolour, 1150$ CAD

Harrys asks: “Is everyone fundamentally alone?” It would answer much. This eternal need to bring ourselves intact into the community. Harry needs to another song for his illicit bootleg album so he thinks of his first love, Anna Baker, a girl in high school who like Harry read books. She liked Under the Volcano by Malcolm Lowry. Anna’s brother Alfred joins Harry’s band to play bass. Harry is fifteen. His band is called, ‘The Half-Snapped Elastic Band’.

Watercolour, 1250$ CAD

Jollimore comes off the Crybaby stage and sits with Harry at the bar. Bartender Calvin Swig watches as Jollimore and Harry talk about old times. Jollimore says that Harry’s song After the Funeral had him pull the car off the road in Chicago and weep. He then tells Harry he will need his guitar back. The Gibson j45. Harry nods. He hasn't got Jollimore’s guitar and has ho idea where it might be.

Watercolour, SOLD

A guitar player is in the audience and even though Harry, when he goes on break, puts the guitar out of tune, the stranger gets up on stage, takes the guitar, turns on the amplifier and dazzles the Crybaby Bar crowd. Applause is from every corner as Harry watches from his stool at the far end of the bar. But he knows that sound, he knows that touch. For since coming to the guitar as a kid he has never forgotten how another plays.

Watercolour, 1850$ CAD

Harry knew love. He was married to trapeze artist Trixi Almeida. They thrice circled a garbage can fire in Toronto and an all-consuming love arrived, with meaning and purpose. But with a mustard seed of disunity came the drought that brought the locusts and the lunches of acorns.

Charcoal, SOLD

Dracula asks Cinderella to dance. Harry watches the swiftness of cupid's arrow. Camus' absurdity is absurd when love pierces the heart. All is meaning, all is purpose, all is a resurrected life when love pierces the heart and from his vantage point on stage Harry can see all.

Watercolour, 1150$ CAD

Smokey Studios will pay Harry fifty bucks to play at the screening for a new film. Harry has to come dressed as John Voigt in Midnight Cowboy. Harry remembers his father’s words: "Do the big thing. We’ll head on down the highway to catch the Holy Molies. You need road time." They drive the highway and catch the rock band bound for the Woodstock music festival. It's 1969. Harry is fourteen.

Watercolour, SOLD

Harry is reaching the patrons of the Crybaby Bar with his own music. There is attention, photographs and offers to record. Harry is also letting people in. Even the Swig at the bar has an encouraging word. Has it always been a matter of letting people in? But he did, when he was younger, and he thinks about what happened then. It led him to here.

Watercolour, SOLD

Harry will sing his own tunes come hell or high water. And he will start with, 'There's a Sadness Going Around.' But there on stage, haunted by demons that have come to remind him of a contract he signed, his mind goes to the night at Jollimore's, the trailer with the blue wings down at the tides of Slow River.

Watercolour, SOLD

Lemonade is outside Harry's door at the Tarantula Arms. It is rainy night and fog fills Steel City. Lemonade comes in and sits in Harry’s brown barrel chair and asks Harry how to identify a good man. Harry shakes his head, looks across the room. Is another season of songwriting is upon him?

Watercolour, 2150$ CAD

Walking up Iron Street after a Crybaby gig - after K.O. shoots down the Cannonball, Harry recalls the night before he went on tour for the first time. It was with the band from Jollimore’s trailer, The Holy Molies. Harry was 14 years old but he attended the best educational institution there is in music - the road.

Oil, 1650$ CAD

Harry sings ‘The Cannonball’ but doesn’t make big splash with Toronto record producer K.O. Biggs. K.O. will visit the Crybaby Bar tomorrow night but Harry had better ‘Put on the Ritz’. Walking home, Harry recalls those years past when he went into Jollimore’s trailer and saw for the first time a live band. He knew what he wanted to do with his life just not the course on which it would take him.

Watercolour, 1850$ CAD

On his bike, with the Banner Gibson guitar over his shoulder, Harry drives down to Slow River when his pant cuff gets caught in his bike chain and he falls in front of Jollimore’s trailer. An exotic barefoot woman comes out to the road to pull him off. ‘I’m Clarissa. They call me, ‘Baby Fingers,’ she says and Harry is stunned by her beauty. Harry goes down the road with Clarissa to the old rusted trailer with the blue victory wings.

Oil, 2350$ CAD

The Banner Gibson guitar is too valuable and Harry’s father says it needs to go back to its owner. Jollimore. “Give it to him at the church. Don’t go down to Slow River.” Jollimore is nowhere to be found at the church. So Harry ventures down to Slow River to return the guitar. No one he knows has ever been down to Slow River.

Oil, 1150$ CAD

Harry pedals his bicycle into work at the graveyard. He has the Banner Gibson guitar but Jollimore, who has not missed a day in 30 years, is nowhere to be found. Harry must attend to the funeral clean up on his own. “Where is he?” says Father Don. “This is related to that guitar, I know it!”

Watercolour, 1150$ CAD

Jollimore teaches Harry the graveyard chords C, F and G. He then breaks into song with the guitar at the gravestones, singing, 'The Cannonball'. Father Don rushes across the road: ‘Stop the guitar! The R.I.P. means, Rest In Peace!’

Watercolour, 1450$ CAD

In his first job at a graveyard, Harry meets the peculiar character Jajoe Jollimore, who tells Harry he plays guitar. Harry has no interest in the guitar. This prompts Jollimore to bring his own to the graveyard where he teaches Harry how to play.

Watercolour, 1450$ CAD

How to do play the guitar? I’ll tell you, Harry. You play it with your heart. You play it with quiet projection. You play as if it’s you last statement to the world and the people at the guillotine.

Charcoal and Watercolour, 1150$ CAD

Back to the graveyard, where it came from for Harry. Ja-joe Jollimore was the graveyard worker that introduced Harry to the guitar. Jollimore discloses to Harry that he is a guitar player. Harry has no interest in guitars. This distresses Jollimore.

Harry needs money. He rents a tiny room at the Tarantula Arms with a shared bath down at the end of the hall. His income is his guitar gig at the Crybaby Bar. He has a plan. He will make a come-back with a song that he was saving for an emergency, one that says it all, 'The Cannonball'.