Daniel Burke (music promoter)

Daniel Burke (born 1957) is a Canadian journalist and music promoter.

Journalist

Burke was born into a working class Irish Catholic family in the Notre-Dame-de-Grâce district of Montreal, where he grew up. As a teenager, he started to work as a copyboy for the Montreal Gazette, the main English language newspaper in Montreal, where his father Timothy, worked as a sports writer. As a teenager, he knew many members of the West End Gang. Burke recalled in 2011 that he used to see Frank "Dunnie" Ryan, Allan "the Weasel" Ross and other West End Gang members playing pool at Smitty's Bar, saying it was "like a scene out of Goodfellas. That's what it was like". Neil Cameron, a journalist at the Montreal Gazette stated: "“Dan could be described—like many baby boomers who longed to be part of a world known by their fathers, a world dying out in their own time—as a man born too late...Both Tim [Burke] and Dan struck me as being romantically Irish. Pugnacious, hard-drinking, sentimental, and rather fond of the more disreputable elements of Montreal". Burke graduated from Loyola High School in 1974.

After working at the Edmonton Sun, Burke in 1978 entered Ryerson Polytechnical Institute (now Toronto Metropolitan University) in Toronto with the aim of majoring in journalism. One former girlfriend at Ryerson stated of him: "Dan was hot. He was very funny, had a slight lisp, and was also a bit of a brawler. I seem to remember he had a summer job working on a ship in the Great Lakes, and he’d talk about getting into fights. It was almost like he was from another generation." In the early 1980s, Burke dropped out of Ryerson and went to work as a journalist with the Toronto Star."

Burke had the ability to write well and to ingratiate himself with the criminal elements, which made him a successful crime journalist. One journalist, Wilson-Smith said of Burke: "Some cop writers work it from the police angle. Dan came at it from the other side. He was very comfortable with the thugs." Unhappy with life in Toronto, Burke returned to his native Montreal later in the 1980s. In 1987, he published a story in Maclean's magazine revealing the gross corruption in the office of the Minister of Public Works Roch LaSalle. His article led to LeSalle's resignation from the cabinet.

In 1987, Burke's profile of Ryan entitled "An Uncommon Criminal" in Saturday Night Magazine led to him being nominated for a National Magazine Award for investigative journalism. Burke failed to win the award and at the award ceremony was intoxicated and became involved in a brawl with a rival journalist, Gare Joyce. During this period, many of Burke's friends such as the journalist John Haslett Cuff expressed concern about his lifestyle. Cuff stated: "Burke got into some really bad drugs. I remember when he was doing work for Maclean’s, he’d call me up in the day, not about a story he was working on, but because he was high at his desk and thought it was funny...We were all concerned about his drug use. But the intervention failed. I myself had only just quit drinking, and it only got worse for Danny."

Burke started to work for The Fifth Estate television show in 1991. By this time, Burke was by his admission addicted to cocaine and as a drug addict knew many of Montreal's drug dealers very well. From a West End Gang drug dealer, Burke learned that Claude Savoie, a senior officer with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, was working for Allan "the Weasel" Ross of the West End Gang. Burke stated in a 2008 interview: "I was on drugs then and I was fucked...I found out about it from one of the drug traffickers I knew. Savoie was corrupt. He was taking money from one of the biggest drug traffickers in Canada". Burke produced and researched a episode that exposed the shady links between Savoie, Ross and a well known Montreal lawyer Sidney Leithman who had been murdered in 1991. The revelation of his corruption prompted Savoie to commit sucide in his office at the RCMP's national headquarters in Ottawa on 21 December 1992.

The Savoie scandal led to Burke being promoted to associate producer with The Fifth Estate, but his substance abuse led to him to engage in erratic behavior. By 1993 many of his colleagues at The Fifth Estate were pressing him to go into rehab, advice that he rejected. Linden MacIntyre, a journalist with the Fifth Estate stated in a 2011 interview: "He’d say things like, ‘I want to live the life rather than talk about it' For a long time, I thought he was just researching something, working on a novel, but he was just out of control, trying to give it a romantic gloss.” In December 1994, Burke walked out of The Fifth Estate, never to return. Bob Culbert, the executive director of CBC's news and current affairs, called Burke in for a meeting. MacIntyre stated:" Bobby called Dan in and said he’d help him; that the CBC would do whatever it takes to get him back on track. Burke listened, and then said he didn’t want to be back on his feet, and asked Bobby for a twenty dollar loan".

Homeless

From 1994 to 1997, Burke lived as a homeless person in Toronto. MacIntrye stated: "Dan became a character in his own life. I think he knew this, and it brought him comfort. He never looked down on people that were down and out. And so now he could look at them and say, ‘I’m one of those people, too. So be it.’" Cuff who tried to help him recalled: "We hired him because of his research skills, but he just got high and fucked up. I was cruising crack houses in Regent Park, looking for Danny and the rental car we’d given him."

Music Booker

In April 1997, Burke entered the music business almost by chance. In 1997, Burke was able to leverage himself into becoming a music promoter as he able to convince a Toronto landlord that he was able to turn a decaying building into a nightclub as Burke lied about knowing much about the music industry. In the spring of 1997, Burke started to intensely research various emerge music acts in Toronto, saying: "I’d read through the weeklies, get a feel for the story, and then try to set something up." On 1 July 1997, Club Shanghai opened in Toronto with Burke as its chief booking agent. Initially a failure, Club Shanghai had become Toronto's most popular club by 1998 with acts such as the White Stripes, the Brian Jonestown Massacre, Sloan, and the Deadly Snakes all playing to well received shows. After quarreling with the owners of Club Shanghai, Burke left in the middle of 1998 to become the booker for El Mocambo club. After leaving Club Shanghai, Burke recalled: "I’d gotten about $2,300 of a $5,000 settlement I was supposed to get, and I spent the whole fucking thing in about four days."

Burke recalled: “I got to the El Mo with $60 in my pocket, no job, and no home. Somehow I ended up booking the whole club, so I must have done something right.” Clint Rogerson, a Toronto musician recalled: "You’d see him on a payphone, booking some band from Memphis that nobody in Toronto had even heard of. The Black Lips, Brian Jonestown Massacre—Dan was the first to make that shit happen". Burke's success at El Mocambo was largely because of his ability to discover rising new American bands, which he was able to book to play at El Mocambo, just before the bands acheived mainstream popularity.

Burke's success as a booker made him into a local celebrity in Toronto. Rogerson recalled: "There’s been a lot of shows where nobody’s having a better time than Dan. He’d get a couple drink tickets that were supposed to be for the bands, and he’d be at the bar: Scotch. Scotch. Scotch. And then suddenly there’d be an altercation or misunderstanding that would escalate into a brouhaha".. His success as the booker for El Mocambo provided Burke with the first stability in his life for years as he able to hold the job. Burke considers the summer of 2001 as one of the highpoints of his life as he had a steady girlfriend and an apartment for the first time in years. However, the ownership of El Mocambo changed hands in 2001 with the new owner being a local businessman, Abbas Jahangiri. In September 2001, Jahangiri decided to shut down El Mocambo, leading to a last show on 4 November 2001 that ended with Burke being arrested for alleged assault after he threw his sunglasses at Jahangiri. Burke attempted to reopen El Mocambo at another location, but the city of Toronto blocked his move by denying him a license to sell alcohol, which rendered his plans moot. Without a job, Burke lost both his girlfriend and his apartment. After six months of unemployment, by May 2002 Burke had lost the $18, 000 dollars he had saved from his time as the booker for El Mocambo, leading to live back on the streets again.

Burke lived on the margins of Toronto society while continuing to work as a booker. Burke's most consistent job was as the booker for The Silver Dollar club starting in early 2003. During one show on 13 April 2004, Burke was involved in a brawl with the musician John Dwyer of The Hospitals on a stage with ended with a guitar being smashed over his head. Burke regards his on-stage brawl with The Hospitals as one the highlights of his music career. Burke told the journalist Cathal Kelly "Tt was so rude, what they did", charging that the Hospitals had been late to the show and were treating the Toronto audience badly, leading him to go out to fight with them on the stage.

Burke is considered by many to be one of Toronto's best music bookers, albeit an unstable one with serious substance abuse issues. In 2008, the journalist Jordan Bimm wrote: "Booking and promoting live shows for The Silver Dollar at College and Spadina, Burke has become something of a living legend. Still struggling with addiction, Burke lives an unpredictable day-to-day existence—his name having become synonymous with crack-cocaine, erratic behaviour, and street-level hustling, but also with indie celebrity, and some of the most memorable rock shows Toronto has ever seen. In a word, Dan Burke is an anomaly. Blessed with moxie, wit, and intellect, Burke has the skills and musical taste to be a big-time booker. At the same time, his absolutely heroic intake of drugs, transient life-style, and subsequent inability to control his finances virtually guarantees him a life of marginalized vagrancy. Somehow, every day, Burke manages to navigate this near-impossible tightrope between success and total self-destruction. He’s become an unlikely yet fascinating cultural icon". Bimm described Burke as one of the most important music bookers in Toronto.

A colorful character, Burke was described in 2009 by Kelly as: "He is feckless and untrustworthy and an admitted thief. But he is a purist who lives harder than any of the acts he has helped thrust toward stardom. And that makes him untouchable." Burke admitted to Kelly that he had still had substance abuse issues and that he was homeless. Kelly described Burke as an unnaturally fit man for his age with the built of a boxer who was very passionate about music with an intense work ethic. Despite having lived in Toronto for decades, Burke still regards his hometown of Montreal as his favorite city. The journalist Jay Somerset who met Burke in December 2010 described him as an oddity, namely that he was one of Toronto's most successful music bookers with an annual income of about $40, 000 dollars who was homeless as he lived in his office at the Velvet Underground bar or the Oak Leaf men’s bathhouse. Burke told Somerset: "I’m a drug addict and an alcoholic with about twelve years left—twelve years of work—and I’m about to reinvent myself.".

Burke's lifestyle as led to a 2011 documentary, The Last Music Man being made about him as well as a song, Show Promoter Dan, by The Barmitzvah Brothers. In 2017, the journalist Sarah Greene reported that Burke had appeared to finally got past many of his drug addiction problems with his principle vice appearing to be cigarettes. In 2022, Burke played a prominent role as an expert in the documentary Kings of Coke that focused on the West End Gang and the Savoie scandal. Much of the documentary was concerned with the still unsolved murder of Sidney Leithman in 1991.

Books

• O'Connor, D'Arcy (2011). Montreal's Irish Mafia: The True Story of the Infamous West End Gang. Toronto: John Wiley & Sons.
• Schneider, Stephen (2009). Iced: The Story of Organized Crime in Canada. Toronto: John Wiley & Sons. ISBN 978-0470835005..

Links

• The Hospitals vs. Dan Burke