Remembering Reg

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 02/04/2016 (3614 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

‘Wait right here, I’ve got something to show you,” Tim Frisk announces, cutting his inquisitor off in mid-sentence.

Frisk heads outside to where his vehicle is parked. He rummages around in the car’s trunk for a few seconds. After finding what he’s looking for, he re-enters a near-empty, North End doughnut shop toting a three-panelled section of cardboard — the same sort of contrivance a grade-schooler would use for a science fair project.

The shaggy-haired 56-year-old steadies his homemade backdrop on a vacant table. Using his stir stick as a pointer, he directs our attention to a host of album covers affixed to the board with a mishmash of staples, glue and masking tape.

“This is Reg’s first record, Homebrew,” Frisk says, motioning to an LP recorded in 1974 by Reg Bouvette, a legendary Winnipeg-born fiddler who, after he died of diabetes complications in 1992, was inducted into the Manitoba Aboriginal Music Hall of Fame and Porcupine Awards Hall of Fame. “This one here is called Red River Jig. He didn’t write (the title track) but it’s probably his most famous song. And this is Fiddling Across the Border, a record he did with Jr. Daugherty, a top-notch fiddler from the States.

“If you’ve never listened to this stuff before, you’re missing out.”

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Last month, Frisk took out an online ad titled, “Wanted: Reg Bouvette Musical Legacy.” “I am a fiddle freak looking for anything REG,” the blurb read, “and am willing to pay a reasonable price for whatever you may have… record albums, 45 records, posters…”

Here’s the kicker: Despite the fact he now has an admirable collection of Bouvette videos, CDs and promotional material (one placard, circa 1975, informs us Bouvette and his backing band, the Roadhouse Gentlemen, were available for “dances, weddings, banquets and socials”) Frisk wasn’t always the four-time Manitoba fiddling champion’s No. 1 fan. Far from it.

The fourth child in a family of six, Frisk was 12 years old in 1972 when his mother, Beryl Knott, a country musician in her own right, entered into a personal and professional relationship with Bouvette, a former long-haul truck driver and divorced father of three. Because of their heavy touring schedule — until Bouvette’s death, the couple regularly performed throughout Canada and the United States, and as far as Europe, Australia and New Zealand — Frisk didn’t see much of his mom or Bouvette, whom she married in 1982, when he was growing up. A birthday here, a holiday get-together there, he recalls, but that was the extent of it.

“I can’t speak for my sisters, but I know it was not good for me and my brother,” he says, noting he spent his teen years bouncing back and forth between an older sister’s abode and an isolated property on Springfield Road owned by his father, a tow truck operator. “To be honest, it always felt like my mother left us for (Bouvette), and I grew up resenting both of them for it.”

Eight years ago, Frisk was out of work and desperate for a place to stay. He approached his mother, a cancer survivor, and asked if she had room for him in her pocket-sized home in St. Boniface.

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“It was the first time I lived with her since I was 12 but it worked out good cause I needed her and she needed me,” he says, choosing the word “rough” to describe his life up until that point. “I’d have been on the street if she hadn’t taken me in, that’s for sure, but I like to think I helped her, too. I’m pretty health-conscious and got her eating right. I’m also a bit of a handyman — that’s what I’m trying to do for a living right now — so I fixed up her house. And all those negative feelings I had? They mostly went away.”

Shortly after moving in with his mother, Frisk noticed a stack of Bouvette albums in one corner of her living room. Although his personal taste had always leaned more toward the Led Zeppelins and Tommy Bolins of the world, Frisk decided to give the records a spin. “I know music, I’ve been into it all my life, and this was just kick-ass,” he says, his eyes lighting up. “You put it on and you can’t stop moving. I mean, even if you don’t like to dance, your feet are still going 100 miles an hour. It totally motivates you.”

In 2013, Frisk was motivated enough to stage Reg Fest — an event that celebrated the life and times of his late stepfather. The get-together, which drew a crowd of 220 to the Indian and Métis Friendship Centre on Robinson Street, featured a slate of noteworthy fiddlers, including Sierra Noble and Gary Lepine, as well as members of the Asham Stompers, a Métis square-dance troupe that performed at the 2010 Vancouver Olympics.

“They played all night long — three sets, just givin’ ‘er,” he says, showing off a replica of Bouvette’s trademark blue fiddle, which he had on display that evening.

Frisk intends to mount a second Reg Fest — part of the proceeds from the inaugural shindig were split between a Métis resource centre in Winnipeg and the Alzheimer’s Society of Manitoba — but his goal is to acquire the rights to Bouvette’s music from Sunshine Records, the label that has represented Bouvette and his mother since the 1970s.

Frisk, who now lives in Point Douglas at his sister and brother-in-law’s place, met with the label’s CEO last week and was told the asking price for the master tapes would be in the low five figures.

“Reg wrote something like 200 songs, he didn’t… around, and I was thinking if I somehow managed to do this, I could use those tapes to put together some new greatest hits-type albums. Maybe a wicked, double-CD waltz album or one that was just breakdowns or polkas.

“My mom can be a bit of a cold fish. She told me nobody wants to listen to Reg’s stuff anymore, but at the same time she seems to appreciate what I’m trying to do. Cause this isn’t about me. It’s about the music and trying to make sure people get a chance to hear it again.”

david.sanderson@freepress.mb.ca