End of an era
Heritage
By Peter Paylor
I t wasn' t that long
ago that I would have been able to write that every small town has a Tweedsmuir. An old hotel tavern with a small group of regulars you’ll find there every weeknight and live music on Friday nights and Saturdays when the place really starts coming to life. Local bands. Cover bands. Tribute bands.
Open mics. A bit of a bad reputation not always deserved. Almost every band who has ever really made it has started out playing places like that. Places like the Tweedsmuir are getting harder to find and now you won’t find the Tweedsmuir at all. It burned to the ground on March 10, 2021. “There’s no place left like it between Peterborough and Perth,” says musician Billy
Piton who made his first visit to the Tweedsmuir 40 years ago. Piton and partner Lynn Marriot (pictured) had the Tweed Video Centre across the road. “There were always newbies to Tweed…in the 70s and the 80s and the 90s. We were the Come From Aways of the 80s,” says Piton. “The tavern was a place where we met and kind of got to know each other. For me and a lot of other people – poets and musicians – it was a place for us to play.” Piton started taking pictures of the bands in exchange for a free beer or two. The pictures were later framed and displayed around the bar. “It was always a treat when Peter Spratt hired a band. I knew that getting him on stage to pose with them afterwards was going to be a trip. He was such a big guy. They all looked like kindergarten kids next to him.” I asked Piton for a favourite memory. “Valdy,” he says without stopping to think. The tribute bands were fun… you know…the guys who cover AC/ DC and The Hip…bands like that… but I remember the night that Valdy was there and Carlos del Junco came to sit in with him. That was a special evening. Listening to those guys.”
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