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![\"MIKAELA](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/4135967_web1_260410-Times-Chang-d--00185.jpg\")
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MIKAELA MACKENZIE \/ FREE PRESS<\/p>\n
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John Scoles stands outside Times Change(d) High and Lonesome Club in the Fortune Building. He took over as proprietor of the downtown venue in 2001, and is celebrating a quarter-century of music on April 15.<\/p>\n
On Thursday, the venue\u2019s current iteration will mark a quarter-century of roots music, blues jams, housecoats and rubber chicken memories with a sold-out concert by Saskatoon rockers the Sheepdogs with Winnipeg\u2019s Irvin Miller Band opening up.<\/p>\n
Sheepdogs bassist Ryan Gullen says it was the band\u2019s pleasure to tack on an extra local date one day ahead of their concert at the Burton Cummings Theatre.<\/p>\n
\u201cVery few places in this country can say they\u2019re even close to touching what the Times Change(d) can offer,\u201d says Gullen, whose band has been touring since 2004. \u201cWe wanted to help raise awareness for what a gem that venue continues to be.\u201d<\/p>\n
An eternal tinkerer, Scoles and his staff were still in the process of installing updated lighting, PA systems and speakers last week. After climbing down from a 12-foot-tall ladder, the 60-year-old Scoles reflected on his time as the steward of a venue so deeply intertwined with local and western Canadian music history.<\/p>\n
Though he\u2019s only been officially authorized to make updates to the interiors since taking over proprietorship in 2001, Scoles has been designing his dream version of the Times in his head for nearly 40 years.<\/p>\n
\u201cVery few places in this country can say they\u2019re even close to touching what the Times Change(d) can offer.\u201d<\/p>\n
His earliest memories of the Main Street concert hall date back to the late 1980s, when the venue was still known as the Times Changed Caf\u00e9.<\/p>\n
Located in a room that had earlier housed an automotive shop and the pioneering lesbian bar Ms. Purdy\u2019s, the cafe had seating for 50, with some mismatched chairs and tables spread throughout the room on \u201ca carpet the colour of your lawn in springtime,\u201d Scoles recalled. (Big Dave McLean, the host of the Times\u2019 legendary Sunday night blues jam, was playing that room, too.)<\/p>\n
The building\u2019s lovely bones \u2014 designed by architects C. Mancel Willmot and George W. Stewart \u2014 were hidden by an ungainly drop ceiling. \u201cAt night we\u2019d lift up the ceiling tiles to look up at this beautiful old tin-tiled ceiling,\u201d recalls Scoles. \u201cPieces of the plaster walls would break off and you could see the brick.\u201d<\/p>\n
In 1990, the Morden-raised Scoles headed to Austin, Texas, with his then-girlfriend, blues guitarist Sue Foley, and his high school friend, a bassist named John Penner.<\/p>\n
In Austin, Scoles got a first-rate education in blues-bar ownership from Clifford Antone, whose eponymous club was a regular stop for artists across genres and generations, from the Tex-Mex stylings of Doug Sahm to the country-rock of Bonnie Raitt. Working under Antone, Scoles took notes, seeing that the venue\u2019s strength wasn\u2019t only in its promotion of up-and-comers, but in its heraldry of forgotten or underappreciated bluesmen.<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t MIKAELA MACKENZIE \/ FREE PRESS<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n Times Change(d) High and Lonesome Club \u201cThe Eddie Taylors and the Jimmy Rogers. Junior Brown was playing on Tuesday nights,\u201d recalls Scoles, who was awarded with the Kevin Walters Industry Builder Award at last year\u2019s Western Canadian Music Awards. \u201cHe couldn\u2019t necessarily afford to have B.B. King playing, so he realized you can elevate these people who are just as good.\u201d<\/p>\n When Scoles returned to Winnipeg in 1992, he got a job as a bartender at the old caf\u00e9. The carpet still bugged him.<\/p>\n \u201cI asked the manager if we could get rid of the carpet, but he said the liquor commission required one in a place like that,\u201d recalls Scoles, who balked at what he perceived as bureaucratic overreach. \u201cOnce I ripped out the carpet, a new liquor inspector came in. What do you think the first thing he said was? \u2018You got rid of that carpet. Hey, that was a good idea.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n While he updated the interiors, and as the walls began to be pasted with a museum-worthy collection of handbills, gig posters and inexplicable ephemera, Scoles took a page out of Antone\u2019s book by \u201ccreating a cavalcade of stars\u201d to serve as elder statespeople and establish a credible stable of local talent.<\/p>\n That group included McLean, bandleader the Rev. Percy Tuesday and Stew Clayton, a world-renowned country yodeller.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m not a churchgoer, but that\u2019s the kind of church I\u2019d go to.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cStew won the international yodelling championship 11 times,\u201d says Scoles, who says the venue picked up the slack once the fabled Blue Note Caf\u00e9 closed in 1998. \u201cThe amazing thing about that was you couldn\u2019t win two years in a row.\u201d<\/p>\n Those early Times Change(d) legends were quickly joined on the schedule in the early 2000s by bands like the D-Rangers, the Perpetrators, Chic Gamine and Nathan, a Juno-winning alt-country group featuring Damon Mitchell, Shelley Marshall, and Keri and Devin Latimer, now of Leaf Rapids.<\/p>\n In 2001, when Nathan released its first record, Stranger, with a gig at the Times, reps from Vancouver\u2019s Nettwerk Records were in the audience and signed the quartet right after; Leaf Rapids celebrated its most recent album release in the same room in 2024.<\/p>\n \u201cThe Times had that small-town feel that I loved,\u201d says Keri Latimer, who grew up in Lethbridge, Alta. \u201cIt made me feel at home. I\u2019m not a churchgoer, but that\u2019s the kind of church I\u2019d go to.<\/p>\n \u201cIt also feels like you\u2019re stepping into a museum when you walk through the doors,\u201d she adds. \u201cAnd you kind of are.\u201d<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t MIKAELA MACKENZIE \/ FREE PRESS FILES<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n From left: Devin Latimer, Keri Latimer, Joanna Miller and Chris Dunn of Leaf Rapids, which released its most recent album at Times Change(d)<\/p>\n But that history is still unfolding, with the venue playing host each week to a cross-generational mix of folk, blues, country and roots acts, consistently boasting the top players in the province and the region.<\/p>\n In the decade since local philanthropist John Pollard purchased the Heritage-designated Fortune Block in 2016, Scoles and company have continued to build the Times Change(d) into a local icon.<\/p>\n While 2026 marks the 25th anniversary of the venue\u2019s current management, it also marks five years since its sister venue, the neighbouring Blue Note Park, opened its gates for the first time.<\/p>\n \u201cBlue Note Park was the key,\u201d says Scoles, who aims to open the outdoor venue in late May. \u201cBecause we took that leap of faith, we were able to translate that success into this,\u201d he says, gesturing toward the reconfigured honky-tonk.<\/p>\n In his head, he\u2019s already plotting out Times Change(d) 4.5 A-2.<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t MIKAELA MACKENZIE \/ FREE PRESS<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n John Scoles history with the venue stretches back to when it was Times Change Caf\u00e9.<\/p>\n winnipegfreepress.com\/benwaldman<\/p>\n \n\t\tWinnipeg Free Press | Newsletter\n\t<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t \t\t\t\t Ben Waldman Ben Waldman is a National Newspaper Award-nominated reporter on the Arts & Life desk at the Free Press. Born and raised in Winnipeg, Ben completed three internships with the Free Press while earning his degree at Ryerson University\u2019s (now Toronto Metropolitan University\u2019s) School of Journalism before joining the newsroom full-time in 2019. Read more about Ben<\/a>.<\/p>\n Every piece of reporting Ben produces is reviewed by an editing team before it is posted online or published in print \u2014 part of the Free Press\u2018s tradition, since 1872, of producing reliable independent journalism. Read more about Free Press\u2019s history and mandate<\/a>, and learn how our newsroom operates<\/a>.<\/p>\n
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\nhas undergone a recent refresh.<\/p>\n
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Reporter
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