The band
John, Sheila, and the boys
John Ludgate has been playing in clubs, pubs, coffee houses and festivals for more than forty years. He has won awards and FACTOR grants for his songwriting and has received radio play across Canada and the United States.
For the last twenty years he has been joined by his wife Sheila on bass and harmony vocals. They write together, and they play as a duo across Southern Ontario, into Montreal and down into the States. Audiences come for the rhythms, the blend of voices, and the original songs.
Seven studio records. Two live albums that start, almost every time, with a counted-in “two, three, four…”. The later records — Running Through The Innocent Years, Northern Soul, What The Camera Couldn’t See, The Kitchen Sessions and Folk Rock — bring in Luke, Anthony and Shane, once of the alternative band Beautiful Nothing. John and Sheila are the folk. The sons are the rock.
Ludgate, the family band
Luke, Anthony and Shane are the lead guitar, voice and drums of Beautiful Nothing — college radio, Aux TV, MuchLoud, and stages shared with The Trews, Monster Truck, The Arkells and Finger Eleven.
Both sides of the family have FACTOR awards. The title track of Northern Soul won Folk Music Ontario’s Songs From The Heart. In 2015 that album was nominated for Folk/Traditional Recording of the Year at the Hamilton Music Awards, and Beautiful Nothing was nominated for Alternative/Indie Rock. The boys can go from folk to alternative rock in the blink of an eye. David Lum’s playing on Northern Soul is part of that record. Jim Marino put What The Camera Couldn’t See on his 2018 Top 10 for Penguin Eggs. “The Gift Of An Ordinary Day,” from the kitchen-table record, made the Folk Alliance International Top 10.
They have recorded together for years. More recently they have started walking on stage as one band: Ludgate.
As they tell it
The real story
John has played guitar since his early teens, having picked up the basics from his dad. He started with folk, moved to soft rock, heavier rock and, after several decades of experimentation, back to his folk roots. Sheila was raised on classical and traditional music. Aside from a few piano and trumpet lessons, she had never so much as plucked a string, and was generally content to hum along.
Not so for their kids. The early years of the three oldest boys were spent practicing brass instruments — Sheila’s idea — and they resented nearly every note they blew. One showed particular promise as a trumpeter, and Sheila delighted in visions of raising another Wynton Marsalis. He traded the trumpet for drums, probably just to spite her. His brothers played guitar with as much noise and distortion as electronically possible. A fourth son stayed enthusiastic about piano and trumpet, probably to spite his brothers, and revived Sheila’s fantasy of attending classical concerts as the mother of the virtuoso. It’s a fantasy, remember.
With a rock band thumping in the cellar, a husband howling in the music room (where they also keep the furnace and the water heater), and a kindergartener banging on the piano, Sheila always had a headache. So John bought her a bass for Christmas — shiny and blue, with a decent amp. A major concession: he almost always bought second-hand. A beaten-up bass was not likely to tempt her. This was akin to Fred Flintstone buying Wilma a bowling ball.
To John’s amazement, Sheila decided she really liked the bass. Now the only tension in the house is over which songs to play, how fast to play them, and who’s responsible for that sour note.