He steps into the McDonald's on Saturday mornings, and people are waiting.
He flashes a smile as he puts down a battered old Fender acoustic guitar on a table, and somehow you can guess that in that curly grey-haired head is a clutter of songs.
You might recall Keith Meilleur when he played guitar in this city with his brother and sister in a band called Family Tradition. Today, he's taking it easy. He's retired from Chrysler and content to show up a weekend morning at the McDonald's on Wyandotte near Pilette in old Riverside.
It's there he strums a few songs, joined by his sister Darlene Williams whose voice packs a grittiness that could rip the curtains right off your windows.
This duo finds a corner in this fast food restaurant and their voices rock the place. Elvis, Roy Orbison and a little bit of Hank Williams. Something for everybody.
Joanne Hebert, who lives nearby and never fails to stop by to hear Keith and his sister, says, "It doesn't matter what you ask -- they'll play anything you want."
It's a brother-sister act, something Keith initiated nearly three years ago.
Now Saturday morning customers have come to expect it when they sit down with their newspapers and coffee at nearby tables.
They come to listen and every now and again a couple will stand up and start waltzing in the aisles, then someone else will slap down a $5 bill. To this, Keith smiles and nods and keep on crooning.
For him, it's not about the money. That was a long time ago, that business of nights and weekends making the rounds to the bars and, as Keith says, in those days he spent as much or more than he was making.
Now it's all about simplicity, about fun and a little bit of giving back, and saying thank you for God-given talent. It's what his family has always done -- they sang for the sheer joy of it from the moment they rose in the morning to the moment they went to bed at night.
"It's in our genes," says Keith. "It's what we do."
He recalls his childhood when his mother "tapped her silver knitting needles" while his father played the fiddle, and both sang. All this in the parlour of their house. It was part of living and breathing and communicating.
"We were always singing," said Darlene.
At Christmas, with the house pulsated with the sound of their voices and the fiddle the harmonica and the piano.
"We were all together and we made music," Darlene said.
By the time the children were nine, they were being driven to singing lessons.
Keith was 14 when he borrowed a friend's guitar and learned a few chords. Pretty soon he was playing and singing. He couldn't afford to buy his own and so he was hellbent on stealing every moment he could on his friend's guitar.
I watched Keith hunkered down over that tattered Fender acoustic. He wore a baseball cap and sunglasses, and suddenly his hands were a blur as he dove into the Chuck Berry's 1958 hit Johnny B. Goode.
All around him the feet were tapping and breakfasters were slapping their thighs to the beat.
For Marcie Nespolon, the McDonald's manager who started here 10 years ago, this has become a welcome tradition at her restaurant and customers faithfully make a point of showing up.
"I like it, and I think it's great," she said.
For Keith, it's also about "keeping in shape."
He said, "They (McDonald's) haven't said anything about me doing this, or not doing it. I don't use mikes or amps. This is good enough. Besides, I get to keep in shape, keep my hands moving."
And for Darlene it's the same -- letting her voice run loose.
And pleasing people. One morning when they
were playing, a couple from New York got out their cellphone and telephoned someone from home to report they had never heard anything like this at a McDonald's.
"Yes, we have a good time and everybody here has a good time and we meet a lot of good people," Darlene said.
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