FACES
“H
onestly, there
hasn’t been a
day in 45 years
where, as I
got up in the
morning, I said,
‘Damn. I have to go to work today,’”
says an enthusiastic Peter Patrick.
And while some veterans of Cana-
da’s MI industry could make the same
claim, what’s particularly noteworthy
is that Patrick has spent every one of
those 45 years with the same compa-
ny.
The longtime GM of Erikson
Music, Patrick joined the team at JAM
Industries before it was called JAM
Industries, and has nearly a half-cen-
tury’s worth of stories that make his
passion for the position and industry
crystal clear.
Patrick was born in Montreal and
spent his childhood moving around
to various rural communities with his
family, eventually settling in Frederic-
ton, NB. He was drawn to music from
an early age, having been introduced
to classical music by his mother and
the jazz greats of the time by his
father.
He developed his ear playing the
harmonica and then the recorder be-
fore setting his sights on a guitar after
The Beatles’ seminal performance on
The Ed Sullivan Show in 1963. Shortly
after, he had his first six-string and
literally played it until his fingers bled
– before Bryan Adams had started
grade school.
At 17, he was asked to join an
established east coast rock band
called Naked Lunch and played with
them for the following few years.
After seeing the band perform on
a Halifax TV show, executives with
promotions powerhouse Donald K.
Donald suggested the band move to
Montreal, which they did the follow-
ing year amidst the notorious October
Crisis. “As you can imagine, a rusty
van with out-of-province plates full of
long-haired guys was an easy and
frequent target,” he recalls. “I believe
we were pulled over at least 24 times,
sometimes at very nervous gunpoint.”
The band was busy with gigs for
the first year before the opportunities
started waning and they disbanded
in 1971. After a brief respite back in
New Brunswick, Patrick returned to
Montreal and joined another band,
20
CANADIAN MUSIC TRADE
Peter Patrick
By Andrew King
Hotspur, which eventually enlisted
fellow NB resident Terry Hatty as its
frontman – who would go on to per-
form with The Guess Who in the early
‘90s. The band spent months in New
Jersey amidst what Patrick calls the
“highlight of his musical career,” but
he soon grew tired of being broke and
hungry and returned to Montreal.
During his time with both Naked
Lunch and Hotspur, Patrick was in
regular contact with a bassist named
Allan Embury, who was working at
a family-owned music store called
Golden Imports. Embury introduced
Patrick to Marty Golden and his
brother, Sam, and Patrick soon began
taking shifts at the store.
In 1972, Marty left Golden Im-
ports and music retail to found JAM
Industries, which has since grown
into an MI distribution juggernaut
with Patrick along for virtually every
step of the journey. In the mid-‘90s, he
was promoted to his current post as
GM with Erikson Music, which has
been his official title ever since.
“Music is of course what drew
me to this industry and is still a big
draw,” Patrick enthuses. “I’m sur-
rounded by ‘toys’ and people who
love to talk ‘toys,’ but the relationships
I’ve developed and the friends I’ve
made both here at JAM and around
the world have made it a thoroughly
enjoyable ride as well.”
Among the highlights of a long
and storied career are the global
destinations he’s visited, including
a particularly memorable trip to
Japan with Golden for a Christmas
party at one of their guitar factories.
“The MC was up speaking to several
hundred workers and all of a sudden
everyone was looking at us,” Patrick
recalls. “The guy was saying, in Japa-
nese of course, that Marty and I were
famous Canadian musicians and
that we would play for them, so we
dutifully got up and played together
for the first time ever. I remember
he had to play a pretty bad electric
piano with missing keys and the gui-
tar I had was pretty bad too, but we
played a 12-bar blues thing and got a
standing ovation. Famous in Japan!”
Another came just a few years
ago when JAM received a shipment
of guitars with misplaced bridges.
Destroying them didn’t feel right, so
JAM’s Eddy Shenker found an orga-
nization that supplied instruments
to indigenous people in the north
and they donated about 60 repaired
guitars to various village schools.
Patrick was invited to present the
instruments to Grand Chief Stan
Beardy of Nishnawbe Aski Nation
at Government House in Toronto
and performed a rendition of “Here
Comes the Sun” for the dignitaries.
Outside the office, Patrick and
his wife of 42 years, Elizabeth, enjoy
their time together, travelling when-
ever the opportunity presents itself.
Music is still his number one passion
and he still picks up his guitar at least
once a day. He also enjoys photogra-
phy and keeping active with tennis
and his “old-timers” ball hockey
league.
And to this day, there’s not a
morning that begins with anything
but enthusiasm ahead of his short
commute to work.
“The most enjoyable part of the
job after all these years is thinking
back to how it all started,” he rem-
inisces. “When you walk by JAM’s
Wall of Fame that recognizes people
for their years of service, you see just
how many have been here for 5, 10,
15, 20, or 30-plus years and realize
that this is a great place that passion-
ate people have chosen to call home”
– and few for as long as he has.
Andrew King is the Editor-in-Chief
of Canadian Music Trade.