ON STAGE
What: Lunch at Allen’s
Where: McPherson Playhouse, 3 Centennial Sq.
When: Friday, Nov. 5, 7:30 p.m.
Tickets: $60 from rmts.bc.ca or by phone from 250-386-6121
Each member of Lunch At Allen’s offers something unique, which makes concerts by the quartet of Marc Jordan, Ian Thomas, Murray McLauchlan, and Cindy Church the sum of four disparate folk music parts.
“Everybody joins in,” Jordan, 73, said from his home in Toronto. “I think it makes it a little deeper that way, and more interesting.”
McLauchlan is the best-known performer in the bunch; he has 11 Juno Award wins, from 24 nominations, with hits that include Farmer’s Song and Down by the Henry Moore. But each member has a solo career of their own, outside of Lunch at Allen’s: Church has eight Juno Award nominations, while Jordan has seven Juno and Thomas has four. Despite their substantial résumés, a supergroup mentality wasn’t the main motivator behind the project when it was assembled — almost by accident — in 2002.
Very little was thought out in advance, including the band’s name. Allen’s was the Toronto restaurant where Jordan, McLauchlan, and Thomas would regularly meet for lunch.
“We never knew what to expect at the beginning,” Jordan said. “It just happened. We did not set out to do this. We were going to do two shows, but there was an agent in the audience. He said, ‘I have three or four more shows you could do,’ and we said OK. And then it never stopped.”
Jordan had the good fortune of living through the major label era of the 1970s, which gave him opportunities that don’t necessarily exist for the young artists of today. He managed to have a career of his own, while based in Los Angeles — scoring pop-radio hits like Marina del Rey and Survival — while making inroads simultaneously as a songwriter for other acts. He has written for and had his songs covered by top-tier talents in the decades since, including Diana Ross, Rod Stewart, Bette Midler, Chicago, and Josh Groban.
The experience has given Jordan a unique perspective on the business of music, which he imparts to his two children with musician Amy Sky, singer-songwriters Ezra Jordan and Zoe Sky Jordan.
“Kids have much more control over what they do,” Jordan said, with regards to the current era of online-only releases.
“The downside of it is that they get no support. My son and daughter are songwriters, but it’s very hard. They have to do all the social media themselves. They have to make the records themselves. They have two jobs — one is music, and the other is a day job that will pay for music.”
Their professional lives, even if they score a hit, do not have the benefit of the lucrative songwriting-royalty model which has made Jordan’s life extremely comfortable. His song, Taxi Taxi, appeared on Believe, the 1998 hit album from Cher, which sold a reported 20 million copies worldwide.
“We used to get eight cents a song [per record sold], which you’d split with your publisher. Even with four cents, times that by 20 million [records sold], and that’s real money. Now, on Spotify, you get .00046 cents per stream. You’ll need a billion of these, and that’s hard because you don’t have a machine behind you to get you visibility.”
Lunch at Allen’s is less concerned with fame and fortune at the moment, and more about pleasing its fans. Live music has been taken away from concertgoers during the pandemic, and Jordan said he and his bandmates want to give it back.
The group returned Oct. 26 from a long tour of the Maritimes, and will embark on a string of Vancouver Island dates starting Wednesday in Courtenay at the Sid Williams Theatre. The group will also perform shows Thursday in Campbell River (at the Tidemark Theatre), Friday in Victoria (McPherson Playhouse), Saturday in Nanaimo (The Port Theatre), and Sunday in Duncan (Cowichan Performing Arts Centre).
The group has no plans of slowing down, but the realities of the road for a group whose members are in their 60s and 70s can’t be avoided forever, Jordan said. Retirement appears to be a ways off, so the members are enjoying their time together and with their fans. “No one has mentioned it yet. But I guess that’s a conversation that will happen in the next few years.”
