Spill the Beanz — a Friday jam with a bit of a difference

Craig Bakay | Nov 20, 2019

Back in the day, John Fradenburgh was part of the Toronto music scene. These days, he runs a coffee house/music store in Northbrook.

The musician in him remains strong as does his desire to play with other musicians. That’s probably why he invites a bunch of them over on the third Friday of each month (from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m.) for a bit of a jam. Essentially everyone’s invited, whether you play or not.

“I go back a million years, playing in rock’n’roll bands in the ’60s and ’70s (such as Donnie and the Corvairs),” he said. “I was known as a drop-in drummer — anything, any style.

“I was even in a polka band.”

These days, he’s pretty much settled in on bass, but he can play most instruments.

“I got tired of lugging drums around,” he said. “And on drums, you don’t get your name in lights.

“And, you’re in the back and if you get flashed, you have to be paying attention.

“I’ve been flashed about 20 times and each time I wasn’t paying attention.”

He did spend many years in the garage business (“I’m still a licenced mechanic”), from 1976 to 1990 in Brampton and Mississauga. But he and his wife at the time bought a cottage on 41 just north of Bon Echo.

“My wife always wanted a Yarn Store so we opened up Log Cabin Yarns,” he said. “I said ‘let’s start a music store’ so we were music and yarn.

“In 2012, my wife left and I didn’t want yarn so we just started selling coffee.”

Fradenburgh is hardly a newcomer to the local music scene however. He and a group of friends started up The Old Farts and were known to play regularly in places like the old Northbrook Hotel. They also hosted an open mike there.

But, as bands do, that one sort of dissolved of natural causes and this past spring, he decided to start up monthly jams again with Spill the Beanz becoming magnetic north for such things.

“We started off with country but I’m a rocker, Johnny B. Goode,” he said. “But I’ve learned a few country tunes.”

The format at Spill the Beanz tends to be an ‘anything goes.’ There’s no house band per se, essentially just Fradenburgh on bass and whoever shows up.

“Whatever you want to play, we’ll play,” he said. “It just can’t be too loud.”

And some people drive quite a ways to sit in with Fradenburg.

Dale O’Hara came from the other side of Belleville to jam.

“At most open mikes, you get two or three songs and then you sit down,” he said. “Here, I can do 10 if I want to.

“It’s a fairly long drive but it’s worth it.”