Just so you know, Fat's is Back

mrG — Sat, 10 Dec 2005 21:43:34 -0500

Just so you know, Fat's is Back.

I haven't had the pleasure of a trip to the big smoke on the day that it happens, so I haven't been to the resurrected Fat Albert's Cafe, but I do know they have a website, and the website insists it is all business as usual...

You'll find us at 25 Cecil St (one block south of College & one block east of Spadina), in The Steelworkers Hall, in a room at the front -- it's the usual routine, set up and open stage sign up from 7 pm, performances begin at 8 and go to 11:30 or so with a feature around 9pm

let's have a big cheer for the Steelworkers, apparently more 'Christian' in their fellowship than the Christians. Bravo mates, well done. Guaranteed, next car I buy, it's going to be made with Ontario steel, and if you're still left wondering whether you ought-a be there, take a peek at the party inside and you tell me if this isn't pure folk.

Eulogy for Fat's

mrG — Sat, 27 Sep 2003 15:36:13 -0400

For the want of a horse, kingdoms perish, and for the want of a few bob, ends an amazing chapter in the history of folk music and poetry in Canada. The saddest note struck in this visit to hogtown comes in NOW Magazine's item on the closing of Fat Albert's Coffee House:

Great Canadian singer-songwriters like Neil Young, Jane Siberry, Kyp Harness, Ron Sexsmith and Anhai have all graced Fat Albert's stage. As one of my own faves, Bob Wiseman, puts it: "What better place to forget your lyrics or break a string or tell a joke that doesn't make anyone laugh than in that little room?'' Bob Snider, one of its wittiest grads, calls it "a centre for countless talented performers as well as the homeless, the friendless and the penniless.''

After 37 years (or more?), through the folk-revival 60's, the rise of the Singer/Songwriter in the 70's, all through the electro-crazed 80's and right through the me-first 90's, Fat Albert's stood as the one place where you could go out for $1 and come back enriched in at least some small way. It might be from a line in a song no one on this planet had ever heard before, or from a song so old it's whole culture was long lost, it could be from a conversation of which there were always many earnest and thoughtful in an evening, it might come from an impromptu jam in the hallway, in the changeroom across the hall, in the stairwell or in the washroom, but it always happened.

And it knew no boundaries. You might find yourself chatting realism in poetry with an upscale arts patron, or discussing polemics with a street person, because everyone was always welcome at Fat Alberts, no one was ever barred from entry because of their particular side of the tracks.

And now, the host church, the church that started Fats as an outreach, an outreach that worked, they've hit hard times themselves, they say their congregation is down, their costs are up, and they say they have to charge $160/month for 4-evening's use of a dank, dusty dungeon of a stone-hewn room with steam-pipes criss-crossing the ceiling, a room no one but bohemians would want, a space any bohemian would cherish.

This is just an aside of naive musing, but do you think perhaps that a church that shifts the blame for failing profits on to the shoulders of the poorest lodger just maybe has other issues that might induce christian-folk to, you know, kind-a loose interest in it? Just a thought.

Given the $1 cover included all the coffee you could tank, given that half what came in went to the 'star' musicians of the night (aka the feature performance) and given there was no room for expansion and no will to shift to a wealthier cast, Fats is doomed, shut out and discarded, and according to NOW, closed for two weeks now.

Now maybe there's more to it, maybe there's unspoken politics going on that the press won't say and Mary Milne is too thoughtful to mention (although, from what I read in that link Gene gives us in the comments the situation is even more bizarre) but the sad fact remains. Fat Alberts is no longer, and for all it's Mervish glamour and TSO glitz and pomp, the city of Toronto is far poorer for the loss of it.

Fat Alberts: 1967-2004

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Just so you know, Fat's is Back

Eulogy for Fat's