art - David Doucette

On stage for Halloween at the Crybaby Bar, Harry sees Dracula ask Cinderella to dance. He watches the swiftness of cupid's arrow. Camus' absurdity is absurd when love pierces the heart. All is meaning, all purpose, all plans for a right-ed life - there, before you. Harry knew love. He was married to trapeze artist Trixi Almeida. They circled a garbage can fire in Toronto and it was an all-consuming love, it was meaning and purpose, but with a mustard seed of disunity a drought came that brought the locusts and acorn lunches.

art - David Doucette

Harry has a new gig, a couple of jazz numbers to open for a film premiere in Steel City. Smokey Studios is paying him 50 bucks to open the documentary film, ‘The Piano Tuner.’ Harry has to dress as John Voigt in Midnight Cowboy. It comes back to him. Harry remembers how his father said: "Let's head on down the highway to catch the Holy Molies in their school bus," The two drive the provincial roads and before long catch the rock band bound, unbeknownst, for the Woodstock music festival. It's 1969. Harry is 14.

Art - David Doucette

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

Art - David Doucette

What is the relationship, the true relationship, between artist and muse? Harry realizes that he has always had a muse, after Lemonade enters his door at the Tarantula Arms. Harry is on stage at the Crybaby Bar where he promises never to sing a covering ever again. He 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 as if by demons that have come to remind him of some contract he signed, his mind goes to the faithful night at Jollimore's, the trailer with the blue wings down at the tides, the delta of Slow River.

Art - David Doucettte

The Hippie child 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. Has he found his muse and that another season of songwriting is upon him?

Art - David Doucette

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.

Art - David Doucette

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.

Art - David Doucette

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.

Art - David Doucette

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.

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!”

Art - David Doucette

Art - David Doucette

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!’

Art - David Doucette

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.

Art - David Doucette

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.

Art - David Doucette

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 is up against it. He rents a tiny room at the Tarantula Arms with a shared bath down at the end of the hall. His only income is his guitar gig at the Crybaby Bar. He has a plan, though. He will make a come-back with a song he never recorded, one that he was saving for an emergency, one that says it all, 'The Cannonball'.