Actor enjoys stay in Hub City, says he would welcome invitation back
By ROD ALLEN
TIMES & TRANSCRIPT STAFF
Published Thursday December 13th, 2007
After four tempestuous days, ‘Aykroydmania’ finally blew out of New Brunswick yesterday afternoon and was last seen bearing down on Prince Edward Island at high speed.
At NB Liquor’s Paul Street outlet yesterday, word had obviously spread far and wide about Aykroyd’s 11 a.m. gig there, since the line-up started when the store opened at 9 a.m.
Inside, as he has done all week at NB Liquor outlets in Fredericton and Saint John, the world-renowned Canadian comic actor of Blues Brothers fame signed just over 1,000 bottles of his Aykroyd Cabernet-Merlot and Chardonnay wines.
It would have been more had the province not run out of bottles — NB Liquor spokeswoman Norah Lacey said yesterday that outlets in the other two cities sent all their remaining stock to add to Paul Street’s horde — and Aykroyd out of time.
Unfortunately, concern over making his next gig in Charlottetown yesterday afternoon, a very long lineup of 500 people at opening time and some confusion at the door resulted in some people not getting an opportunity to have items signed.
The signing was supposed to go two hours and conclude at 1 p.m., but Aykroyd and his band stayed an extra two hours to meet as many people as possible.
Lacey explained that the actor’s stays in Fredericton and Saint John could be extended a little longer than Moncton’s because yesterday’s schedule was the only one that had two stops, and those stops stretched over two provinces and the Northumberland Strait.
Lacey added that Aykroyd’s bus was moving at a pretty good clip when it left town.
One can only speculate that the actor’s close relationship with police officers — he’s a badge-carrying honorary member of a municipal police department in the United States — might stand him in good stead.
But if Metro Moncton was not able to top its sister cities in the number of bottles they could convince the affable and ever-accommodating Aykroyd to sign, they at least came up Number One in the department of body-part signatures.
Aykroyd signed a Blues Brothers tattoo on a man’s leg in Fredericton and a pregnant woman’s belly in Saint John but managed two in Moncton, a woman’s butterfly shoulder tattoo and a reporter’s follicular-challenged head.
For the record, it is a time-honored tenet among journalists to avoid becoming part of the story, but there’s another one that says rules are meant to be broken.
Also for the record, Aykroyd remarked that the proffered pate was “better looking than some breasts I’ve signed,” eliciting peals of laughter from the adoring crowd and furious blushes from the crustiest of scribes, now at last able to live up to the generic title of ‘ink-stained wretch.’
There was much, much, more: movie posters, CDs, DVDs and a United Church minister’s clerical collar among the mix.
Aykroyd also led the house in a cheer for Moncton-stationed soldier Darrell Zinck, who made the news last year as the beneficiary of a local kindergarten class’s Christmas sock sent to Zinck on one of his tours in Afghanistan.
Meanwhile, let it not be said that Aykroyd, very much a man of the people who loves to mingle, merely stopped in Moncton, signed his bottles of Aykroyd wine and Patron Tequila and moved on.
Aykroyd blew into town Tuesday night and true to his word, he did the town right, staying at the Delta Beauséjour Hotel and visiting several of downtown’s finest establishments, including the Old Triangle ’round midnight.
“He heard Van Morrison playing on the outside speakers and that’s what drew him in,” said Steve Gallagher, owner of the prominent Main Street venue.
“He grabbed a snug in the back of the pub and invited me and a few friends to join them. They stayed until the wee hours and left a three-figure tip.”
Earlier, “Dan showed up about 8 p.m. and stayed for nearly four hours,” said Steve Gallant, proprietor of Rouge Resto-Club on Robinson Court.
“We had a live band and Dan actually got up on stage and sang a song before a fully packed house. Our guests were blown away.”
After the Island, Aykroyd continues his Atlantic Canadian tour for a few more days before heading back home to Kingston, but he might be back in Moncton some day.
The co-founder of the House of Blues bars, which are usually affiliated with casinos, says he’s open to an invitation if Metro sees a casino project this year.
“I’d be interested in bringing my band, the Blues Brothers Formal Classic Revue with the blood brother of Jake Blues, aka Jim Belushi, to Moncton for the opening of your casino,” he said yesterday.
“I would love to come back and do that.”
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