With the steam of his breath billowing out into the night like creamy puffs of cigar smoke, Madd Dog takes his usual position outside of the Beaches liquor store.  It's his favourite spot to play, he explains, especially in the summer, when the streets are filled and he can make some decent cash serenading the sea of smiling faces. 

But tonight it's windy and bitterly cold and there's no more than a handful of straggling souls who slip by with ashen faces of December.  

Wind-chilled ghostly grimaces have replaced the tanned summer smiles and the prospect of making any money seems dauntingly slim, but Madd Dog doesn't care, he's intent on playing, so he eases his old weathered guitar out of an equally ragged-looking case and slips into a giant plastic bag, hoping it will provide enough insulation for his fingers to function in the sub-zero temperatures.  

"Being a musician is my favourite job in the world I think," he explains as the first notes from one of his infectiously mellow songs hits the air.  "I wouldn't change it for anything."

"I will find a way to survive out here," he vows, just as a passing car's headlights cast an eerily angelic glow around his pragmatic plastic coat. 

From the moment he was born, it seems like Madd Dog has been fighting against the odds. 

At just four months old he had emergency surgery to repair a hole in his heart.  Since then he's been through more than most of us could imagine, but somehow he's still able to put it all in perspective and crack an optimistic smile.  

"I'm so lucky that I can come out here and just simply express my soul," he beams behind a pair of mirrored shades and a wild slew of ropey dreadlocks. 

Luck is something that hasn't always been on his side.  Despite an early interest in journalism and several jobs in the field, Madd Dog ended up homeless and destitute after abruptly turning his back on the 9-5 world. 

"Nobody wants to end up in the streets.  I lost big time in terms of my career in journalism..I was having difficulty fitting in.  (I wouldn't change my stories) to protect (their) advertisers or political aspirations."

"I made a lot of mistakes and I think I lost my way.  I was having terrible problems with my ex girlfriend, I ended up with nothing but hassles in my work, nothing but hassles in my home life, hassles with my roommates.  It became all too much, something blew out in me and I said 'that's it, I just want to quit.' "

So that's what he did.  But with little direction, he soon found himself spiraling into a deep depression that threatened to consume him.

"In '85 I was sitting on my couch and I didn't know what to do with my life, I was thinking about committing suicide and I was drinking like a 26er a day, just sitting on my couch vegetating.  These friends were over and they were bored so they took out my guitar and they plugged it in and put it in my hands, and I started to play for them, and they liked that and after a while we started getting jams going and after a couple of months I found that I felt better about myself.  I had purged something from me, gotten all those woes out playing my guitar and I've been a fan and a devotee of music ever since."

His dedication would be an all-consuming one, and Madd Dog would spend most of the next three decades as a wandering, rootless bluesman, ultimately sacrificing his comfort and security to follow his heart and his artistic inclinations.  

"I used to work the same hours as the muggers, from 10pm to 2am, make some money, go to an after-hours joint and have a few beers, take it easy, then sleep in the park with a bunch of other musicians.  It was a very bohemian way of entering the streets."

Today he has a roof over his head, in what he vaguely refers to as the 'poor' section of Cabbagetown, but he's still at home in the streets.

"He's awful dedicated...he's out here braving the temperatures, I don't know how he does it," one passerby remarks.   A few minutes later he's back, warning us not to use his photo because, as he cryptically puts it, 'I'm a wanted man'.

Madd Dog doesn't blink.

"You meet the whole gamut of characters, the whole gamut of people," he tells me.  "When I was downtown in '88 it was rough.  There was a lot of mean characters.  I just tried to stick to myself and I really lived on the fretboard, that's really been the only thing that's ever meant anything to me for years."

"I was lord of the strings on the streets of Toronto."

Madd Dog is currently going through a messy divorce, and when he brings the topic up you can see the pain welling up in his dark, brooding eyes.  It's the same pain that gives his music its haunting authenticity.

"I'm struggling," he admits.   

"In the winter, this is always hell for a street musician, but I made the choice to survive I guess."

"It's hard because you look around this world today and you can live a good life, but if you have any kind of heart, there's love that you always look for."

"We all look for inspiration and meaning in our lives," he continues.  "We all ask 'What's life about?  What is the big picture all about?"

He may not have the answers, but Madd Dog's got a plan.  He hasn't let life's hardships break him yet, and as long as he's got his guitar, he'll forge on.

"I'll keep playing," he says, staring at me with a searing intensity. 

"I'll keep believing."

michael.talbot@citynews.rogers.com