CRESTWYND, Sask. – When dances ended, people would sometimes pass the hat around to collect money to keep the Johnson family band playing.
“If it was a good crowd, we would go another hour,” said Howie Johnson of his band’s heyday in the 1970s and 1980s..
The band provided hours of dancing entertainment for 40 years in the Crestwynd district and throughout southern Saskatchewan.
Howie played the guitar and announced, with his wife Brenda handling the keyboard and his parents, Bill and Thelma, on the saxophone and base guitar.
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Over the years, the band included Howie’s brothers, Ron on drums and Tom on piano, and even future Saskatchewan premier Lorne Calvert. The band was known as Lorne and the Country Acres until Calvert left in 1973.
They played music from 1920s to 1950s song sheets, an assortment of old time round dances Bill and Thelma loved, grew up with and danced to whenever they got the chance.
Bill doesn’t care much for today’s music, saying, “It nashes my nerves.”
Siblings Cathy and Carol were too young to play, said Thelma, who recalled laying the children down behind the drums to sleep for the night while the band played.
“They’d sleep real good until we stopped playing then they’d wake up,” she said.
They played from 8 p.m. to 2 a.m., shortening up those hours in the later years, then packing up and driving home.
“We used to leave at 3 a.m. and get home by 6 a.m. and a lot of the time I’d go spraying because the sun was up by then,” said Howie.
They played most weekends and sometimes Thursday to Saturday during the busy Christmas season. One year, they played 70 dances, weddings and anniversaries and festivals.
“We married off most of the community,” said Howie.
They proudly cited their performance at 38 consecutive New Year’s Eve bashes, where they started playing their first gig for about $50. That grew to about $1,000.
“When we started, we would have paid people for us to be there,” said Howie.
The Johnsons say the band kept their children busy and out of trouble and allowed them to be together. In addition to performing, the family farmed full time and Bill worked in road construction in the winter.
The band boosted the family’s income and provided spending money for the children, with the money divided between all involved.
The Johnson children studied music, but there was no money for such luxuries for Thelma and Bill who grew up in large families. Thelma came from a family of 14 children.
“I got a how-to book,” said Bill. “I never learned to play by music(scores). I learned to play by ear.”
Thelma and Bill confessed to jitters in the early days but found being part of a group made it easier. Thelma preferred to stay in the shadows on stage and Bill learned to follow along with his bandmates.
“We were there as a family group, we all supported one another,” said Thelma. “We didn’t do it to show we were important, we felt they (audience) were important.”
“As long as they were having fun, I felt good,” added Bill.
The band had its share of hecklers, drunks and critics, those who wanted to sing or those who wanted them to play slower or faster.
A bad night was when no one was dancing or only dancing after they got drunk, they said.
“The more you drink, the better we look and the better we sound,” said Howie, grinning.
High school graduations never worked out because younger crowds were looking for top 40 hits. Large halls or ones with poor acoustics were another challenge for the band, which came with amplifiers and limited gear.
“We kept it simple, whatever we could carry in with our two hands. Within 10 minutes, we could play,” said Howie.
They survived storms and bad weather and ran out of gas but missed only one gig, even when Howie and Brenda got in a car accident. He was dizzy and Brenda’s nose was bleeding,and after the dance, Howie was diagnosed with a broken neck.
Another time, he was pinned under his rod weeder for two hours before anyone found him with a broken ankle. That night, he left the hospital to perform and returned afterward.
Howie also recalled playing while his wife was in labour, getting home just in time to take her to the hospital.
In addition to weather and sickness, the Johnsons also survived the era of disco and line dancing.
“They were times when we wondered why we were doing this,” said Howie.
“We didn’t change our style and it was up to those hiring us to know their crowd.”
The band doesn’t play together anymore but Howie and Brenda continue to perform when called upon.
Looking back, the Johnsons think they left their mark.
“I felt we were contributing to the district we were in and I felt a little proud we were able to contribute,” said Thelma.
Her son, Tom, a professor in rural development at the University of Missouri, said the family’s old-time music reached a lot of people.
“Music has been such a part of their life. They are a thread and a glue that runs through the community all those years. The community is richer because of people who provide these threads.”
