Hillbilly Night at N.D.G.’s Wheel Club will take on a more sombre tone than usual on Monday. The hootin’ and hollerin’ will probably be kept down to a minimal roar. Even the trusty cowbell, rung after a crowd-pleasing, country music performance, will probably sound relatively muted on this evening.

The Hillbilly Night faithful, ever-loyal country musicians and fans, are in mourning. Jeannie Arsenault, the diminutive dynamo and spiritual force behind Hillbilly Night, died on Monday, July 28 at 82, succumbing to the cancer she had been battling since last fall.

Arsenault, frequently attired in her favourite fire engine-red dress and customary country chapeau, was the spark plug who helped keep Hillbilly Night going against all odds through venue and musical taste changes. She remained true to the dream of the late Bob Fuller, leader of the Old Time Country Music Club of Canada when the soirées began.

Fuller founded Hillbilly Night at the long-defunct downtown Blue Angel club nearly 60 years ago. After a few moves, it found a home in the endearingly ramshackle Wheel Club and managed to survive COVID.

But after Fuller, who had been in ill health for a long period, died seven years ago, it was left to his disciple Arsenault, a Hillbilly Night performer for 50 years, to keep the fires burning.

Arsenault was a no-nonsense yet much beloved figure. She made certain that the rules first established by Fuller were still strictly followed. The cardinal rule being that any instruments — save for the steel guitar — requiring an electrical boost from an amplifier were verboten. And........

© Montreal Gazette