He couldn't be found with Google

Gutter Folk, as it has come to be called, has been influenced by numerous artists and genres, from Country & Western to Grunge, from Marilyn Manson to Michael Bolton. But the secret ingredient as it were, the hidden influence that no one talks about is a forgotten school of music called 'Water Jazz'. That no one talks about it is a sign of how completely forgotten it has become, for it was practiced at only a single location for a limited period of time, by a man whose name not even Google was able to recover.
But it existed, it surely did, and it proved to be the quickening agent for a young Jeremy Owen, then Gypsy Crow, as he struggled to find his own musical identity.
Recalls Owen in his 1967 memoir 'The Way of the Road':

"I saw this guy on Granville; a scruffy, disreputable sort, banging away at a dirty, 5 string guitar. He was all over the place with his timing and the guitar was so out of tune it sounded more as though he were torturing the instrument, rather than playing it. But despite a total lack of aesthetics, the man had a hat out and a battered sign beside the hat. The sign read: Water Jazz, and it was enough to intrigue me, though the briefest of exchanges proved beyond any doubt that the man was a total lunatic. Nevertheless I came away from the encounter with a sense that he was on to something. He was a genius, though the loss of his reason had also robbed him the ability to focus that genius. I thought perhaps, if his lunacy and abandon could be wed to my own style and purpose... well, then we might have something."

Fact and Fiction

Certain challenges rise up to baffle any historian trying to make sense of this man's life. Biographical evidence is scarce, stories are often apocryphal, contradictory, or both, and the reclusive nature of the subject in question makes separating fact from fiction a herculean task of the intellect.
That being said, certain facts are indisputable: Jeremy Owen is/was a musician, he was born & lived in Canada, and formed two Bands -neither of which amounted to anything- before striking out on his own to play folk music and focus on song-writing.
But what are we to make of the tale that he sold his soul to Jesus at the crossroads for a red guitar, three chords and the truth? Did he truly work in politics for ten years before retiring to make music on his pension?
Even something as simple as his birthday presents immediate problems: we are told, by various sources, that he was born in 1921, 1969 or 1991. When I posed the question to him, Owen merely shrugged.
"I was born," he said, not sounding entirely pleased. "Isn't that enough?"
Despite some natural reticence on his part, I was determined to find the germinating seed of truth amidst the garden of myth that had grown wild all around it. Bracing myself I asked him flat-out about his unlikely history. Which of it was truth, which of it lies?
His eyes sparkled. "All of it is true," he said, "especially the lies."