Coming out of the Woodwork

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 28/09/2019 (2560 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Before he helped form the Holly Davidson Band in 2017, drummer Josh Gray was a member of the DCW Band, a group that included David Wood on guitar and Stan Bedernjak on bass.

Because Gray, 46, was only six years old when Wood and Bedernjak established Woodwork — a hard-rocking outfit that in the early 1980s appeared ripe to follow in the footsteps of the Guess Who, Bachman-Turner Overdrive and Harlequin as the Next Big Thing to emerge from these parts — he was initially unaware he was sharing a stage with, in his words, Winnipeg music royalty.

“The way people would look at (Wood and Bedernjak) with such admiration and speak of how influential they were was something to behold,” Gray says. “Often, I would see — and be part of — the brilliance that was the core of Woodwork nightly.”

Last December, Gray came up with the idea to stage a fundraising concert in support of Siloam Mission. He posted a blurb on Facebook, inviting local musicians to donate their time and talent to the event, scheduled at the Norwood Hotel five days before Christmas. Dozens responded positively, including Wood and Bedernjak.

For a while, the pair had been gigging intermittently under the banner One More Time, so they naturally assumed that’s what Gray was going to bill them as for the fundraiser, Wood says, seated next to Bedernjak in a downtown coffee shop. Suffice it to say, when they arrived at the Norwood and saw “Woodwork” splashed across the promo poster — Gray refers to the miscue as a “simple reflex rather than a calculated decision” — they were more than a little surprised.

“Originally, we had no intention of resurrecting the band, whatsoever,” Bedernjak says. “But after a bunch of people approached us after Josh’s thing, saying how much they enjoyed Woodwork back in the day and would love the chance to see more of us, we started to think, “Hmmm… maybe that’s not such a bad idea, after all.”

In April, four months after the fundraiser, Woodwork staged an official reunion show, a complete sellout, at X-Cues Billiards and Café on Sargent Avenue. And on Oct. 5, almost 40 years to the day Woodwork first strutted its stuff in front of a live audience, Wood and Bedernjak, along with their current bandmates, George Demeduk (drums) and Mike Tesser (guitar), will again take the stage as Woodwork, this time as part of the Thursday Night Riders’ 11th annual Children’s Wish Fundraiser at Nashville’s, 826 Regent Ave. W.

“There are four bands on the bill and we go on just after 10 (p.m.), I believe,” Bedernjak says, noting their set will consist of covers of late ’70s faves such as Goddo’s Sweet Thing and Ian Dury’s Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll interspersed with Woodwork originals such as You Take the Cake and She’s a Rock ’n’ Roller.

“They have room for 900 and I’m told it should be sold right out so, yeah, super looking forward to it.”

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In 1976, Wood, then 22, met John Hannah, lead guitarist for the rock band Holy Hannah and later for Streetheart, at a music store on Broadway. The two became fast friends and, within a few months, began performing as the Wood ’n’ Hannah Band, a critically acclaimed unit that went on to open for the likes of the Doobie Brothers.

Around the same time, Bedernjak, six years Wood’s junior, was a student at St. Paul’s High School, where his eastern European parents sent him to “get a good education and do something with (his) life,” he says with a laugh.

The problem was Bedernjak, raised on a steady diet of Deep Purple and Alice Cooper, was more interested in playing bass guitar than studying algebra. After graduating from St. Paul’s in June 1977, he and his band Goldwing hit the road, not returning to Winnipeg until the end of September — too late to enrol in university.

Wood, as towering as he is talented at 6-foot-5, took a year-long hiatus from playing in a band after Wood ’n’ Hannah split up. By 1979, though, he was itching to start a new project, one influenced in part by Van Halen’s debut album. One afternoon, Bedernjak was hanging out in Kildonan Park with a few buddies when a drummer friend of his cruised past in a van, slowing down long enough to inform Bedernjak that Wood was in the market for a bass player.

“Even though they’d been broken up for a while, there was still this mystique surrounding Wood ’n’ Hannah — on their old posters they looked like (Led) Zeppelin or something — and I thought, ‘Wow, wouldn’t it be incredible to land that gig,’” Bedernjak says.

“I arranged for a tryout on Maryland Street, in the same house where we rehearse to this day, and when I got there, Dave started showing me all these licks he wanted me to learn. He was playing faster and better than anybody I’d ever seen, so at first I was like, ‘whoa.’ But I went home, worked my ass off and got the job.”

Woodwork began as a four-piece, with Wood, Bedernjak, Kathy Brown (vocals) and Brad Meadmore (drums). After debuting at a jam-packed Marion Hotel in late-September 1979, the band was immediately booked for a Thanksgiving weekend social at the convention centre, where the Pumps, an up-and-coming act that had just secured a major-label record deal, was scheduled as the headliner.

“There were over 2,000 people there, screaming their fricking heads off the entire night,” Bedernjak says, noting Toronto’s the Deserters were also on the ticket. “At one point some idiot lit a carpet on fire, which brought everything to a complete halt. In the end, though, that only added to the craziness.”

Brown left Woodwork sometime in 1980. With Bedernjak replacing her on lead vocals, the group really began to hit its stride. Wood recalls an evening in August 1980 when they were booked at the Bodyshop, Vancouver’s No. 1 rock club at the time, and the next thing he knew, he was flanked by members of Loverboy.

“We ended up tearing through Turn Me Loose, six months before it even got played on the radio,” Wood says, breaking into a grin.

Other noteworthy gigs included a separate show in Vancouver when the three members of Rush were seated metres away from the stage, clapping and singing along most of the night; a performance at the Norlander Hotel on Pembina Highway when Burton Cummings, freshly bailed out of the hoosegow, announced to a packed dance floor, “Do you know how much it cost me to be here tonight?” before launching into I’m Scared, backed by Woodwork; and an appearance on the CBC television show, 10:30 Live, alongside Montreal wunderkind Jerry Doucette.

“Mama Let Him Play was his big hit, and even though there wasn’t supposed to be any upstaging of any kind, he and Dave ended up going toe-to-toe during that song’s famous solo, each one trying to outdo the other,” Bedernjak says with a chuckle, guessing it was around that time when Rick Mallett replaced Meadmore on drums.

In 1981, Woodwork headed into the studio, first to record two tracks for a 92 CITI-FM-sponsored album called Winnipeg Homegrown, and later, to put the finishing touches on their debut LP, Anyday Now.

Although Anyday Now failed to dent the charts — Wood half-jokes that he still has a box or two of factory-sealed copies in his basement — the guys weren’t disillusioned. Sure, they would have loved it if Needed More or the title track has been played on the radio alongside Harlequin’s Innocence or Streetheart’s take on the Stones’ Under My Thumb, except they were still making a decent living, commanding between $4,000 and $5,000 a week at some of Western Canada’s largest watering holes.

“Simply put, our pond became the bars, and we were satiated being big fish in that pond,” Wood says. “I remember one time we were playing Frankie & Johnny’s in Calgary which, in those days, was the place to be. At around 7:30 (p.m.) Stan taps me on the shoulder and says, hey, Dave, get a load of this, pointing outside through the window. No kidding, there must have been 1,000 people lined up outside waiting to get in, almost as if — hahaha — somebody really big was going to be there.”

By 1985, most booking agents in Winnipeg had retreated from hiring bands that performed original material in favour of groups that meted out covers of Top 40 hits night after night after night. Bedernjak vividly remembers his final appearance with Woodwork 1.0, which occurred at the bar Benjamin’s, located on Edmonton Street in a building that had previously housed the record store Opus 69.

“One of the songs in our set that night was Beat It, with me up there pretending to be Michael Jackson,” he says. “Afterwards I was like, ‘OK, that’s it, I’m outta here.’”

In the ensuing years, Wood and Bedernjak went in different musical directions. In 1986, Wood formed Woodwork II, a synth-pop group that took its cue from the likes of Human League and Eurythmics. Following that, he fronted a dance band called Modern Minds before he changed speeds altogether by embarking on an extended, Sunday-night residency at a Sherbrook Street blues bar, where he was habitually joined by local stalwarts such as Ron Paley and Ken (Spider) Sinnaeve.

Meanwhile, Bedernjak hooked up first with Strawdog, which consisted of Lou Petrovich, formerly of the Pumps, and Alex Chuaqui, ex- of Queen City Kids, and later with the Kenny Shields Band, which, as its name suggests, was largely a showcase for Streetheart’s longtime lead singer. In 1995, Bedernjak helped put together The Vice, a hard-charging group that created a bit of a stir with the original tune, Get the Lead Out, later covered by none other than Shields, himself.

In the early 2000s, Wood was walking down Main Street when he spotted Bedernjak, whom he hadn’t spoken to in several years, heading towards him. After spending a few minutes catching up about their families and such, the topic — surprise, surprise — turned to music.

“Around that time, I had started a band called River City,” says Wood, who also found time to go back to school, netting a theatre degree from the University of Winnipeg. “Except the guy who was playing bass for us wanted to watch baseball more than he wanted to rehearse, so one day we gave Stan a call, to see if he was interested. He ended up signing on for four or five years, which pretty much brings us up to date.”

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Wood and Bedernjak expect next week’s show at Nashville’s to carry the same vibe as the one at X-Cues in the spring, which turned out to be as much a reunion for longtime fans of the band as it was for the guys on stage.

“Probably the best way to describe what was going on that night is old home week,” Wood says, leaning back in his chair. “All evening long, everybody was like, ‘Hey, how have you been? I haven’t seen you in years,’ myself included.

“Plus, it was immensely gratifying to look out into the crowd and spot people singing along to our songs, like it was 1982 or something all over again,” the spiky-haired Bedernjak chimes in, pointing out he was still getting around with a walker the week before the show, thanks to having surgery on both knees last fall. “Here we are, alive and kicking, which, unfortunately, is something we can’t say for a lot of our friends from back in the day.”

As for what the future holds for Woodwork, the two agree that for now, they’re taking things one gig at a time.

“I do think if we’re going to move forward with this project and play two, three, four times a year as Woodwork, it’d be nice to write some new songs,” Wood says. “I have a bunch of stuff I’ve been working on, Stan’s the same way, it’s just a matter of finding the time and sitting down together. Plus, I ran into Kathy a few months back and mentioned it’d be great to get her up with us one night, and Brad, too, if he’s interested. To me, music is an ocean and I’ve got a cup, so yeah, I guess we’ll see where all this goes.”

david.sanderson@freepress.mb.ca