Rockin’ The Rankin Gallery – Father’s Day Show

As many families, we like to celebrate Father’s day together. My spin was to play a concert with two of my kids. We all met at the Rankin Gallery in Inverary, Ontario (near Kingston), a beautiful greystone farmhouse built in the 1860’s and renovated by the genius, Al Rankin. 

Surrounded by elegant gardens overflowing with peonies and lemon lilies at the time, we were made welcome by the warm and gracious Brenda and Al. They host concerts six to ten times a year with terrific acts like Valdy, The Wailin’ Jennys, The Bills, Coco Love Alcorn and Lynn Miles. Al also produces shows in larger venues with the ilk of Judy Collins, Arlo Guthrie, Pete Seeger, Ritchie Havens and John Sebastian. I have been playing Father’s Day concerts at the Rankin Gallery for years and the crowd is always great, some have seen Eli and Hannah play with me since the kids were five and eight years old on stage at Blue Skies Music Festival, where Al was the Artistic Director.

We were all relaxed and in the groove with Hannah on vocals going deeper and deeper into the melody and harmonies, Eli on guitar blending shreds to achingly soulful lyricism, and I, being the Dad, get to play and sing whatever I feel is the thing of the moment from piano to acoustic or electric slide guitar, to violin to accordion, Of course, Robin, my lovely wife, co-writer and mother of the band, was beaming, applauding and laughing at our jokes.