As of this writing, Gate is 83 and living in an apartment in Ottawa. His wife Jean died a few years ago. He's surviving this awful pandemic, alone with his spirit and his guitar. I first met him in 1990 the day I first visited the Connors estate but reconnected with him in 2017 when I interviewed him for my book, My Good Times With Stompin’ Tom.
That was a long conversation. All conversations with Gate are long come to think of it. He has the gift of gab. It’s always a joy speaking with him. He usually has a lot to say. Combine that with an impressive memory and we more often than not delving into his Stompin’ Tom story memory bank. No one knows more stories than Gate. No one goes back as far as Gate (1964).
His memory somehow survived all those “ years of cheers and beers”. * (thanks to Bruce and Brian Good for that line from their song, Shooting Star, about Stompin’ Tom and Whiskey Jack). Gate lived through those years with his eyes open. If he didn’t use a camera, he used a pen and wrote them down. He wrote a lot of songs during those years so the stories are hidden there also. At 5000 songs and counting, he has an encyclopedia of memories to choose from.
On that 2017 conversation with Gate, I learned a lot. His routine of writing one song a day was in full force. He spoke of his numerous visits to Nashville and the subsequent publishing of some of his songs by Acuff-Rose, one of the biggest and most prestigious publishing houses in the world.
He also mentioned in passing that he and T.C. Connors wrote many songs together, a habit they began when they first met in 1964. I knew this of course. The album Long Gone To The Yukon is one of my favourites and the two of them co-wrote most of those songs. As the conversation progressed, it came out that Gate has a folder/file/box with 15 more songs they co-wrote and that were never released, recorded or published.
As of this writing, I'm going through each of these songs and going through them, one by one, in search of a good key and rhythm, making sure these are all compatible with the lyrics Gate gave me. Sometimes I have to adjust a line here and there. My end game is to complete this process with as many of them as I can and record them for release, perhaps here on this blog.
My heart skipped a beat. These could be gold thought I. Over the years, Tom’s routine was to take the Lepine/Connors songs, register them with SOCAN and officially publish them and/or record them.