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Buckstone Hardware
Pack It In / You're Still Feelin' Better - 7"
Apex - 1969
Michael Panontin
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Jake Thomas first picked up his brother's guitar while he was just a kid in North Bay (ON), and by the age of seventeen he was already on the road touring northern towns like Timmins and Rouyn-Noranda (QC). He would even make his way down to Detroit for a spell, trying to make a living at what he called "the University of Blues and R&B". By 1967, he and a few buddies had formed a band called the Riffkin and had set their sights on the happening Yorkville scene down in Toronto.
Once established there, the band found a new manager, who updated their image to what Thomas described (to podcaster Tommy Solo) as "flowers and all the mod junk". That look hardly befitted a group of small-town boys steeped in roots music, "so we just ignored everything they said, put on blue jeans and t-shirts [and] called it Buckstone Hardware".
True to the times, the guys - Thomas along with singer Peter 'Swamp' Marsh, bassist Jacques 'Jocko' Chartrand, keyboardist Ralph 'Ma' Wiber and drummer Russell 'Weed' Franklin - rented a house in suburban Willowdale ("Our version of Big Pink" is how Thomas describes the place). In addition to the usual jamming, partying and freaking out the neighbours, they would get visits from Burton Cummings whenever the Guess Who came to town.
"I visited them every single time we went to Toronto, couldn't wait to hang out with them," Cummings wrote in a Facebook post. "We sailed into space and talked and talked and philosophized and solved all the problems of the ages, and sometimes listened to sounds."
Despite the vast difference in the groups' career trajectories - the Guess Who charted four singles in 1969 alone, including two US Gold Records - the influence was mutual. "The Floyd Cramer-type piano licks are something I kinda showed the piano player," Cummings revealed, "and 'Jocko' on bass...that's where I got the name Jocko for 'New Mother Nature'...it just sounded good."
It wasn't long before Buckstone Hardware entered Toronto Sound Studios, with up-and-coming producer Greg Hambleton at the controls, and recorded their first and only record, 'Pack It In'. It was released in April '69 and by July had climbed to an impressive #33 on RPM's Hot 100 chart, which makes a lot of sense given the song's honky tonk piano and its lazy, summery vibe. And that was without the help of Toronto's powerhouse pop radio station. "We were known as the jukebox hitmakers. We couldn't get airplay on CHUM because it was a little too country for them."
Buckstone Hardware played everywhere that year, including a week-long stint locally at The Electric Circus, at the Wonderland Pavillion in London (ON) with Muddy Waters and at the Freak Out Pop Festival north of Toronto in Aug. '69. They were even booked the following year to be part of the Festival Express cross-Canada extravaganza, with the Grateful Dead, the Band and Janis Joplin among others. But unfortunately that fame turned to footnote when the group decided to, um, pack it in, barely a month or so before it was scheduled to take place.
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