By Mike Levin

Memory has a niche reserved for music. It’s called the MPC Room, for Medial Prefrontal Cortex, science’s term for the brain hub that links music, memories and emotion. But that’s the last thing anyone thinks of when a tune hits your ears, the hair on the back of your neck goes rigid and the rest of the world goes away.

It happened to Jon Bartlett on a road trip, with his new girlfriend. It might have been during 1997 or 1998; it could have been in California or New Brunswick. Bartlett isn’t sure because during one specific song, the rest of the world went away while he and his destined-to-be wife fell in love with the music. The same thing happened to Joe Hagan and his wife, also on a road trip. The music was similar in both cases: by a melody-driven singer/songwriter named Bill Fox.

Jon Bartlett. Photo by Mike Levin.

Bartlett, owner of Ottawa’s Kelp Records, and Hagan, a New York writer, have never met. But they are linked, not by an obsession, more by a nostalgic focus on Fox. The funny thing is, Fox was simply a three-year folk wonder in the mid-1980s with a band called The Mice, tried a brief resurrection in the late 1990s and had been a Dylan-esque recluse in Cleveland until last year. That didn’t faze Bartlett, who first tracked him down in 2003 and has spent seven years trying to get him up to Ottawa. This year he finally succeeded, and Fox is the performer-of-honour during Kelp’s three-day birthday celebration May 13-15.

“His melodies were beautiful, haunting even. Very few artists can instill that type of reaction. I’d put (his album) in people’s hands and tell them to listen to genius,” says Bartlett, who reviewed Fox’s solo Transit Byzantium for Exclaim! magazine in 1999, pretty much the only attention he’d received for a decade. “When we got married in 2003, I invited him to play (at the wedding). He was working at some telephone job. He didn’t even have a guitar.”

Hagan’s 2007 feature on Fox for The Believer magazine, also titled Transit Byzantium, reignited the industry’s interest. By last year, Fox was performing, irregularly, around Cleveland, and Bartlett figured he’d try again. His persistence won over Fox’s manager, and Ottawa now gets a chance to see the man Hagan calls “one of America’s greatest contemporary songwriters.”

Bill Fox. Photo courtesy of Bill Fox.

Fox will appear onstage of the Mayfair Theatre May 14 with Andrew Vincent and Leif Vollebekk, after playing Toronto’s Horseshoe Tavern May 12 with Vincent, Vollebekk and Chris Page, as well as Montreal’s Le Cagibi May 13 with Vincent and Beaver Sheppard.

All three shows are all part of Kelp’s anniversary, which also includes performances by Kelp anchor Jim Bryson and Chris Page May 13 at the Mayfair; by Flecton Big Sky, The Flaps, Andy Swan, The Secret Loves and Jenny Omnichord all day May 15 at the Carleton Tavern; by Rhume (Bartlett’s old band), Tres Bien Ensemble, Camp Radio and The Michael Parks May 15 during the evening at Raw Sugar; and by The White Wires late into the night May 15 at a yet-to-be-disclosed location.

Full information about these concerts is on Kelp’s Website.

Bartlett is persistent about a lot of things. He believes enough in energy efficiency to do policy consulting for companies like Battery Cycle. He’s finally starting to leverage his MBA by expanding the scope of Kelp’s operations to create additional revenue streams. But mostly he’s persistent about having a good musical time.

This is the 16th year he’s thrown his record label a multi-day party and is talking about getting back into his own singing and songwriting. “Life is pretty constant, and it’s been tough to finish things I started. This is an exciting time for music in Ottawa, and I want to be as much a part of it as I can.”