Bananas Foster

Gomer Kendrick Foster. Nobody ever called him Gomer, though. He was known in the music business as Bananas, like the dessert. Foster was an impresario, promoter, manager and general mover and shaker in the Toronto music scene. Legend had it he set up countless record deals and made more than a few careers. Even back when I was on the polka circuit I’d heard Bananas Foster stories, but you have to understand the polka scene was its own universe, and it was strictly meat and potatoes – no dessert.

Bananas Foster was the furthest thing from my mind that night at The Shoe. By this time, we were playing 4, sometimes 5 nights a week. We were the New Polka Kings but we were becoming known around Toronto as simply NPK. We’d been traveling around, playing anywhere Staash could book a gig within 3 and 4 hours drive of Toronto. It was all word of mouth, no marketing, no nothing, and it came at just the right time, because the strike at the Bottle & Can where me and Staashu worked, showed no sign of settling. Any cash we could get our hands on was welcome, believe you me.

People called us polka-punk and I guess that’s as good a way to describe the music as any – if nothing will do but you need to attach a label to it – nobody in the band ever used that term though, as far as I know. I mean, in a way, sure I guess we were a hopped up polka outfit, but we weren’t trying to put a box around what we did. You could hear elements of all kinds of music in our repertoire – punk and polka sure, but also Zydeco, Tex-Mex, R&B, Irish folk tunes, 60s pop music – we were all over the map, and we were having a blast developing our own sound. Besides, I was way too old to be a punk.

Playing The Shoe was like a graduation for us. We were moving up to bigger clubs. I guess you know you’re having some degree of success when the kids from the suburbs start coming out to your shows. We just wanted to fill the club, do our thing and get everyone dancing, and we were getting gigs so I guess we were doing something right.

It was after the second set. We were sitting backstage, chilling. I was sore and tired, I can tell you, and at that time it seemed I was pretty much always sore and tired. Back in my first go-round as a musician, I had the energy to play all night every night without paying for it later. These days I was OK while I was playing, but when I stopped and slipped the big accordion off my shoulders, man, I really felt its weight.

Like I said, it was after the second set. It was hot and really close in the club. I was covered in sweat, happy to have thought about bringing along a change of clothes. We were having a great night. I mean we were on fire out there, and the dance floor was packed, punkers in the centre by the stage, and off to the sides, the kids from the burbs trying to approximate the polka.

There were a couple people I didn’t know in the dressing room, friends of Ndidi and Boom-Boom, our rhythm section. We were draining bottles of Labatt’s 50, re-hydrating you might say. Our guitar player Maggie rolled up some reefer and sparked it up. I was going over a couple arrangements for the third set with Staashu.

The door to the dressing room burst open, and there stood a big man, scanning the room. He must have been six-seven or maybe even taller, stocky, dark-skinned. He had the biggest hands of anyone I’d ever seen. And he was wearing this get-up – I don’t know what else to call it but a get-up.

He had a white 10-gallon cowboy hat perched on his massive round noggin and snake-skin cowboy boots with brass tips on his equally huge feet. In between, he was wearing one of those Nudie Suits like Hank Snow and Buck Owens wore, except this one was more like Hank Snow on acid if you asked me. It had everything you could imagine going on, flowers and stars and musical notes and God knows what else, all arranged in an insane stew of gaudy rhinestones, glitter and tapestry.

Everyone in the room stopped talking and stared at the big man in the doorway. He worked the silence for several seconds and when he finally spoke, his voice was a deep, loud baritone, revealing just a hint of an accent from somewhere down in the Caribbean.

My name is Foster, Bananas Foster, and I’m going to make you famous.