Greg Kerr (June 28, 1969 – June 28, 2022)

I’m not sure what happened yet, but Ottawa cartoonist and musician Greg Kerr died at the end of June, and on his fifty-third birthday, no less. I don’t want to believe it.

I first encountered Greg’s work through his self-published BUNCHA STORIES chapbook-sized comics (almost in a Chester Brown Yummy Fur vein, offering separate issues of stand-alone but interconnected stories) at Crosstown Traffic in the Glebe, these small roughly-made first-person comics of drinking and other ridiculous adventures. I was immediately struck by the energy of Greg’s work, and his ability to tell stories. The comics were rough, but he understood narrative, and how to pace out the action. He was really good at telling stories, whether through comics or in-person. During that period, I knew an editor at Carleton University’s weekly newspaper, The Charlatan, who was letting me do whatever I wanted in their centre spread, so managed to find a contact with Greg and meet up for an interview (which allowed me to meet him in person for the first time), which can be found online here. He did give me the original of his illustration of me interviewing him, but unfortunately, that, along with my personal copies of the piece, disappeared after a particular move. Not long after that, he even did a back cover illustration for one of my chapbooks.

Most of my encounters with Greg were on the streets of Ottawa’s Centretown, throughout the 1990s and into the aughts, encountering him randomly on the street or at the original Royal Oak Pub on Bank Street, just by MacLaren. My interactions with Greg were always positive, always random, always a bit ridiculous. On the surface he seemed quiet, almost shy, his comics allowing for a more outgoing, gregarious (so to speak) self. A personal favourite was a single-panel comic displaying, basically, all the things he realized he now owned after a particularly rowdy evening of drink, a list that included “a chair from McDonalds,” a traffic barricade light and other completely random items. He later drew me a couple of times, including an “author photo” included on the cover of my first full-length poetry collection with Broken Jaw Press, back in spring 1998. At one point, during the stretch of years I wrote daily at a Dunkin’ Donuts at Bank and Gloucester (where a Tim Horton’s now sits), he wandered by and displayed a pair of hugely oversized trousers he referred to as “Czechoslovakian winter pants” (large enough that four or five of us could have comfortably fit simultaneously within), purchased while drunk from Irving Rivers that they wouldn’t allow him to return. At another point, he wandered by with a Yogi Bear lamp sans lampshade that he gave me, although he paused to remove and keep the light bulb.

I kept this lamp for years, until I realized it required an electrical repair I’d never get around to. When I mentioned the lamp to Greg again, he had no recollection of any of it, and thought him taking the bulb back was confusing, hilariously funny, even mean. He laughed: Why did I take the bulb?

I spent the latter half of the 1990s most late afternoons and evenings at that particular Oak, usually working on fiction, and hanging around with whoever might be around. Greg would go in to socialize, and read the newspaper. We spent hours upon hours together. He once did a comic depicting a full day spent at the Royal Oak where he accidentally spent his entire paycheque, writing our pal Sunny further into the story and writing me out—I had been part of the first eleven hours of his twelve-hour misadventure, as he purchased round upon round of drinks for the two of us, finally switching to gin-and-tonics around 10pm. Because, as he said at the time, “beer takes; gin and tonic gives.” He eventually cut me off because I wasn’t drinking fast enough. Later, upon seeing the comic, I asked why he’d edited me out and he laughed, saying that he figured he’d drawn me enough.

Greg knew more trivia about WKRP in Cincinnati (the greatest television program of all time) than anyone else, and even produced a couple of comics around the show. Greg Kerr was a Centretown standard, even when he ended up moving to Gatineau. Do you remember rhat period of time when he’d be without a phone because he’d refuse to pay the phone bill and get disconnected? Eventually, Bell would convince him to reconnect, and they’d be off again, and he'd be cut off again after another period of months before they realized he had no intention of giving them any money. This went on for years, a cycle that seemed to be a strange kind of game that he delighted in, and Bell Canada never quite picked up on. Over the years, Greg performed in numerous bands, and worked in a restaurant kitchen or two (where the head chef would put on CFRA Talk Radio’s right-wing provocateur Lowell Green, which prompted Greg to fume every morning at work).

During the period he was part of the band The Deadbeat Dads, they were an episode’s guest-band on The Tom Green Show (during Tom’s Rogers Ottawa days), and started an off-camera fight during taping. If you watch that particular episode, you can hear a scuffle, as Tom turns from the camera and looks to his right. Apparently, after that, the floor director would warn bands not to cause problems during taping, thanks to their scuffle. Apparently, as Greg claimed later on, he just saw bandmate Scott Fairchild’s “big ugly red head” in front of him on stage, “and just had to hit it” with his bass. And that was that.

Greg made comics. I even produced an above/ground press title at one point, Drunkboy Stories (1997), around the time I was publishing his comics regularly in my journal Missing Jacket (the same comics he ended up re-selling, years later, to the Ottawa X-Press, actually). He was ridiculous and extremely fucking talented, without a speck of malice beyond a kind of impish impulse to cause trouble. He was curious, and I always wondered why he didn’t push to continue his comics; a kind of ambition that perhaps conflicted with his interests in doing other things, whether playing music or hanging out with friends or simply not worrying about any of that stuff. He was a good dude, and I will miss him.

A memorial for Greg Kerr will be held on SATURDAY AUGUST 6^th, 2022 (3pm to 7pm) at The Dominion Tavern, 33 York Street, Ottawa. Mark your calendars.

A series of author photos: rob mclennan by Kerr, McInnes and whist,

For years, I preferred the idea of cartoon depictions on the back covers of chapbooks and books, as opposed to professionally-done author photos. I spent a long period unhappy with any photographic depictions of myself, and thought that by asking comic artists irregularly to draw me for such would be far more interesting, and make a cool archive down the road. Since the early 1990s, various artists that have drawn or painted me include Greg Kerr, Gavin McInnes, Dave Cooper, Heather Spears, David Cation, Diane Woodward, Tom Fowler [see the amazing "engagement photo" he did for us here] and the artist once known as emily whist (for years, I’ve dreamed of the possibility of an author sketch by Adrian Tomine or Kate Beaton, but so far, nothing yet). There was even a quick sketch once done by the poet George Murray that I used for a chapbook at one point. Here are a couple of examples I’ve discovered, while preparing my archives for the University of Calgary.

I originally met Ottawa artist and musician Greg Kerr through the small self-published comics he sold through Crosstown Traffic, Buncha Stories, immediately reaching out to write a short piece on him for The Charletan, during that period (circa 1993) I was writing regularly for Carleton University’s paper. Kerr drew a number of depictions of me over the years (most of which I’m still digging around my archive for), but he drew this one specifically for my first Broken Jaw Press publication, the chapbook Poems from the Blue Horizon (1994).

The “donut” reference on the coffee cup in the drawing refers to the fact that I wrote for a number of years in a Dunkin’ Donuts on Bank Street, where he used to occasionally visit me (after it closed, the location became a Tim Hortons, currently at the corner of Bank and Gloucester Streets). Without space in my shared house to write, I wrote six days a week, five hours a day in that donut shop (from 10am until 3pm) from roughly May, 1994 (after it opened) to June 2000 (when it closed), and most of my first few published books were composed in that donut shop window. During that period, I wrote poems and reviews in the donut shop, and fiction during occasional evenings at The Royal Oak.

Greg Kerr later on had a comic strip included in the visual art and literary journal I produced in the mid-1990s, Missing Jacket, and above/ground press produced a small comic of his, Drunkboy Stories (May, 1997). For a short time, his strips were included in the Ottawa X-Press, but, despite his loyal legion of Ottawa fans, nothing since.

Gavin McInnes sketched this mocking image of me for the seventh issue of STANZAS (above/ground press, November, 1995). The portrait gives the impression he didn’t have high opinions of either myself, poets or Toronto, but he claimed later that it was mockery, and he was shocked that I had actually published the thing. Why not? At that point, McInnes was self-producing a small comic zine he sold through Crosstown Traffic, but hadn’t yet started up at Vice Magazine. He later appeared on at least one panel on Politically Incorrect, and has recently produced a series of strange, short and amazing videos.

For a period after that, McInnes was co-producing a comic strip with Dave Cooper, who still keeps in touch with him.

emily whist was the pseudonym of the Ottawa artist Rob Nelms, said to be part of the family that owned and operated Nelms Opticians. I originally saw his artwork in the strangest corners of the University of Ottawa during the period I took a poetry workshop there, the 1992-1993 academic year. He had produced a series of very strange images, put them on stickers, and hid them throughout washrooms, on billboards, and various other locales.

I don’t recall specifically how I ended up meeting him, but this image was drawn on a paper placemat as I sat with Rob and his partner for a couple of minutes around midnight, at a Chinatown restaurant at the corner of Somerset Street West and Bronson Avenue. They were having dinner, and I was slowly making my way home from something, slightly or even somewhat intoxicated (I must have been wearing my "Go Fish" t-shirt that night, produced by another Ottawa artist from that period).

He was another who drew me more than once, and he even gifted a package of artwork I was free to use for various above/ground press chapbooks. I used fragments of his artwork on Natalee Caple’s poetry chapbook, The Appetites of Tiny Hands (Nov 26, 1997), the WHIPlash 2 reader (the anthology of the second annual WHIPlash poetry festival, June 1997) and various issues of the long poem journal STANZAS, including meghan lynch (now Meghan Jackson)’s “inside     first floor         at the randomization factory” (issue #13; June 1997) and ryan fitzpatrick’s “further revisions” (issue #25; July 2001).

He had large-scale paintings that once hung in galleries all over Ottawa, and he and his partner were the core of the most amazing noise-band, The Kittenling Foundation, who once performed as part of the second annual WHIPlash poetry festival in 1997. Their performance included a Theremin, singing, noise and a toaster. Stories of what happened to him after that vary, and are mostly unverified. Needless to say he was damned talented, incredibly strange, well-liked, and, bafflingly, simply disappeared.

The Dirty Dozen, Open Book: Ontario

For the sake of the reading Christine McNair and I are doing in St. Catharine’s, Ontario tonight (and tabling tomorrow at the Virus Book Fair, with various above/ground press and Chaudiere titles, as well as my own titles and her own recent BookThug), Open Book: Ontario was good enough to post this "questionless" interview with me yesterday, and another with Christine, the day before. Thanks, Open Book!

After going through my list of twelve things folk might not know about me (only one of which Christine didn’t know, which I was a bit frustrated by), I thought of a few other bits I could add to the list. Am I just pushing myself to find bits that Christine might not have known? Possibly.

13. I have been the subject for a number of artists, photographers and illustrators over the years, whether formal or informal, nearly all of which I have been extremely pleased with, and many of which I’ve slipped onto the back covers of various chapbooks and books. Some of those who have drawn, painted or photographed me have included Dave Cooper, Diane Woodward, John W. MacDonald, Charles Earl, Tom Fowler, Heather Spears, Patrik Jandak [see my post on such here], Robin Kelsey, Jenn Farr, Pearl Pirie, Gavin McInnis, Rob Nelms (Emily Whist), David Cation, Robert McTavish, Christine McNair, Heather Gilberds [her 2010 portrait of me, left] and Greg Kerr (there might possibly be one or two others I can’t recall at the moment).

Poet and Bookninja George Murray even did a sketch of me, quickly, once, that I put on the back of a chapbook, somewhere around 1997. I am still hoping, possibly, someday, to be able to include Kate Beaton and Adrian Tomine, but perhaps those are pipe dreams. I am hoping someday to be able to collect all the pieces together in a single publication, perhaps. God only knows.

14. If I say that I situate myself somewhere between atheist and agnostic, it means I'm not sure what I don't believe.

15. I have a guitar in my possession (apparently) signed by the band Counting Crows. When Laurie Fuhr left Ottawa for the west over a decade back (she currently lives in Calgary, where she was, until recently, managing editor of filling Station magazine), she left it at my house for safekeeping. This is one of a series of guitars I’ve received from others, with my first in mid-teens from my cousin Patti (a Christmas present she received when I was pre-school age; it disappeared during a late 1990s break-in, resulting in Fuhr’s temporary offer of hers), a classical guitar from Stephen Brockwell, another from Marilyn Irwin, and a more recent acquisition (along with a lime green ukulele) from Sharon Harris.

It was years before Fuhr told me what the black marker scribbles on the face of her guitar meant, let alone by whom. When it finally gave up the ghost, I couldn’t throw it out, and even considered putting stamps upon, and shoving into a mailbox, just to see what might end up at her address in Calgary. I considered burying it in the woods, and photographing a small ceremony to send to her. Instead, it lives in our storage unit, waiting. Considering it isn’t mine to toss, how can I not keep it?

16. I can tell you from experience that being a Cub Scout when your ill-tempered mother is a Cub Leader is a terrible combination.

17. I taught Sunday school weekly, all the way through high school, and later ran a home daycare until my daughter Kate was nearly four. But these are most likely things you already know.