A mainstay of Winnipeg's music scene

Danny Gabbs, 74, sought spotlight in 1960s, '70s

By: Randall King

In the 1960s, in the years after the Beatles-led "British Invasion," it seemed every block in Winnipeg generated its own rock ’n’ roll band.

Daniel (Danny) Gabbs was at the epicentre of that scene. Indeed, he was in deeper than most.

A North End kid, Gabbs was a cousin of Randy Bachman, the guitarist-songwriter who would find fame with the Guess Who, and Bachman-Turner Overdrive. Gabbs was closer in age to Randy’s younger brother, Gary Bachman, and in their younger days, the two would often celebrate their April birthdays together.

Gabbs, who died Nov. 16, 2019, after battling cancer and Alzheimer’s disease, would have been 75 this year.

According to Bonnie Gabbs, somewhere along the way, her brother picked up playing the guitar — though she can’t recall if he had any instruction beyond a how-to book. Their father was a switch foreman for the Canadian National Railway, and money was too tight for formal lessons.

That didn’t stop Gabbs. On the musical front, he found his way to the spotlight as bass player for a band called Electric Banana ("Music with a-peel!"), and helped introduce legendary rock chanteuse Dianne Heatherington to adoring audiences.

"I remember they played mainly every Friday night at the Village Inn, and there were lineups to get in," Bonnie says of the Westwood-area pub. "People came an hour ahead of time. We got in because we were family, but if you didn’t come early, you didn’t come in. Diane really gathered them in there."

Gabbs helped a few others coming up, as well.

"I was 16 when I met him first," says Juno Award-winning singer-songwriter Graham Shaw, on the phone from his lakefront property in Chatham-Kent, Ont.

"I don’t even know how I hooked up with them," but Gabbs was there for his first professional gig, Shaw says.

"This was in 1966. I played organ with them, so I was playing bars when I was 16. They let me play, but I’d have to leave between sets."

Shaw recalls the older musician acted as a protective brother.

"He taught me how to drive. He was really old, like, 21," Shaw says with a laugh. "A very, very, very nice man. He introduced me to a couple of girls at 16, which was quite an adventure for me."

Gabbs was soaked in the culture of the time and place, he says. "It was a bit of a hotbed in the North End, north of Inkster (Boulevard). It’s just part of the culture."

Shaw’s experience ran parallel with another Winnipeg musician, John Einarson, who would become the principal chronicler of the city’s music scene, penning biographies of Bachman, Neil Young, and the Guess Who, among others.

"I was 17 years old when I first met Danny," Einarson recalls. "He called me up, I guess, in late spring or early summer of 1970. He wanted me to join his band, and I was 17, and, at that time, you had to be 21 to get into pubs. I said, I just can’t."

Einarson did end up playing in local pubs that year anyway, with a band called Euphoria. When Electric Banana and Euphoria were double-booked at the Maryland Hotel, they finally got to meet face-to-face.

"It’s like he took me under his wing," Einarson recalls. "He took me into the coffee shop and he had so much advice.

"He shared his experience and his knowledge with this green kid who had not done this kind of thing before, which again endeared me and probably 100 other musicians who have that same experience with Danny, where he really was just wanting to help people," he says.

"Danny certainly was well-positioned because he was playing in the pubs for a few years. He was certainly a mainstay in the Winnipeg music scene, and he was well-loved. He kind of flew under that radar."

Gabbs would later marry Janet Guertin, and have two children: daughter Michèle (Mia) Perrier and son Kristjan Gabbs. He was also the father of Reagan Gross, who tragically was the city’s first homicide victim of 2020, a couple of months after Gabbs died.

In his later days, Bonnie connected with her brother over games of pickleball. At the Sunova Centre, she would organize games and play a selection of music "and Danny would sing along with all the songs."

Gabbs almost always carried a harmonica with him, she says, ready to hop on stage at a moment’s notice. "He always said, ‘Before I die, I want to play harmonica and jam with (Randy Bachman), but he never did get a chance to do that."

"The thing about Danny is, he was one of those musicians who never made it to the first tier," says Einarson. "He was always kind of a second-tier musician with the bands that he played with.

"But I don’t think there’s anybody who would ever consider him a second-tier guy: he was top rate."

randall.king@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @FreepKing