Episode 19: The Raconteur- Richard Flohil
At the age of 91, Richard Flohil is definitely enjoying his time in the spotlight. And why wouldn’t he? A lifelong manager, promoter, publicist and self-confessed “great connector of people”, he has spent his life singing the praises of others. Now, it’s his turn.
Flohil has crafted his seven decades in the music business into a one hour show he calls “War Stories”. The show changes every time he performs; having rubbed shoulders (and other body parts) with many of the greatest names in the music industry, each half-finished tale sparks another. And does he ever have stories to tell.
His own story begins as a teenager in 1940’s England, where he somehow developed a deep love for the distant sounds of American Blues. From there it moves to Chicago, and then north to Canada, where in 1957 he arrived in Toronto with $300 in his pocket, and was instantly smitten by the thriving music scene.
His has been a lifetime spent in smoky night clubs, run down juke joints, and far flung music festivals (over 300, and counting). Always searching for new talent and promising acts as varied as Muddy Waters, B.B. King, Nana Moskouri, Ani di Franco, K.D. Lang, The Downchild Blues Band, Shakura S’Aida…the list goes on and on.
A walk with Richard is like a walk back in time. Start strolling, and the stories pour out in a never ending stream.
Miles Davis tried to buy his car to skip out on a gig. Benny Goodman was “miserable as sin”. Chuck Berry would only play an encore “if you slipped cash under his dressing room door”. And The Chieftains were “a feckless bunch of good time people who drank a lot”. Keep walking, and he’ll tell stories of working with Eric Idle, Alice Cooper, David Crosby, and Billy Connolly.
As a nonagenarian, he is a living repository of music history, and he tells his (often profane) stories with a twinkle in his eye, a delight in mischief, and with little regard to what anyone else thinks.
We begin our conversation back stage at the Calgary Folk Festival where, true to form, he’s speaking with a promising young performer named Nyssa who happened to mention she was pulling up stakes and moving to England.
Click below to listen in on our conversation.