Michael MacRae, co-owner of Toronto's Horseshoe Tavern.Marty MacDougall/Handout
In the 1980s and into the 90s, unproven Canadian music acts had to go through Michael (X-Ray) MacRae to get a gig at the landmark Horseshoe Tavern in Toronto. The burly, bearded talent buyer had an ear for the best sounds around. He was an amateur drummer; if his chubby fingers tapped the desk as he listened to an audition tape, a band had a chance.
His office in the venue’s dungeon-like basement was cluttered with cassette tapes that left just enough room on his desk for a computer he used for solitaire and nothing else. A young artist’s goal was literally just to get their foot in his door.
“It was quite a threshold in those days,” said Greg Keelor of Blue Rodeo, a now popular band that cut its teeth in the city’s nascent Queen Street West music scene in the mid-1980s. “You’d walk into his office with your tape in hopes of getting a gig at the Horseshoe.”
If the Horseshoe was the place to play, Mr. MacRae was one of the reasons why. He, along with Kenny Sprackman and Richard Kruk, had resurrected the bar and backroom for music from its darkest days. In 1982, a week before it was to celebrate its 35th anniversary, the venue that played host to Stompin’ Tom Connors, Teenage Head, the Police and Loretta Lynn briefly went dark. The familiar marquee disappeared. A new name and business plan – Stagger Lee’s, with a retro 1950s aesthetic – did not take.
Enter the jolly, industrious trio of Mr. Sprackman, Mr. MacRae and Mr. Kruk, officially known as the X-L Boys for the size of clothes they required. They took over the day-to-day business and eventually ownership from a number of unsuccessful operators including Marcus O’Hara. The brother of singer Mary Margaret O’Hara and actor Catherine O’Hara held horseshoes tournaments in the back alley and reportedly sold his interest in the bar for a lifetime of free drinks.
Mr. MacRae with Wayne Gretzky.Marty MacDougall/Handout
While the bottom-line conscious Mr. Sprackman overhauled the Horseshoe’s business model, Mr. MacRae looked after the talent with special attention paid to young rock and alt-country acts. Blue Rodeo and the Tragically Hip were just two of the bands he fostered at the Horseshoe. Later he had a stake in the nearby Ultrasound Showbar, another hotspot for up-and-coming Canadian talent.
“When you look at popular music today, a lot of it is X-Ray’s stuff,” Mr. Sprackman said. “He was a player in the industry, and he was the guy who ultimately decided whether you got to play.”
Mr. MacRae, a bigger-than-life character who parlayed a love of music into a colourful, windblown career that guidance counsellors could not fathom, died Jan. 26, of cancer, at Rideaucrest nursing home in Kingston. He was 72.
Mr. MacRae loved roots music, road trips and barbecued meals. He hung out with rock stars and Hollywood actors – “He had a bit of that celebrity dust on him,” said Mr. Keelor – and he enjoyed talking about his high-profile pals and acquaintances. A restaurant on the ground floor of the building that held the Ultrasound above on the second floor was named X-Rays in his honour.
His professional life began in the 1970s in Kingston, where he owned the record shop Used Grooves and tended bar and booked live acts at Dollar Bill’s, a saloon within the historic Prince George Hotel. It was there he met a young comedic actor and blues aficionado who would become a lifetime friend and associate.
“X and I closed many a dawn at Dollar Bill’s,” Dan Aykroyd told The Globe and Mail.
Blue Rodeo and the Tragically Hip were just two of the bands Mr. MacRae fostered at the Horseshoe.Handout
Their friendship was forged during the time Mr. Aykroyd’s star was ascending in the 1970s as an original cast member of NBC’s hit late-night comedy series Saturday Night Live. Years later, Mr. MacRae told the Toronto Star’s Rosie DiManno that he never watched the ground-breaking show himself: “I was always working on Saturday nights.”
Mr. MacRae’s nickname apparently had to do with basketball. Though his heft and surgeries on his ankles as a child impeded his own athleticism, he was the non-playing manager of the basketball team at Kingston’s St. Lawrence College, where he studied business administration. In the 1988 Toronto Star interview he said he picked up a ball in the gymnasium one day and improbably swished a long-range set shot: “I bent down and put an X on the floor. That was 16 years ago and I’ve been X-Ray ever since.”
Mr. MacRae enjoyed six years at Dollar Bill’s, before the owner’s decision to switch to disco music cost him his job. Then his friend Mr. Kruk invited him to Toronto to help him run the storied music club at 370 Queen St. West. According to David McPherson’s book The Legendary Horseshoe Tavern, Mr. MacRae arrived in the country’s biggest city on April Fool’s Day in 1984 with only $200 in his pocket. Homeless, he slept on a friend’s floor for six months.
Along with others, Mr. MacRae helped revitalize the Horseshoe into the adored music venue and dive bar it is today. “It has a certain cachet,” said Jake Gold, manager of the Tragically Hip. “If you consider yourself a real band, you have to play the Horseshoe.”
In 1988, Mr. Gold had implored MCA Records artist and repertoire man Bruce Dickinson – outrageously portrayed by Christopher Walken in the famous SNL cowbell sketch – to fly from New York to Toronto to see the unsigned Tragically Hip perform. The band was scheduled to play two songs at the Toronto Music Awards at Massey Hall on a Friday, but Mr. Gold wanted a more substantial showcase in order to impress the illustrious American talent scout.
The problem? Finding a venue in which the Hip could audition for Mr. Dickinson on short notice. Mr. MacRae solved the problem by opening up the Horseshoe’s backroom early to facilitate a quick Saturday-night gig ostensibly for an audience of one (although the room was full of fans and other record label representatives).
The Hip played the show, was signed by Mr. Dickinson and soon after broke big in Canada. Years later the group wrote the song Bobcaygeon, with lyrics that referenced the Horseshoe’s checkerboard floors.
Mr. MacRae stopped walking those floors in the late 1990s when current part-owner Jeff Cohen bought out his shares in the venue. He would get out of the business entirely, working for Mr. Aykroyd in Los Angeles instead.
“He was instrumental in helping my wife and I raise our three daughters,” said the star of The Blue Brothers, whose showbiz career often kept him away from home. “He was my wife’s majordomo, and he also gave the girls the gift of music by making them playlists.”
A country boy at heart, he was born on Jan. 19, 1952, in bucolic Picton, Ont., even if his birth certificate listed Kingston. His mother, Rhea MacRae (née Shane), was a nurse; his father, Duncan MacRae, was a salesman and businessman. Together they ran a gas station and store in the quaint village of Harrowsmith, Ont.
As an adult, Mr. MacRae had a farmhouse in Hay Bay, Ont.Marty MacDougall/Handout
As an adult, Mr. MacRae had a farmhouse in Hay Bay, Ont., where his pride and joy was a Massey Ferguson 165 tractor. The weekend retreat became his home upon retirement.
He leaves a brother, Terry MacRae, and a sister, Sandra Breen. Though serious health issues dogged his final years, he stayed in character even on recurring trips to emergency rooms. He had always loved to hold court and continued to do so from hospital beds.
“That was his thing,” Mr. Sprackman said. “He travelled in high circles, with movie stars and other famous friends, and he enjoyed telling stories about it.”
One of his life’s passions had been to jump in a pickup truck or on a Harley Davidson motorcycle with friends and a case of beer but no map. Mr. MacRae, who never married, freewheeled.
“He’d go off not knowing the destination,” Mr. Aykroyd said, “taking roads he did not know.”
Editor’s note: A previous version of this article incorrectly reported Michael MacRae’s age. This version has been updated.
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Brad Wheeler