Ashley MacIsaac, the virtuosic and volatile Cape Breton fiddler who made self-destruction a public endeavour, popped up in Halifax to sign his new autobiography, Fiddling With Disaster, the first and last stop on a one-city book tour.
Owing to an unsteady history with the media and given the fact he is not a conventional promoter, both he and his publisher, Warwick, said there would be no interviews. But that did not stop Mr. MacIsaac from talking. And talking. And talking.
Seated at a small table at the rear of a downtown bookstore, Mr. MacIsaac had little else to do. Fewer than a dozen people showed for the signing, and it closed down early. Two security guards hired for the night made easy wages.
Having committed acts of defiance and vulgarity too numerous to list, Mr. MacIsaac is celebrating the recent paperback release of his tumultuous tale. A small summer tour to promote his latest, self-titled CD begins today in Hamilton and stops in Toronto on Canada Day. But the 28-year-old, clearly a tremendous but tortured talent, is not reinventing himself as a grownup.
Thursday evening he was chatty and contradictory, bloodshot and mellow. He appeared high as a kite, and held forth on a variety of subjects: his steady diet of marijuana, the benefits of drinking urine and the happy repeal of U.S. sodomy laws. He also said he might try to get married in Alberta this summer.
When someone asked how he would spend the rest of his evening, he replied: "I will wait with every passing moment, nervous fingers in my mouth, for the next issue of Frank."
It is tiring and yet fascinating. Is he for real? Is he playing for the reporter from the satirical biweekly? Does anyone care any more?
Mr. MacIsaac wandered into the Book Room, which has the distinction of being the country's oldest bookstore, to purchase a copy of his own book earlier this week. He asked the staff if he could do a signing in a few days. Reluctantly they agreed.
"We feel obliged to support authors, especially Canadian and Maritime authors, and we agreed to get the word out," Charles Burchell, the shop's proprietor, said. "But it was extremely short notice. We didn't know what the outcome would be. But he was extremely gracious."
It was a sticky night, but Mr. MacIsaac never doffed his baggy, black leather jacket. He looked naturally scruffy - as opposed to the studied scruff often preferred by musicians - in sneakers, ball cap, dingy white T-shirt and tattered jeans. He signed all 100 books in the store, which will likely have the only autographed copies in the country.
Considering the fiddler's past interactions with the public, which included flashing his privates on Late Night With Conan O'Brien in 1995, and shouting racist comments and inviting oral sex acts from the audience at a Halifax rave five years later, a book signing seemed a risky proposition.
"Yes, we realized things have happened in the past," Mr. Burchell said. "But I felt since he requested this himself it was something he wanted to do, so I didn't expect a problem. I think he's making a very sincere attempt to remake his image."
Mr. MacIsaac began fiddling at the age of 9 in his hometown of Creignish, Cape Breton. By the time he was a teenager, he was performing in local festivals to great acclaim. His first record, Hi, How Are You Today, released in 1995, was a huge crossover success, selling 200,000 copies in Canada.
But the drug use - he was addicted to crack cocaine and sold his fiddle for $25 while he was high, and struggling financially; he filed for personal bankruptcy in 2000 - abetted his undoing. He acted out, unapologetically, even enthusiastically, mocking the same public that had helped make him an international celebrity. But to his book-buying fans, Mr. MacIsaac was charming, even sweet.
When he discovered one young autograph-seeker who worked at Casino Nova Scotia, he launched into a story about how security had turned him away a few nights earlier.
"Were you drunk?" she asked.
"No, I don't drink," he said. "They said they didn't like the smell of me. I'd just smoked a joint. I told them I have medicinal needs."
The drugs and the gay sex and, yes, the music, are all chronicled in the book.
"There's a lot of shit in there I thought I might as well write myself and get paid for before someone else writes it," he said.
A short time later, the tiny trickle of fans at full stop, Mr. MacIsaac thanked everyone in the store politely and said goodbye, shuffling down the street, eyes to the sidewalk, headed who knows where.