For a city of roughly 20,000 people on the north shore of Great Slave Lake, Yellowknife has an unusual knack for producing things that punch above their weight. One of the more recent is a 13-piece big band that came together almost by accident, and which will spend Halloween night filling the ballroom of the Chateau Nova Hotel with the sound of brass.
The Ragged Ass Swing Band headlines Swingin' with the Spirits on October 31, 2026, an evening built around live music and dancing. Doors open at 7 p.m., and at 7:30 Natasha Duchene leads a swing dance lesson for anyone who wants to learn the basics before the band takes the stage at 8. Appetizers are included, there's a cash bar, costumes are encouraged, and the event is 19 and over. Tickets run $45.
The band's name is a piece of local folklore in its own right. Ragged Ass Road is a short, unpaved residential street in Yellowknife's Old Town, about 150 metres long, and it was known for years as Privy Road because of the number of outhouses lining it. In 1970, resident Lou Rocher, who owned much of the property along the street, was sitting around with friends after a prospecting season that had yielded very little. The group joked that they were "ragged ass broke," and decided that ought to be the name of the road. It stuck. The city eventually made it official, and the street sign was reportedly stolen so many times that it had to be welded to its pole. Ragged Ass Road merchandise is now sold in shops across the city, and the road made national news in 2012 when a WestJet flight attendant asked a passenger to remove a T-shirt bearing the street sign.
The band that borrowed the name was the idea of Al Jones, a retired music teacher who moved to Yellowknife from Edmonton. "When my wife and I moved up North, I said, 'I can't be here for years without music. So if there's nothing happening, I'm gonna make it happen,'" Jones told CBC North. With help from resident musician Bill Gilday, he assembled a network of local players, including composer Carmen Braden and choir director Margo Nightingale. The ensemble settled at three trumpets, three saxophones and a trombone, plus a full rhythm section and a guest vocalist.
Their debut, at the Top Knight on February 18, 2023, sold out within a week. "It's gotten better as we get used to each other," Jones said during a rehearsal at Mildred Hall School ahead of that first show. "Everybody brings something to the table. It's a very good collaborative group." The repertoire ranges from Count Basie and Glenn Miller to Elvis Presley and Peggy Lee, and the band has since grown to as many as 18 players for larger engagements.
In the years since, the group has become a fixture of Yellowknife's music calendar. It has played the Longshadow Music Society's concert series at the Chateau Nova, including a November 2024 date billed as a full night of music and dancing, and it has appeared at Folk on the Rocks, where it ran through swing-era standards and, by at least one account, a cover of Jamiroquai's "Virtual Insanity" while the city's mayor danced at the main stage. The band has also spun off a family-friendly alter ego, the Ragged "Butt" Swing Band, for all-ages afternoon shows, keeping the joke and losing the profanity.
Swingin' with the Spirits fits that pattern: a big room, a dance floor, a lesson for the uninitiated and a costume theme to loosen things up. It's the kind of night that only works in a place where a retired teacher can decide the city needs a big band and then, within a couple of years, have one that sells out rooms.