Frantz stage set for Club Wagon Creek

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 11/02/2024 (456 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

If you build it they will come, and if you hire a local electrician to wire it, he will be back on that stage for opening night, along with the rest of the Club Wagon Creek band.

Club Wagon Creek, which includes electrician Zak Cudney, will provide the entertainment at The Edge Bar at Frantz Motor Inn Saturday, playing before what is expected to be another sold-out crowd.

The Edge Lounge and Nightclub manager Charles Tyson is excited to welcome back Club Wagon Creek as the first band to perform on the newly renovated stage, because they packed out the bar when they appeared there for the first time, a couple of years ago.

Cudney and Mitchell Friesen chuckle as they recall their first booking at Frantz in 2022. Apparently, their hosts for the evening had not expected they would draw a big crowd and had booked only one bartender for the evening. When they told him they were expecting a huge crowd, they scrambled to get in more servers and security. By eight o’clock, The Edge was packed.

The stage was tiny and at one end of the room, so the band played with two television sets on the wall behind them, showing some kind of sporting event. Now that has changed.

When Club Wagon Creek booked three months ago for a return engagement on Feb. 10, Friesen told them they would like to bring in portable stage panels. That was when they learned Frantz Motor Inn was planning to build a new stage and the extra panels wouldn’t be needed.

Tyson said the new stage was part of renovations to the bar to make it a fun place to be and a comfortable place to go to enjoy an evening of entertainment, with live bands to go along with karaoke, comedians and DJ’s on weekends.

“This weekend, we have DJ Patelli, one of the best disc jockeys, to entertain along with the band.”

Club Wagon Creek has been enjoying a great deal of success since they got together for a jam session a few years ago. The four musicians had all been with other bands in the past and had not really planned on becoming a new band at the time, and were just playing for fun.

Now, two years later, they are still playing for fun and have a good social media following, have recorded a number of videos, are on Spotify and You Tube and market a Club Wagon Creek line of merchandise.

Mitchell and Zak say they love all kinds of music, including rock and pop country. They don’t know what to call their own genre, which is really a blend of all kinds of music. Playing what the audience wants to hear, is what Club Wagon Creek does, they say.

And their venues are as varied as their music. Zak says they played a birthday party for a 94-year-old woman last summer and Johnny Cash tunes were a favorite there.

A busy year saw them at Steinbach’s “Summer in the City” and the “The End of Summer Party” at another outdoor venue, south of Steinbach. Other bookings have included a couple of weddings locally and a trip out to Brandon. Earlier this week, they were at the Steinbach Curling Club for a function put on by the Steinbach Firefighters.

Since they launched the band in the spring of 2022, they have been booked solid.

“We are booked all the time, especially in summer, when we play somewhere every weekend. At times we are even double-booked.”

Zak, who has known Mitchell for a decade, used to play in a rock band, drumming and singing, but doing both was too much work and he quit. Today, with Club Wagon Creek, Zak plays guitar and provides a drum beat using foot pedals on a device he created for himself.

That foot-pedal drum comes in handy when the band doesn’t have a drummer, because Zak’s always tapping his feet anyway, Mitchell says.

Sam Peters, who is with a heavy metal rock band, fills in on the drums when their booking calls for a full band.

Mitchell plays acoustic and electric guitar, and between bookings, offers private lessons at his home in La Broquerie.

Guitarist Jason Whitehead, at 51, says he is the oldest member of the band and is reminded that he was part of a pretty hot rock band, playing in the last century.

Whitehead and the Normandeau brothers from La Broquerie were featured in July and August issues of The Carillon in 1999, when they were one of five bands vying for an opportunity to be on the mainstage at the annual Minnedosa Classic Rock Festival.

Speedmaze won a spot at the festival a few weeks earlier at a classic rock band search contest at the Silverado night club in Winnipeg.

They did not come close to winning the recording contract, VIP passes, and a performance on the main stage, with the likes of Def Leppard, Sammy Hagar and Lynyrd Skynyrd, but that did not hinder the excitement of the weekend for Whitehead and Speedmaze

The band collected $400 and a repeat visit to the secondary stage, and enjoyed the “time of their life.”

Whitehead told The Carillon they felt very much at home on the stage at the Classic Rock Festival and that on-stage experience was better than anything else.

But Whitehead is not the only member of the band to have enjoyed being featured in the The Carillon early in his music career.

Zak Cudney picked up the drumsticks in 1996 to “help out his sister” in Bill Cudney’s family blues band, Grumpy Old Man.

The family band was formed when Jazmyn, a student at Steinbach Christian High School, expressed an interest in joining the school band.

Her father, a former professional musician, felt it would be easiest if he taught her the bass himself.

Bassist Jazmyn, 14, and drummer Zak, 13, told The Carillon feature writer Tim Plett during a 1997 interview that the band was named after “dear old dad” who played guitar and handled lead vocals.

Their repertoire included cover versions of songs by blues greats like B.B. King and Stevie Ray Vaughn, rockers like George Thorogood, and an increasing number of original songs.

Grumpy Old Man performed at country fairs, in community halls, and even at the Winnipeg Speedway. Their stage for many of the performances was the bed of an old 1950s grain truck. They would plug in, play, unplug and drive away.

Today, Zak and the band travel in a 1984 van, which gave Club Wagon Creek its name. During a particular wet summer, their Ford Club Wagon had to negotiate a creek running across the driveway and someone hand painted the word “Creek” after the logo plate on the van.

The band may soon be in the market for a newer vehicle, especially as plans call for an extended western tour to Saskatchewan and Alberta this fall.