Ned Treanor is a folk historian, with more memories than you’d expect from someone who was part of the Woodstock generation. Maybe the haze only filtered out the boring events.
I continue to share his enlightening and funny emails to me in what has become a monthly series.


You want credentials? Shawn Colvin used to baby-sit his kids. Take it away, Ned

Back in 1967, we had just opened the “Living End” in Motown [Detroit,MI] and were one of the first U..S. clubs to showcase the Irish Rovers and Gordon Lightfoot, [separately, of course] - both from our neighbor to the north, the Dominion of Canada.

We had previously experienced an overflow turnout with our initial showcasing of the Rovers at our relatively small club.  So for their triumphant return gig, we rented a movie theater, to be able to handle the anticipated “mob scene”. Just one small problem… Dee-troit had a nasty habit of attracting rather unpredictable weather patterns that were not especially comforting for the club owner bent on filling his/her venue for a given event. In this particular case, our “overflow crowd” for the Irish Rovers, fresh from their first “hit”, Shel Silverstein’s “Unicorn”, consisted of probably a dozen or so delighted fans, not even filling the front row! To our surprise, The Rovers insisted on doing a FULL SHOW, to the delight of the “crowd”…and then, would only allow us to pay for their return transportation costs to Canada, “donating” their fee to help offset the cost of the theater rental!

Exactly one year later, Gordon Lightfoot, for the same reason, having experienced a similar situation at his year-earlier “debut” at our club, had been booked into a similar “overflow-prevention-solution”, this time at a shopping mall, no less, only to have Mother Nature work her magic and bring Motown to a complete standstill! Again, Gordon, Red Shea and John Stockfish, his band, nearly outnumbered their audience, but insisted on performing an entire show for a “crowd” that you could have counted on two hands, with fingers left over; and then insisted on foregoing their fee in exchange for passage back to Mother Canada, across the river from Detroit…and then some!

Its memories like this that you’ll NEVER bring away from an Eminem nor Madonna gig - even though they’re both from Detroit. Thanks for the opportunity to share some of these moments with a new generation of singer-songwriter-performers who, at times, must wonder if its all worth it! Once they are able to bank a few of their own similar anecdotes, they’ll have their answer, loud and clear! Thanx, Fran.
-Ned