A man of many hats: Blues frontman is Lockport's unofficial harbor master

Damien Brady has lived and worked in Lockport just about all of his life, making a living in sales, manufacturing and the blues music community. These days, at age 65, he’s taking it easy by the Erie Canal, as the unofficial “harbor master” at the city marina at Widewaters.

“I don’t want to take any 18- or 19-year-old’s job. I don’t know why somebody wouldn’t want this job if they were 18, 19 years old. I know the work ethic has changed,” Brady said, “(but) a job like this … you’re in the fresh air … you meet people literally from around the world.”

The former newspaper ad man said he’s never really been able to leave Lockport, except for the year he spent in Pennsylvania working as a salesman for a printing conglomerate. While there, at a party, he was asked what they do for fun in Buffalo, and he jumped up and did a somersault onto a table. A week later the person who asked him called him up and offered him a job with a bigger salary and a corporate car.

“And it’s perfect for you,” Brady remembers them saying. “The job is in Buffalo!”

After his corporate job fizzled out, Brady went to work as a steel cutter at Dunlop Tire for 10 years, then worked as a sales consultant at the Lockport Union-Sun & Journal for about five years. After that, he started taking care of his parents, who lived into their 90s, and worked at the marina between 2017 and 2019. Then he took a part-time job as a janitor at All Saints Parish, before returning to the marina, officially as an attendant, and jokingly referred to as the “marina harbormaster” by Mayor John Lombardi III.

All those gigs were just Brady’s day jobs.

In 2002, he was in a bar, singing something, and guitarist Benny Provenzano told him he had the “perfect voice for the blues.”

After Provenzano talked him into it, Brady was the frontman for The Flyin’ Blind Blues Band and ended up winning the Western New York Blues Society’s Memphis Bound competition in 2005.

“I was on Beale Street (in Memphis) singing the blues,” he said.

These days, Brady is happy. He and his wife, Mary Kay, have been married for more than 40 years and have three children and five grandchildren. He’s also considering getting the band back together.

In the past, according to Brady, when the city had a lot more workers, the parks department took care of maintenance at Nelson C. Goehle Marina.

“Back then, the (attendant’s) job description was to launch boats, get people to rent slips for the year, sell gas, sell ice and occasionally give people directions,” Brady said.

Today, he and three other attendants do the mowing and clean-up, and plant flowers, at the marina. Their ages range from 59 to 76.

As an attendant, Brady said he met some interesting people and seen some beautiful boats. One such boat carried a couple coming from Houston on the “Great Loop” around the Gulf of Mexico, up the Eastern seaboard, into the Hudson River, along the Erie Canal, into the Great Lakes and down the Mississippi River back to the Gulf of Mexico.

“Who would think these people would be on the Erie Canal and be docked here in Lockport?” Brady said. “We get beautiful boats here all the time. Big, small, medium. People stay overnight … once they look at the area, they really appreciate it. It’s calm. All the amenities are here.”