The Silver Dollar Room (Est.1958). Home to lo-fi, electro, indie, rock, garage, pysch, punk, bluegrass, alt-country, folk, roots and more.</p> <p>Originally constructed in 1957 as a lounge extension for the turn-of-the-century-established Waverley Hotel—the business with which the Silver Dollar continues to share its Harbord Village property—the Silver Dollar quickly became a beacon for live blues music in Toronto, and today it is both a staple that helps hold together a much thicker, more varied Toronto music community and a thoroughfare for touring musicians.</p> <p>It’s allowed more than half a century of culture to seep into its nooks and crannies—Killshot is just one of a teeming supply of tales that can be extracted from places like the cracks in the ceiling that Leonard wrote about: Bob Dylan and Levon Helm both played the small bar; Texas jazz saxophonist David “Fathead” Newman and Toronto R&B pianist Curley Bridges both recorded live albums there; and there were those film cameos the bar made in ’80s flicks like Adventures in Babysitting and Police Academy(as a sit-down Chicago blues joint and a gay leather bar called “The Blue Oyster,” respectively).</p> <p>As with any good watering hole, a few good bullshit stories have slipped through those ceiling cracks, too. A popular yarn has it that convicted Martin Luther King assassin James Earl Ray visited The Silver Dollar while holed up on the lam at the Waverley in 1968. But the Toronto Star debunked that myth in 2008 when Queen’s Park Bureau Chief Robert Benzie dug up an old interview he had conducted with Ray for the Ottawa Sun some 15 years prior in order to write a feature on the 40th anniversary of King’s murder (there’s no firm evidence, but it’s more likely Ray visited the Drake Hotel than the Silver Dollar).</p> <p>Still, it’s not as if the Silver Dollar is without its own seedy past. In the 60s the cocktail bar began operating as a strip club, but after years spent establishing itself as a headquarters for jazz and blues, even then it was continuing to function as a community meeting place for the musically inclined.</p> <p>Here are some of the bands who have graced our stage here at The Silver Dollar Room (previously and presently)…Anagram, Andy Maize (The Skydiggers), Andy Shernoff (The Dictators), Basia Bulat, Beams, Bleached (Los Angeles/CA), Blood Ceremony, Bloodshot Bill, Brave Little Toaster, Brendan J. Stephens, Burger Records Road Show, By Divine Right, Calvin Love, CATL, Chico No Face, Cold Warps, Cousins, Crazy Strings, Crocodiles, Dave Wall & Gregor (The Bourbon Tabernacle Choir), Deadly Snakes, Death From Above 1979, Deer Tracks (Sweden), Gordie Lewis (Teenage Head), Green Merchants, Gregory Pepper & His Problems, Henri Fabergé and the Adorables, Hunters (Brooklyn/NY), Huron, Igor & The Red Elvises, Jay Reatard, Johnny Dowd, King Khan & The Shrines, Kontravoid, Lee Bains III & The Glory Fires (Birmingham/AL), Legato Vipers, Listener (Fayetteville/AK), Mac DeMarco (Duncan/BC), Michael Rault (Edmonton/AB), Mikal Cronin (Laguna Beach/CA), Moon Duo (San Francisco/CA), Mozart’s Sister (Montreal), Naomi Punk (Olympia/WA), Neon Jesus, Nicholas Doubleyou & The B Squad, Ninja Funk Orchestra, NoBunny (Tucson/AZ), No $ignal, Optical Sounds (Toronto/Record Label), Pierced Arrows, Pretty Pretty Records (Toronto), Radio Moscow (Ames/IA), Reigning Sound, Rick White & Dallas Good from the band Elevator (performing Syd Barrett Tribute), Ride ‘Em Cowboy, Sam Coffey & The Iron Lungs, Scam Artists, Shannon & The Clams (Oakland/CA), Simply Saucer (Hamilton/ON), Sonny Vincent (New York/NY), Sphinxs, Sonny & The Sunsets (San Francisco/CA), Stephen Stanley (The Lowest Of The Low), The Babies (Brooklyn/NY), The BB Guns, The Blackwood Two, The Burning Hell (NFLD), The Cameron Brothers Band, The Foggy Hogtown Boys, The Highest Order, The Pixies, The Rathburns, The Responsables, The Rucksack Willies, The Schomberg Fair, The Zoobombs (Japan), Walter Lure (Johnny Thunder & The Heartbreakers), White Mystery (Chicago/IL), Xray Eyeballs (Brooklyn/NY) plus many more.