08/31/2026
Deep Cove Coffee House
September 18th,2026
Once again, Greetings and Salutations, gentle reader! It’s time to talk about the upcoming September 18th, 2026 Deep Cove Coffee House.
For those in a hurry, here is a brief summary. For the details, read on.
The opening feature will be The Lawless Firm Trio, with Michael Dunn, guitar, Eleanor Dunn, vocals, and Edgar Bridwell, violin.
The closing feature will be your humble scribe and the multitalented mandolin maven Rick Van Krugel.
Logistics:
Date: Friday, September 18th, 2026
Place: Mount Seymour United Church, 1200 Parkgate Avenue, North Vancouver
Time: Doors open at 7:00 P.M. Music starts at 7:30
The Details.
Lots of details.
As some of you may know, since 2023 I have organized two 50th anniversary concerts. The first was performed in June, 2023. It was a gathering of my blind musical friends to commemorate our concerts at the Arts Club Theatre and The Queen Elizabeth Playhouse Theatre, and our subsequent tour of the province, back in the seventies. The concert with my blind friends was an experiment, to see if it was something worth doing.
(Full disclosure: my hesitation in participating in these concerts had mostly to do with my health. I have heart disease, and I wasn’t sure whether or not I was ready for all of the preperation, organization, and rehearsals, plus the energy required to perform a full concert).
Was it something worth doing?
Was it ever! We had so much fun, and received lots of love from our wonderful coffee house audience. It was an affirmation that events like this were worth the effort involved, and are probably even beneficial from a health standpoint.
Consequently, in the fall of 2024 I agreed to work to put together another 50th anniversary concert, this time at the Finnish Organization (FO) Hall in Sointula, in the area where I grew up. I was a bit worried since the Blackfish Sound band members hadn’t seen each other, nor played much music together since those happy times so long ago.
I was concerned that we NOT ‘mail in’ our performance, or sound like old folks who had ‘lost it’.
So we practiced for four months, twice a week. Some of us practiced every day. Every rehearsal but two was done over the internet, using collaborative software similar to the Zoom app, but optimized so that there was little delay, so we could sing and play together more or less in real time. We also stored and accessed all of our music, both sheet music and recordings, on Dropbox. This was helpful because our drummer and bass player learned the tunes using the Dropbox charts and recordings.
This was a Godsend. I was at home in Deep Cove, and me and my bandmates were able to sing and play from the comfort of our homes in downtown Vancouver, Coquitlam, and Bowen Island.
AAgain, it felt wonderful to return to the North Island, where we had performed in every community, from Sointula to Port Hardy, to Holberg, to Port Alice, to Winter Harbour, to Alert Bay, and even to Courtenay, Powell River and North Vancouver!
Yes, those were the days.
Best of all was to see and visit with old friends from long ago. And we could still see traces of the old magic from the original Finnish utopian colony, and from the hippie influx of U.S. War Resisters back in the sixties and seventies. Sointula is a special place!
Fast forward to today: One of my most important musical mentors and benefactors back in the day, was Rick Van Krugel. Rick was and is a man of many talents: luthier, mandolin wizard, repairer of old clocks, pocket watches, typewriters, old broken instruments, and even a 1946 juke box! He also makes cool steam punk jewelry out of pocket watch gears and other bits lying around in his workshop.
Back when I first met him, Rick played with many famous entertainers who passed through Vancouver, including Bill Munroe, ace mandolinist and a man who many consider to be the father of bluegrass music, blues great John Hammond Jr., and Doug Kershaw, King of the Cajun fiddle. Rick also served as the composer for the National Film Board of Canada (NFB) stop-motion short animation “Canada Vignettes: Catapult Canada”, released in 1985 (I t’s still available to watch in the NFB app and over the web).
With all of that going on, Rick kept his hand in repairing and refurbishing fine instruments. For example, he refretted my beautiful 1968 Martin D-28 guitar, even creating and adding beautiful new inlay on the fingerboard.
I kept in touch with Rick after he moved to Victoria in the mid-seventies. In 1981 I invited Rick to perform with me at the Soft Rock Cafe on Fourth Avenue in Vancouver (I recently found the poster in the basement).
I could go on and on; for example, about Rick learning Morse Code and working at the Transport Canada radio station up in Bull Harbour, not too far from my home town of Port Hardy on the North Island.
My strongest connection with Rick, however, goes back over 50 years, when he invited me to join a musical group he had formed to perform in 75 different senior’s centres throughout the lower mainland. This was significant because this was my first full-time professional music gig. Plus, I got to perform and learn from some of Vancouver’s best musicians, including Rick Scott. Shari Ulrich and Joe Mock passed through Rick’s band too, before going on to fame and fortune.
So, with all that history, it has been on my mind for years to do at least one last performance with Rick. After the first two 50th anniversary efforts, I know that we are going to have a lot of fun at the Deep Coffee House on September 18!
The Lawless Firm
For opening feature act, I thought it was serendipitous to book luthier, fellow polymath and jazz guitarist Michael Dunn, his wife Eleanor, and violinist Edgar Bridwell to perform an opening feature set.
Michael and Rick are old friends going back over 50 years. And boy, do they have a lot in common! While Rick repairs old instruments, Michael is a noted instrument builder, famous for building gypsy jazz guitars. He has also made many interesting instruments, including a harp guitar, a harp ukulele(!), and a West African Kora, plus many others.
The Lawless Firm performs a tasteful selection of American Songbook jazz, with Eleanor on sweet vocals and Edgar on violin.
Coming soon:
In October we will welcome back the fabulous (and newly minted proud Canadian) Kristina Olsen, with bass virtuoso Jake MacIntye-Paul.
November will bring the return of the lovely and talented Karin Plato and ukulele master Guido Heistek.
Stay tuned for a Christmas surprise.
To help Spread The Word
Please feel free to email or print and distribute the poster (included below) to bulletin boards, restaurants, community centres, libraries, etc. And also feel free to forward this newsletter to anyone who may be interested. This helps to spread the word, and we truly appreciate your help!
Our posters are produced by talented graphic artist Luzia Bowden. Thanks, Luzia, your posters are always great. If you, dear reader, need someone to design a superior poster, we highly recommend Luzia.
And finally, I’d like to acknowledge our talented and diligent sound guy, Constantin Starck. Constantin keeps coming up with new ideas and new sound gear that make our coffee house concert performances sound better and better.
And I would also like to acknowledge our many volunteers who prepare the coffee tea, and baked goodies and take cash at the door. You folks rock the party that rocks the party!
Questions? Booking inquiries? Contact John Lyon, 604–929–8757, [email protected]
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John Lyon is a North Vancouver-based singer-songwriter and folk musician. He is widely recognized for his contributions to the BC music scene, and has been making music for live audiences since the sixties. John is known for his vibrant and moving vocal performances of American Songbook jazz, for performances with bands like Blackfish Sound and Roadside Attraction, and for his solo work at clubs and festivals across Western Canada. His song “Home, Dear, Home” arranged and adapted for his father, a west coast salmon troller, is “unquestionably one of the most beautiful of all our British Columbia folksongs”, according to the BC folklore Society. For many years John has also organized the Deep Cove Coffee House, a vibrant community-based musical evening/extravaganza.
