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They were on a highway that wound through a twilight zone filled with rabbits. Someone or something must've killed all the coyotes, or perhaps there was a particularly bountiful carrot crop that year, but there was a lagomorphic population explosion. Bunnies galore.
"The ditches were undulating and the highways were paved with fur. We killed 100 in an hour," Jerry recalls, adding, "Rabbits are slippery."
And that's where the song Road Gore came from.
Write what you know.
Jerry promises to include that old favourite on a live album he'll be taping tonight and tomorrow at the New City Likwid Lounge. Working title: Night of the Living Jerry. He'll be joined by the inimitable Sons of Rhythm Orchestra, including drummer Ed Dobek, bassist Sherry-Lee, guitarists Tex Wonderful and Anthony Pavlic and special guest Ford Pier. Steve Loree, local rock musician turned producer, will man the console.
As for technical details, Jerry says, "I assume microphones and some kind of recording equipment. That's about as technical as I get. I don't deal with that end of things. I can barely keep myself in line."
Jerry is on the phone from the Elephant and Castle pub on Whyte Avenue, where he works part-time as a bartender - a first for Jerry, yet the perfect gig for such a wry observer of the human condition. Remember, this is the man who wrote The Most I Ever Drank.
He says he's doing a live album mainly because of public pressure and also because he hasn't gotten around to writing a new album since he moved back to Edmonton from Montreal nearly two years ago. It's not writer's block, he says. He's just lazy. But when he needs to be, the man is a machine. He knocked off 24 tunes in three months for his last solo record, The Sound and the Jerry.
Says Himself, as he is nicknamed, "This will be a little something for those loyal supporters all those years. 'Give me something live,' they say. So I'll give them something. It'll be good, but not too good."
Jerry notes that he's not looking for "error-free playing," but a "certain ambience" he declines to describe in great detail for fear of sounding pretentious. You'll know it when you hear it. All he knows for sure is there won't be a mandolin, whose sound has always "disturbed" him for some unexplained reason.
Jerry still has an "informal" relationship with Aquarius Records, which had adamantly opposed him doing a live album in the past, for some unexplained reason. (This is a career filled with mystery.) However, he's free to do it on his own.
"Now that I'm not putting it in stores I think I could actually make some money on it - and that would be a first," Jerry says. "I have a fairly small but pretty hardcore audience across Canada. I know how many records I can sell. So if I can make them aware of it, that's all I have to do. It's a nice little niche. We're not going to be doing shows at the Coliseum any time soon. We're having a lot of fun and we like our circuit - Saskatoon to Vancouver. It keeps us busy and it keeps us happy."
As long as he doesn't run over any more rabbits.