Sean Canan is not a normal person. He doesn't sleep. He is immune to memory loss. He has guitar arpeggios wiggling in his mitochondria. He absorbs musical frequencies osmotically and then shoots them from his fingers like Force lightning onto the fretboard. His brain is rotated 20 degrees inside his skull.
How else to explain the superhuman prowess, range and pace of Canan's live-performance heroics? With his continual musical transformations as a bandleader and citywide entertainer, Canan's presence on the St. Louis music scene can be summed up by the title of this year's Oscar favorite: He is Everything Everywhere All at Once.
For the uninitiated, Canan is the good-natured, hard-partying, guitar-slinging hairball who heads up the Voodoo Players, a rotating cast of nearly 100 of the area's finest musicians who perform the music of a different legendary artist at each of their concerts. Last year alone, Canan led his Voodoo Players through 104 shows, and since the project's 2014 inception, the collective has played an astounding 78 unique artist or theme nights. Many take place at the band's regular Wednesday show at Broadway Oyster Bar, often to capacity crowds who pack the bar's covered patio and stand on benches.
No matter the program, Voodoo sets are guaranteed to feature the best of the best of the area's players. Still, it's hard to take your eyes off of Canan, and everyone has their favorite stage moves in the Canan canon: the headwag shiver. The brainfreeze grimace. The hobo circle-stomp. The 19th-fret conniption. The pigeon-toed apple-bobber. The one-legged sailor. The trout in a blender. The tasered wildebeest. The Farrah.
However, I was able to catch him in a rare moment offstage — sitting in his favorite booth (front corner) in his favorite pub (McGurk's) enjoying his favorite drink combo (a "G&J": one Guinness, one Jameson) — to find out 10 fun vignettes you may or may not have known about Canan:
1. Canan and his three younger brothers were raised in Ohio. Their father was an amateur musician who cycled through bluegrass and rock phases, taking Canan to concerts and providing access to musical instruments around the house. "He took me to see Little Feat and the Allman Brothers when I was 10," Canan remembers. "It was like a bomb went off."
In a bizarre coincidence, he was childhood friends with comedian Nikki Glaser in Ohio, and the Canans and the Glasers would both end up relocating to Kirkwood. Today, Canan's mother is in her final year as an English teacher at Kirkwood High School. His father occasionally sits in on bass with Sean at McGurk's.
2. Canan graduated from Mizzou in 2001 with a degree in geography and, for a short time, played saxophone in the school's marching band. But he spent most of his time in Columbia as the singer/guitarist in the popular art-jam band Bockman's Euphio, formed with keyboardist Andrew Weir. "Meeting Andrew was one of those destiny dominoes, one of those moments when you meet somebody and it changes everything," Canan says.
Amazingly, he first connected with Weir in a Phish chatroom on AOL back when the two were in high school — Canan in Ohio, Weir in Kirkwood — long before the Canans had plans to move to Missouri. The two traded concert tapes without knowing they were both musicians until meeting up in person after Canan moved to Kirkwood years later. Bockman's Euphio (named after a Kurt Vonnegut short story) was a Columbia mainstay, a favorite in St. Louis and a regular on the jam scene through nationwide touring and the ambitious 2007 album Chasing Dragons.
3. Canan joined forces with Pat Kay (now of the Kay Brothers) in the hillbilly-rock band the Hatrick from 2007 to 2013. At times augmented by fiddler Molly Healey, the Hatrick was a stage warrior in Columbia and on the festival circuit. "I was force-feeding Pat bluegrass songs until that's all he wanted to play," Canan says with a laugh, adding that a Hatrick reunion is only a matter of time. "Pat and I made a pact that when we reunite it's going to be so huge!"
4. Sean assumed the Jerry Garcia role in the Schwag, Jimmy Tebeau's venerable Grateful Dead cover band, from 2010 to 2016. Canan toured extensively with the Schwag, wrote the setlists and stretched out his improvisational solos, a musical augmentation that continues to have a jam-centric effect on Voodoo shows today. "Jimmy was, like, 'Dude, your solos are too short,'" Canan remembers. "I hadn't been challenged like that in a long time, so it was an epiphany."
5. Falling Fences, Canan's Irish-folk-influenced band with singer-songwriter Joe Stickley, took over Sunday nights at McGurk's in 2008 when the legendary Bernie and Barbara McDonald retired. Falling Fences plays an average of 50 Sundays a year at McGurk's and released its third album, The Wild Sea, last year.
Canan met Stickley back in the Mizzou years and formed Joe Stickley's Blue Print, a Bockman's offshoot, and now 15 years into the band's McGurk's residency, Canan remains Stickley's biggest fan. "He's a brilliant guy," Canan says. "There's nobody who gets me into my chi quicker than him. He's instant chi!"
6. Would you believe he's also in yet another band? Western States came together five years ago when another old Mizzou-scene colleague, former Doxies frontman Tim Lloyd, sent Sean a demo of new original tunes. "I didn't check them out for weeks," Canan says. "And then one night, I put my headphones on and said, 'Shit, these songs are awesome!' I said, 'Yeah, I'll help get this up and running.'" The band, also featuring Mark Hochberg on violin, remains active, sliding the occasional show into Canan's packed schedule.
7. He always sets up on stage left. Since it's Sean Canan's Voodoo Players, why isn't he at center stage? "It's so I can cue the entire band," Canan explains, citing the band's improv-heavy method. "I can turn and see all the eyeballs in the band at once. I like being over there. It's where I go."
8. The Voodoo bands barely rehearse, if at all. In a testament to the talent that Canan draws from the Voodoo bullpen, the ensembles prepare for shows chiefly through playlist sharing, listening, notetaking and individual practice. New shows are a different story: "We rehearse the night before in my basement," he says. Canan and crew make it look easy, but playing 30 complex songs for the first time in months (or ever) remains a daunting task. "It's a lot of anxiety," Canan says, pointing to his eyes. "You see these bags, bro?"
9. He has maintained his trademark long-haired shagginess for nearly 20 years, which is roughly the last time he had any job outside of music. However, Canan did shave his beard once during the pandemic lockdown. "I freaked out and thought I was going to have to drive an Amazon truck," he says.
10. Even after thousands of shows, Canan still gets stage fright before every gig. "I have it bad," he says. "I think it's because I moved around a lot when I was a kid, always looking for approval." Regardless, he has no intention of slowing down and credits the chameleonic shapeshifting of the Voodoo rotations with keeping things fresh. "I never feel like I'm in a rut musically," he says, emphasizing the incredible depth of musicianship and the spirit of collaboration in St. Louis. "That's why I'm pushing myself like this — because I love the St. Louis music scene." A glance around the Oyster Bar on Wednesday nights makes one thing certain: The city loves him back.
Catch Sean Canan's Voodoo Players from 9:30 p.m. to 1:30 a.m. every Wednesday at the Broadway Oyster Bar (736 South Broadway, 314-621-8811, broadwayoysterbar.com). Tickets are $14 at the door.
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