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Q: How can you tell you're at a classic rock concert?
A: When the band says, "OK, we're going to do something from the new album now," the entire audience goes to the washroom.
In case you didn't know, this is Classic Rock Weekend (CRW) in Edmonton. We're just waiting for the official proclamation from Mayor Bill's office. Since it will be a while before we get another classic rock festival in these parts - roughly around the time the Oilers win the Stanley Cup again - weekends like this will fill the void and sate the hunger of Edmonton's many classic rock fans.
Playing tomorrow at Red's is a veteran Canadian band whose signature hit was turned into a lottery jingle, but no matter. We love April Wine.
As if that weren't enough, the aforementioned purveyors of Sweet City Woman will perform both tonight and tomorrow at the King's Knight Pub - that Mill Woods bastion of classic rock.
We go now to the Stampeders world headquarters in Toronto, home of guitarist and Sweet City Woman author Rich Dodson, where he's hanging out with his drummer Kim Berly. They're waiting for bassist Ronnie King to begin a rehearsal.
The trio's vocal harmonies are the hallmark of many of the Stampeders hits, the most famous of which, as I think I mentioned, is Sweet City Woman.
"We're just going over the set, the oldie moldies and a couple of new things," he says. He notes that the band did record a new album in 1998 called Sure Beats Working and while there's "talk" of getting back in the studio again, they haven't got around to it yet. Too busy.
Dodson hasn't lost his love for sweet city pop music. When he's not playing with the Stampeders - a part-time project at this point, amounting to around 30 shows a year - he's producing a new girl group. No name yet, but it fits into the "current hip-hop dream kind of thing," he says.
"I feel very comfortable with the current pop scene right now," he goes on. "I like all the stuff that's out at the moment. I'm a big Janet Jackson fan."
Egad. What about Backstreet Boys? 'N Sync? Britney Spears?
"I don't mind all that stuff. To me, it feels like I'm back in '64. My 13-year-old daughter is absolutely nuts about the Beatles. She was all excited I could get AM stations on her radio. Isn't that wild?"
Asked to reveal decadent tales from the Stampeders past - we're looking for Greg Godovitz-ian material here - Dodson passes the phone to Kim Berly (who has a 15-year-old son who's absolutely nuts over Eminem, not that it has anything to do with our story, but it gives you an idea of what these aging rockers are dealing with).
"We're middle-aged guys, married with children, we don't (fool) around on the road, not that we get a lot of offers, and that's the nitty gritty from our standpoint.
"I was always kind of a one-woman man. Now," Berly laughs, "if you had Ronnie King on the phone you'd have a completely different story. But Ronnie is a reformed man himself."
It ain't like the old days. So we've ruled out rock and sex. What about drugs?
Not knowing the band is playing in Edmonton the same weekend he is, Berly brings up April Wine to make the point that decadence used to go a lot further than it does today. Coincidence? I think so.
"In the '70s, April Wine was busted for smoking marijuana in Kirkland Lake or something. Next time they went to Kirkland Lake, twice as many people came out. But we're talking 30 years ago. You have to really do something atrocious to get any kind of promotion nowadays."
OK. Have a good time at CRW. (More on: The Stampeders).