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Glass Onion Folk Club

With John Gardiner

Minglewood has Glass Onion audience singing in perfect harmony

Tuesday, April 22, 2003

Matt Minglewood hard at work. Richard Knechtel will be in Wallaceburg on May 10.

The Glass Onion Folk Club in Wallaceburg is full speed ahead with plans to bring in one of Ontario's top singer/songwriters, Richard Knechtel, for a special concert at Roxxy Tap & Grill, a popular local eatery on Wallaceburg's main street.
This show follows hot on the heels of the Glass Onion's last show, a house concert featuring East Coast music veteran Matt Minglewood, where Minglewood absolutely delighted a full house with a unique blend of wonderful anecdotes from his almost 40 years on the road, and some tremendous blues-based tunes, mainly original numbers but also some terrific covers.
Minglewood is probably best-known in Ontario and particularly the Southwest for the Minglewood Band which has played the province and across Canada since the early 1970's. They released some excellent vinyl back in those days and the band continues to excel as one of the country's premier blues outfits.
But its leader has expanded his musical threshhold in recent years and now does increasingly frequent solo performances of the show he calls, "The Story". With each tune played, he relates a bit of the song's history, or perhaps a bit if his history with the song, or perhaps a bit of history about the artist who originally recorded the tune. It's a great package that kept the Glass Onion audience enthralled through the show and for a much deserved encore.
The climax to the show was a moving rendition of the Marshall Tucker classic "Can't You See" that had the entire room singing along. It was one of those magic moments between artist and audience that is part of what a great performance is all about. When he came back for the encore with the R&B classic "Stagger Lee", there was electricity in the air.
Minglewood played both an acoustic guitar and a much-travelled 1962 Gibson electric, and also got involved on the keyboards. He is a terrific musician on all instruments and that compliments his excellent vocal work. On this night at the Glass Onion, he was battling an extremely bad cold, but the audience was none the wiser – the mark of the consumate pro.
Richard Knechtel will appear at Roxxy Tap & Grill on Saturday, May 10 at 8:00 p.m. for a special performance of the honest and heartfelt original songs that have made him a frequent performer at some of the province's largest and best-known folk festivals including Owen Sound's Summerfolk and London's Home County Folk Festival.
Knechtel is a Greentree Music recording artist with several albums and CDs to his credit. Songs like "Old Friends" and "1969" hark back to another era and all his tunes carry an important social message. He has been playing and performing for over 30 years and is well-known in folk circles across the country.
The Glass Onion Folk Club is sponsored by the Wallaceburg and District Council for the Arts. Its mandate is to bring good quality Canadian folk and blues to the Chatham-Kent area. For ticket information or information about the Glass Onion, call 519-627-5978 or e-mail: gardiner@kent.net.



John Gardiner is a 25-year-veteran of the community newspaper business, but he is also a prolific writer of moralistic short fiction he refers to as "emotional thoughtscapes" or "adult fables". Samples of his fiction can be found at:

He has also produced a noteworthy piece of humanist philosophy which can be found at: http://www.xs4all.nl/~aboiten/ad502.htm He welcomes comments on his work.