Ford also goes way back with Gowans, including the odd appearance on albums by the Buttless Chaps. I recall the day I first spoke to him at Red Cat, I had just seen him do a solo set before a 2008 Daniel Johnston concert at Richard’s on Richards, after which he backed the legendary bipolar Texas songwriter as part of a pick-up band (he’s on the left in that clip). I’ve seen him (maybe) with DOA, and I’ve (definitely) seen him open for NoMeansNo and play with the Show Business Giants. I’ve had similar jolts of recognition with Pier. When Pier took the stage for a ‘tweener set between headliners at this year’s Folk Festival, MONTECRISTO editor Fiona Morrow gave a start and said to me, “Hey, I know him from Red Cat!” As I chat with Gowans, Ford Pier is minding the till. Gowans, now Red Cat’s owner, isn’t the only musician around the store. “I remember one time opening for the Supersuckers in a really big club, and there were people throwing beer at me and people cheering people telling me they were going to kill me and people saying it was the most fun they’d had at a show.”ĭave Gowans, owner of Red Cat Records, was the singer and guitarist of The Buttless Chaps, a Canadian indie rock band. “We used to get people telling us, ‘I really like half of what you do!’” Gowans laughs. It took some time for the band to find their audience.
“For sure, I’m a child of the ‘80s and grew up with Echo & the Bunnymen and Depeche Mode,” Gowans says. The band’s country inflections were only a part of what they did, balanced by artful abstraction (aided occasionally by local trumpeter JP Carter’s dreamlike flourishes) and a love of 80s’ New Wave. When you’re riding on a horse, you can’t have leather on your butt, or you’ll fall off your saddle, so they were always like that!” “People would always say, all chaps are buttless. For one thing, chaps were legit cowboy culture years before they were queer costume. Gowans, sitting in the neatly-organized back rooms of Red Cat while John Lee Hooker plays over the sound system chuckles at how wrong I was.
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