They know how to make you dance By FRANCIE HEALY
“We’re just fun-loving guys,” says Al Bragg,
“well past the age when any of us thinks we’ll be stars.” He laughs when he says this. He has a rich,
rolling voice that sounds as though he should be on the radio. But actually, he is a star. So are his fellow
musicians in the Mick Armitage Band. These guys are loaded with talent,
experience, energy, and a love of music that goes way back to boyhood. “It’s a social thing,” Al says of his interaction
with the band. “We just have a good time. It’s like a gentleman’s club.” They play everything, from country to rock to
jazz. They play it like the seasoned professionals they are. They make it look easy. Mick Armitage, a drummer, started the band
in 1987 after a long musical career that began at 14, when he organized and played at dances in his native Shawville, Que. Now a grandfather of five who should by
rights be thinking of retirement, he works full time for the government and still takes on about 40 or 50 gigs in a nine-month period. “People come up to me and say, ‘You played at my parents’ wedding,” he says. Far from
10 BOUNDER MAGAZINE
making him feel old, it’s a statement to him that kids of every age still dance to old time rock ‘n’ roll.
He considers himself lucky to have the “best
players anywhere”. He says they’re all eclectic. They’ll play anything. And he means it. All the members of the band
have been in the music scene for years. They’re some of the best of the best. Al Bragg, for instance (dubbed “Rev.” Al
Bragg by Mick, for reasons that are still unclear to Al, says Al), plays in three or four bands; but about 75 per cent of his work is with the Mick Armitage Band. He plays piano and pedal steel. He used to tour with the Family Brown,
Carroll Baker and Terry Carisse, and played everywhere from Nashville to hockey arenas and art centres to the Tommy Hunter Show and the Paladium in England. He was inducted into the Ottawa Valley Country Music Hall of fame, and when he was leader of the Baker Street Band, the Canadian Country Music Association voted it Best Backup Band in Canada. All through the years, his wife, Isabel, never
complained about all the travelling he did. “She’s a trooper,” he says. They are parents of (grown-up) Steven and Katie.
www.bounder.ca
Photos by ANN TAYLOR
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