Brownstein: Jeannie Arsenault remembered as ‘the soul of Hillbilly Night' at N.D.G.'s Wheel Club

Montreal Gazette

3 days ago

Hillbilly Night at N.D.G.'s Wheel Club will take on a more sombre tone than usual on Monday. The hootin' and hollerin' will probably be kept down to a minimal roar. Even the trusty cowbell, rung after a crowd-pleasing, country music performance, will probably sound relatively muted on this evening.
The Hillbilly Night faithful, ever-loyal country musicians and fans, are in mourning. Jeannie Arsenault, the diminutive dynamo and spiritual force behind Hillbilly Night, died on Monday, July 28 at 82, succumbing to the cancer she had been battling since last fall.
Arsenault, frequently attired in her favourite fire engine-red dress and customary country chapeau, was the spark plug who helped keep Hillbilly Night going against all odds through venue and musical taste changes. She remained true to the dream of the late Bob Fuller, leader of the Old Time Country Music Club of Canada when the soirees began.
Fuller founded Hillbilly Night at the long-defunct downtown Blue Angel club nearly 60 years ago. After a few moves, it found a home in the endearingly ramshackle Wheel Club and managed to survive COVID.
But after Fuller, who had been in ill health for a long period, died seven years ago, it was left to his disciple Arsenault, a Hillbilly Night performer for 50 years, to keep the fires burning.
Arsenault was a no-nonsense yet much beloved figure. She made certain that the rules first established by Fuller were still strictly followed. The cardinal rule being that any instruments — save for the steel guitar — requiring an electrical boost from an amplifier were verboten. And drums, natch, were a no-no. And, oh yeah, no crooning or strumming of any country or bluegrass tune written or performed after 1965 — when it was deemed by some purists that Nashville took a turn for the electrical worse — were to be tolerated.
It was and will always be hail to the Hanks, Williams and Snow, and, of course, to Arsenault fave Patsy Cline, among other pioneers from past eras.
No one protests. The prevailing view among the faithful is — no disrespect to the strides made by Beyoncé's Cowboy Carter or the rap wailings of Shaboozey — that amplification has totally altered the country music sound and would truly drown out Hillbilly Night if permitted.
Terry Joe 'Banjo' Rodrigues, one of the foremost pluckers in town of the instrument that bears his middle name, is one of the faithful. He has no problem adhering to these rules, fearing that the music he and others so love would be otherwise lost.
A Hillbilly Night regular for 25 years, Rodrigues was extremely close to Arsenault. He visited her at her South Shore seniors' residence the night before she died.
'Jeannie had begged me not to come when I called her a few days before,' Rodrigues recalls. 'She told me she looked terrible, but I just felt I had to go. When I got there, she was sound asleep. She was on so much medication for the pain. She was so frail. It was heartbreaking.
'I pulled out my banjo and started to play one of Jeannie's favourite tunes, Grandpa Jones's Eight More Miles to Louisville. Though she seemed asleep, her hands started rising up while I played and she began calling out at me to get a little closer. She heard the banjo. That moment will stay with me forever.
'Bob (Fuller) had the vision to create it, but Jeannie was to become the soul of Hillbilly Night. Jeannie had the biggest heart of anyone I've ever known.'
Rodrigues is in the midst of crafting a song in her memory, titled Ode to Little Jeannie's Gone, which he will perform at Monday's Hillbilly Night tribute to her. He sings me the chorus:
'She was little, but she was loud.
She made country music proud.
Little Jeannie, that gal from P.E.I.
And now even though she's gone,
We know her spirit will live on,
'Cause country music legends never die.'
'Jeannie's wish was that Hillbilly Night survive, and it has, thanks to her efforts,' Rodriguez says. 'It's going to keep going as strong as ever. A new generation of fans has come aboard and is loving it as much as us older folk are.
'But what's most sad is that Jeannie, our little Annie Oakley, won't be there, singing for us anymore. I'm just so thankful I have so many great memories of Jeannie, either playing with her or even getting deservedly scolded by her.'
Rodrigues points out that Arsenault died last Monday night at 7, the same time the Wheel Club opened, 'when she would have been there to greet us.'
Craig Morrison, ethnomusicologist, professor and performer of pretty much all known musical genres, has been a Hillbilly Night regular the last 40 years.
'Jeannie was a true force of nature,' Morrison says. 'It all started with me at the Blue Angel so many years ago, but what kept me coming me back then and through the ensuing years was the warm welcome Jeannie always gave me and everybody else who showed up. She captured our hearts.'
He notes that Arsenault's special gift was making everyone feel at home.
'Hillbilly Night has always been a place where old and young, hip and square, professional and amateur, anglo and franco, were comfortable,' says Morrison, now No. 2 in terms of seniority after the inaptly named Bill Bland.
'There's absolutely no pretence here. Music has always been the common denominator, with acoustic country music and songs about things that people feel as its foundation. And there's a core group of a dozen of us to make sure the music never dies here. So many great memories of Jeannie will always remain.'
My favourite Arsenault memory goes back four and a half years ago to the Hillbilly Night's 55 th anniversary at the Wheel Club. She did an inspired take on the Cline classic I Fall to Pieces.
'Now, don't go reading too much into me doing that song,' Arsenault gently admonished me upon leaving the stage to approving hoots and hollers and cowbells from the audience. 'I'm definitely not falling to pieces over our future.'
True that, it has turned out.
AT A GLANCE
Hillbilly Night, Monday at the Wheel Club (3373 Cavendish Blvd.), will feature a musical tribute to Jeannie Arsenault. Doors open at 7 p.m. Admission, as always, is fr ee.