AFTER a 15-year break, The Lumberjacks are back with their infectious three-for-the-price-of-one formula. They take a trip down memory lane with Kate Copstick
It has been 15 years since The Lumberjacks first came to Edinburgh. Now, in case any younger people are getting excited because they have a Lumberjack alert on their smartphone, no, these are not the American hip hop Lumberjacks, T Mo and Khujo, but the Canadian ho ho Lumberjacks – Stewart Francis, Craig Campbell and Glenn Wool. Not necessarily in that order.
1997 was not a great year for comedy, to be fair. Princess Diana and Mother Theresa died, there was a massacre at Luxor in Egypt and, perhaps in hindsight most chilling of all, Tony Blair was elected. But down in the Grassmarket, at least, something funny was stirring. The original Stand Comedy Club was born in the basement of the Grassmarket Bar. The Lumberjacks and I grab a table there for old time’s sake.
They claim to have been fresh-faced, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed back then. Strangely, Glenn Wool still is – a Dorian Grey of the comedy world and pretty much the poster boy for a life of drink, drugs and homelessness. Stewart Francis, star of stage and screen on this side of the Atlantic and the other, still doesn’t actually want to be a stand-up. “I’d give this up in a heartbeat,” he says. “It is just not really my personality.” What he really wanted – and wants, if anyone is interested – was to be a cartoonist. “I kept sending them off and no-one wanted them,” he says. And so he turned to stand-up.
“How great is it that you can have this as your fallback situation?” says Campbell, sipping Coke (Campbell is opening for Frankie Boyle tonight and wants to stay sharp. “I love Frankie’s audience,” he says. “It’s a real bearpit”). I frown. “Every sip of that a baby dies.” (I paraphrase Stewart Lee). “Can I try?” says Wool, reaching for the glass…
We troop downstairs to the actual basement room where The Stand first stood. There are around eight of us crammed into the space, now used for storage, and there is more beer here than people. “That’s just how I remember it,” says Campbell.
“Eight was fine,” they agree, “eight people meant you could eat.” However, 25, they remember, would sell the room out.
They still would play happily to an audience of eight, they say. “You have to think that those eight people have actually turned up … that they are there because they want to see you,” says Wool.
“You can’t take your disappointment out on your audience,” says Francis, who turns out to be as hardline about his comedy as he is one-line. Francis is a Value For Money comic to his core. Audience banter, endless riffing and navel-gazing by comics are “just pissing on your audience” he says. But he has his sensitive side. “I remember my first gig here,” he says. “I had called and called Tommy [Sheppard, Stand boss] and finally got a spot. And when I arrived, the board outside had all the comics’ names on it. And at the top was Stu Who. I thought they were having a go.”
Talking about VFM, the Lumberjacks offer you not just three comics for the price of one but a special guest each show, garnered from the top names in Edinburgh by the boys themselves. To be fair, Francis has garnered most names. Harry Hill was the opener, impressively. Wool, it would seem, has been collecting mainly female names, Francis points out. “And how many guests have you got us?” he enquires of Campbell. “Er, none so far,” says Campbell. The Francis eyebrows raise in mock despair.
We take one last lungful of beer fumes and comedy hopefulness and head to the Tron, which is where, it transpires, the first Lumberjacks gig actually played. They were originally a duo – Francis and Campbell – but Wool “just turned up and joined in”. The Stand gigs were late-night add-ons. As we leave the Grassmarket it would appear Wool has pulled. A chunky bloke from the end of the table is getting big hugs and invites to the show. It turns out he is the brother of the bloke who managed the Tron when the ’Jacks first lumbered into the Fringe. As we drive up to Hunter Square, Wool regales us with the tale of how this guy, the Tron’s comedy parts being compact to say the least, got his testicles trapped in a filing cabinet. I won’t go into detail. Wool, obviously, did.
Campbell, too, has fond memories of the Tron. He reminisces about how he used to call his mum from the phonebox in the square and how, after their first night, after he told her about the gig, she tremulously broke the news to him that his much-loved cat Squirty had died. “She said,” says Campbell, “‘I am so upset I don’t know whether I can go square dancing tonight.’” You can see where Campbell gets his legendary sensitivity.
As we swing down towards the chaos of roadworks that once was York Place, we all learn that Wool had actually been a professional stand-up for three years before joining the Lumberjacks – he had played almost every reservation and mining town in British Columbia (where having “entertainment” on allowed an establishment extended opening hours). That momentous year the combination of a winning scratchcard and a car accident insurance payout (“whiplash,” winks Wool) had left him with the financial wherewithal to go travelling. And the road led to Edinburgh.
Down at The Stand’s current home there is a frenzy of manly hugging and backslapping with Tommy Sheppard – “the only club owner who would make you toasted cheese sandwiches at two in the morning”, says Campbell.
When we meet, early in the Fringe, the boys have yet to see their new home at The Assembly Rooms on George Street, so we set off up the hill. “Do you have our stump?” is all they want to know. When they first came to Edinburgh they assumed that what Brits mainly associated with Canada was lumberjacks. Hence the name choice. Now, with their glorious return (by public demand, apparently, and not just because they are all far too old and tired now to retain an entire hour show each) they even have a lumberjack set.
As we enter what was the Music Hall, now a vision in corporate beige with barely the curve of a cornice in sight, the lads’ eyes light up. The room holds around 600 (“just a nice intimate number”, says Francis). In a back room there is an entire stage-tree in pieces. “Where’s our stump?” is all they want to know. The stump is there. There has been a slight technical misunderstanding as to the pre-show cinematic cavalcade of Great Canadians (including absolutely the cutest pictures of Craig Campbell, Stewart Francis and Glenn Wool ever seen in public) but nothing to worry about. They quickly work out their six minutes at the Assembly Rooms press launch.
“Five minutes,” says Sheppard. “Five? It was six,” says Campbell. “We’re being cut already,” gasps Francis.
I leave them dividing five minutes three ways and playing with their stump. Well, they are Lumberjacks and they are more than OK.
• Return of the Lumberjacks (Back by Poplar Demand), The Assembly Rooms, until 26 August. Today, 8:10pm.