"I met you at a house party in Montreal"

I’ve had Montreal, by Port Cities (recorded | live | remix) on rotation for weeks now.

It is a lovely song, with strong lyrics. But, more than that, I think it’s a sort of universal song, inasmuch as the possibility of meeting someone at a house party in Montreal is within the atlas of possibilities for many Canadians: it just seems like the kind of thing we might all have in our past.

I recall hearing a story, perhaps apocryphal, about the late Marc Gallant: he was living in an apartment in Montreal, and about to be evicted. So he invited everyone he knew to a house party and asked everyone to take something from the apartment home with them, to prevent the apartment’s contents from being seized by the landlord.

Just over a decade ago we saw Bruce Guthro in concert at Harmony House in Hunter River; Bruce brought his then-17-year-old son Dylan up on stage with him during that concert, and it was obvious that he’d inherited the family musicality. Ten years on he’s one of the trio that is Port Cities.