Mark Bragg is sitting in the lobby of the Alt Hotel. He chose the location because he knows he can navigate the space with his walking cane and it has chairs he can settle into without assistance. His wife, Kerrie Cochrane, dropped him off at the door.
“I’ve been doing a lot more independent stuff lately,” he said. “Even just a month ago, I wouldn’t have Kerrie drop me off on the sidewalk and walk in here just to do my own thing.”
It’s been three years since a stroke sent Bragg into a season-long coma. Although he’s just begun navigating public spaces on his own, the musician has been strutting his stuff on stage for more than six months.
To what does he credit his recovery? Bragg names three things: “I had the sense of humour, I had the family, and I had the huge network of community support.”
A lost year
Bragg remembers little of the summer and fall of 2023.
“I wish I could tell you how long I was asleep for, but I couldn’t tell you,” he said.
What he can tell you is that the stroke happened two days after the 2023 launch of his last album, Ashes. He remembers sitting at the piano in his home and having a concerning, but familiar, sensation. He remembers calling his teenager, Luka, into the room and saying he felt a seizure coming on, but this one felt stranger than usual.
Beyond these details, Bragg’s timeline is spotty. He describes his experience as “approximately four months in a coma, but a year of f—ked-uppedness.”
“Music itself is powerful enough,” said Mark Bragg, “but if you’re creating music, that’s supercharged rehab.” (Submitted by Mark Bragg)
Bragg, 50, has been performing spitfire live shows in St. John’s for nearly three decades. When a tourist in the lobby of the Alt asks him what type of music he writes, he leads with, “It’s a job to say,” then goes on to describe his songs as “kind of in the ballpark of Tom Waits, Bruce Springsteen and Violent Femmes.”
Singing in the voice of often-troubled fictional characters, he explores the darkest human impulses with high energy and a spirit of play.
A DIY gym for rehab
Bragg’s physical recovery has been a long process of retraining his body. He remembers the challenge it was to meet the admission requirements to the Miller Centre’s rehabilitation program.
“I couldn’t sit up, and you really had to demonstrate that you could sit up for a few minutes,” he said.
Once he began rehab, his father attended his physiotherapy appointments and took notes of the exercises and sketches of the equipment. At home, he used items he found around the house —bicycle tires, inner tubes, safety equipment — to create a makeshift BowFlex-style workout contraption.
“I call it bayman style,” said Bragg, “Like what an uber-resourceful, old-school bayman would do.”
Recovering his musical muscle memory
In those early days, when the prospect of returning to playing music seemed out of reach, Bragg imagined a shift toward other creative outlets. “I wholly thought I’d be wanting to get into something completely different, something creative like fiction writing or music producing.”
But the idea of no longer playing for an audience didn’t sit right with him. “I’m a professional musician … also a performer. That was something I realized had to be the case,” he said.
Some months into his rehab, he sat at a piano and began the process of relearning how to play the keyboard.
“I was surprised that it wasn’t just my physical faculties that had been impacted, but my rhythm and sense of time got thrown out, too.”
In time, he discovered that he was able to recover more functionality in his hands when he was playing piano than when he did non-musical movement exercises.
“Watching the way my hands interact on the piano…was far different than watching them interact in other areas,” Bragg said.
“It’s a huge thing,” he said. “Music has a way of activating every part of your brain. It’s one of the very powerful neuro-rehab tools.”
In his recent shows, Bragg has been sharing his songs with vocalist Suzanne Power. “What she contributes to my songs, that’s exciting.” (Submitted by Mark Bragg)A welcoming community
Bragg’s transition from relearning to play the piano at home to performing for an audience began with a reboot of the Nighthawks, a monthly open mic Tom Waits tribute he initiated back in 2016. At that time, it gave amateur musicians at all skill levels the opportunity to perform with Bragg and other professional musicians.
In a sense, resuming Nighthawks during his stroke recovery became a form of reciprocity.
“I’d be learning again, and then I’d have the same kind of support that we provided,” he said.
The goodwill that was sown in the early years of Nighthawks has become a source of support as Bragg returned to performing.
“It was really hard to get back out into the community, especially with all the mobility issues and energy problems. And I knew I wouldn’t have anything to worry about with that crowd, because I knew they’d all have my back, no doubt about it.”
Returning to performance
The past six months have seen Bragg take on the challenge of playing and singing with his own bands.
Last December, he resumed a long-standing tradition of performing the Boxing Day show at the Ship Pub. Then, in March, he held a 50th birthday bash at the Rock House, playing sets with the Nighthawks crew, the Butchers, the Catalina Reapers and the Crate Diggers. For July, he’s preparing for a more intimate show at Bannerman Brewing Co.
His recent performances have showcased the same emotionally charged songs and the same gritty showmanship that made Bragg a lasting favourite for St. John’s live music fans. While he continues to regain his stamina and mobility, he’s making more space for his fellow musicians to shine.
“When I started to get any amount of functionality back …I realized that, regardless of what came back with my hands and my legs, getting around stage, I knew I’d always have these amazing musicians in my back pocket to bring the energy.”
Bragg’s next appearance will be the Mark Bragg & Friends show at Bannerman Brewing Co. on July 11.
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