“Can we put this in the jukebox?”
Old Bob was the owner of our favourite bar and he was frowning at us. We handed him a CD copy of ‘13 Soda Punx’, a Seattle compilation our band was on. Old Bob just stared at us. We knew the answer would be a barely audible: “No”.
Bob owned ‘Martin Village’, a tiny dive bar in the bottom of a 2-story house on the St. Lawrence River. It was a few feet on the Quebec side of the Ontario/Quebec border.
We affectionately called the bar ‘Sam’s’, the name of the previous owner. “Let’s go to Sam’s”, we’d say after each band rehearsal in our abandoned chicken coop, just up the road on the Ontario side. We spent as much time in Sam’s as we did our own homes.
Bob also owned ‘Bob’s’, another local tavern in a neighbouring town. It must’ve sounded confusing to outsiders, but locals knew which bar you meant when you said you were going to Bob’s: Bob’s was across the border to the north; Sam’s was across the border to the east.
Old Bob could be a bit of a grumpy fellow. I suspected that was because he’d dealt with rural drunks his entire life. When asked a question, he’d often grumble under his breath, turn and limp away. I don’t remember him smiling all that much. But because we’d spent so much time in his bars, he eventually took a liking to us.
He agreed to put our CD in the jukebox. We were as surprised as we were thrilled. Our song, along with killer tunes from our friends would be available for us to play in our favourite haunt. And we spun the crap out of it, not realizing the money Bob was making from us playing our own music. Old Bob was a good businessman.
It was 1993 when our band The Stand GT appeared on Top Drawer’s ‘13 Soda Punx’. We were thrilled to be on a record that included a bunch of bands who were kindred spirits: Fastbacks, Sicko, Bum, The Smugglers, Cub, Huevos Rancheros, Young Fresh Fellows. These bands were making music for all the right reasons and we looked up to all of them.
Our friend, staunch supporter and zine czar Alan Wright had moved from Kingston, Ontario to Seattle, Washington in the early 90s. Alan wrote and edited garage rock fanzines and had a massive cassette collection. He would trade cassettes by mail order and kept an archival collection of rare releases and live recordings of garage bands. When Alan arrived in Seattle, he bumped into Ean Hernandez and Carl Carlson who were kicking up an indie label called Top Drawer Records. Alan handed Ean The Stand GT’s cassette ‘Blur Your Cool’ and suggested he might like it.
Not long after, Ean reached out to me by mail, which was one of the few ways of communicating in those days. He sent a letter and a couple of 7”s from his burgeoning indie label. He really liked ‘Blur Your Cool’ and wanted to release more music by our band. And we really loved ‘80 Dollars’ by his band ‘Sicko’. A mutual admiration society began and we started writing back and forth across the continent.
In 1991, Seattle was a music hotspot. Nirvana had blown up and Grunge had taken over the international airwaves. But unbeknownst to us, by 1993 indie music locals in Seattle were disenchanted with what was going on. And at the time, pop punk was a bit of a rare thing, even for Seattle. (For those keeping a timeline, ‘Dookie’ had yet to explode). As outsiders, it felt like we were connecting to something in common and incredibly cool from across the continent in our rural county of Glengarry. We had found distant cousins.
When Ean and Carl announced plans for ‘13 Soda Punx’, we submitted a song called ‘Corner Store’. The song was written about an after party in Sault Ste Marie one night on tour. (That night is forever etched in my brain, so I’ll get to that in another Substack.)
For its 30th birthday, Top Drawer Records is throwing a party for 13 Soda Punx at the Seattle Pop Punk Festival this weekend (Thursday to Saturday, January 18-20, 2024). Ean has lovingly reissued the comp on LP and CD and has written some really good liner notes about the joys and heartaches of running an indie music label in the early 90s. I won’t spoil that for you as you should just buy the record, read them and support him.
It really is a fantastic compilation of great indie songs by great indie bands.
As for that jukebox at Sam’s, I’m guessing it is long gone.
But I like to imagine it’s still there for local kids to discover our music as they stumble into the bar, fresh from jamming with their garage band in a nearby barn.