The barber of the Butte by Stephanie Maltarich

At 5 p.m. on a Friday evening, Drew Canale stands behind a shiny silver barber chair dressed in a black smock, black slacks and black clogs. The way he’s smiling and chatting as he clips his customer’s hair, no one would guess it’s Drew’s 60th haircut of the week. But his friends would hardly be surprised; Drew is known for being chatty, positive and stoked – and for going the extra mile to make each Blue Spruce Barber Shop patron feel comfortable.

“Can I get you a glass of water?” Drew asks his next customer, Steve Jennison, the facilities director at Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory.

After a brief hydration break, Drew gets down to business: a haircut and a neck shave. Between clips and snips, the two talk about soccer, traveling and the swarm of kids who recently came in to get back-toschool haircuts.

“Back-to-school is like Christmastime in terms of business for us,” laughs Drew.

Steve has been getting haircuts from Drew for about a year. Steve heard about the barber shop from his boss Ian Billick, who is also Crested Butte’s mayor and a happy Blue Spruce customer.

After Drew finishes Steve’s hair, he pulls out a straight razor and lathers Steve’s neck with shaving cream.

“This is the authentic barber right here,” says Steve with a smile.

With his accuracy, patience and precision, Drew makes the straight razor neck shave look like an art. He first gets into a steady position by lowering into

Drew Canale creates a retro barber-shop ambiance with touches like a Craftsman tool cabinet and classic barber chair.

a squat. Then, he slowly scrapes the shaving cream from bottom to top. He gets so close that he squints for accuracy, and when he’s done, he gently wraps a warm towel around Steve’s neck. For the finale, he slaps on a few drops of a sea breeze-scented astringent – which smells cool and fresh. Drew jokes that it’s what teenagers like to use for their complexion, but more importantly, the smell is what most guys associate with barber shops.

Steve stands up looking relaxed and refreshed. With clipped hair and a trimmed beard, he pays and is out the door.

Drew started Blue Spruce Barber Shop two years ago, and business has been nonstop ever since. As the only barber in the north end of the valley, he takes pride in cutting hair, shaving beards and building community for men in Crested Butte.

He’s also providing a service that almost everyone needs, at least occasionally. “That’s what’s amazing about this profession; everybody needs a haircut, like everybody needs to eat lunch,” explains Drew. “Even in our little mountain town where some guys only get a haircut once a year.”

Drew doesn’t just cut hair at Blue Spruce; he creates an experience. Above his doorway on Fifth Street, a classic barber pole swirls red, white and blue, an appropriately nostalgic touch. Inside, the shop is small, simple and clean. The space just fits two barber chairs and a few spectator chairs along the walls so guests can sit and join the conversations. A flat-screen TV on the wall almost always features a live soccer game. Crested Butte’s local radio station KBUT plays softly in the background.

“Sports on the tube and music and hair in the air!” Drew says.

The walls show Drew’s connection to Crested Butte while nodding to his Philadelphia roots. Large photographs depicting local landscapes alternate with Philly’s regalia like signed posters and “#1 Fan” foam fingers. There are hints to his prolific presence in the community: a Crested Butte high school sports calendar and a flier for a local man’s 70th birthday.

Drew likes to play on the nostalgia of old-time barber shops. A large metal Craftsman tool chest is stocked with classic tools: the fat brush, styling glue, a glass jar filled with fine-toothed combs, and talc powder.

Of the old-timey ambiance, Drew says, “There’s something kind of classic about it… timeless, you know? You get that from the older gentlemen. I think they’ve missed that.”

GETTING A DOGWOOD HAIRCUT

Drew moved to Crested Butte in 2005 to help a friend build a house just south of town. He’d visited the valley once on a winter ski trip with his brothers, and while building the house, he quickly realized he wanted to stay. For about ten years Drew worked and served in the community. He made tacos at Teocalli Tamale, served drinks at The Dogwood, acted in Mountain Theatre productions, coached the high school soccer team, volunteered at the Adaptive Sports Center and hosted his weekly radio show, the Wholly Stromboli.

Like most Crested Buttians, he fell in love with the place for the views, the adventures and the people.

“It’s the beauty, the mountains, the outdoors – but the community, too,” says Drew. “The way I tell people is it’s not exclusive, it’s more inclusive; the community is pretty special.”

While Drew enjoyed working in the service industry, he was always brainstorming what might be next. He wanted a job that provided a decent living and also allowed him to be his own boss. So he kept his eyes peeled for a business idea that might fill a gap within the community.

His inspiration came while working as a bartender at The Dogwood. The former owner, Doug Pederson, came to Crested Butte from Portland, where he’d worked as a barber. When Doug opened The Dogwood, he offered his employees a free haircut once a month. It was pretty informal: guys would come over on a Wednesday afternoon before opening.

Drew loved it.

“He didn’t have a cape; he’d punch a hole in a trash bag, and he’d cut our hair right there on the wood floor of The Dogwood at one o’clock in the afternoon,” Drew remembers. “It was really cool, and we hung out while the other ones were getting cut, and cracked jokes, and it was like a barber shop. That’s when it occurred to me that this might be something I would really enjoy.”

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The camaraderie reminded Drew of the barber shops back in Philly where he grew up. He filed away the idea, and a handful of years later he decided to go all in. He told friends he was moving back east to apprentice in a barber shop to learn the skills of the trade that he planned to bring back to Crested Butte.

Drew apprenticed at a shop called Philly Fades for several years and gained Sam Lumb 970.275.2448 SLumb@livsothebysrealty.com crestedbuttesothebysrealty.com experience working with a diverse group of people. Becoming a barber takes years and requires a lot of work. A licensed barber must acquire 1,500 hours of hands-on training followed by two practical tests. A barber also has to learn the fine art of the straight razor neck shave.

“I just observed and asked questions for about two months,” remembers Drew. “You have to be in the presence of a master barber or barber teacher; they’re the only ones who can take on apprentices.”

The process of learning, getting his license, and getting some work experience before returning to Crested Butte took about four years, much longer than Drew had anticipated. In 2019 he made his way back to the valley and quickly realized barbering in the Butte was different from in Philly. In Philly, most guys wanted a hairstyle called a fade, which is shorter and requires clippers – Drew’s specialty at the time. “I’m really good with fades and clippers,” he says. “I moved back here with pretty decent scissor skills. But there’s so much longer hair here, and now my scissor skills are right there with my clipper skills.”

Drew arranged to work with The Cut Above for one year to get a little more experience before opening his own shop. That year flew by, and his last day at the salon was set for April – the day after the lifts stopped spinning in 2020. But that day came a little sooner than anticipated – when Covid hit the valley and shut everything down in March. In the frenzy of the pandemic, Drew decided to take a leap of faith: he went for his dream and opened Blue Spruce Barber Shop. It was good timing, he said, because after going into pandemic isolation, everyone needed a haircut. “I’ve been busy, right from the getgo.”

CREATING THE CULTURE

Two years later, Drew gives about a dozen haircuts each day, five days a week. He has around 100 customers and meets new people every week. His clients range from two to 92, and he describes them as a true cross-section of town: from the mayor to business owners, second homeowners, service workers, tourists and kids.

Drew loves his job. “It’s just as cool as I’d hoped it would be,” he says with a smile. “Every once in a while, I have these

overwhelming days, but I remind myself how lucky I am because 98% of my clients are really cool, and that’s not always the case for a barber.” After working for other people for more than a decade, Drew also appreciates the flexibility he has to close down the shop to go on vacation.

Doug Pederson now lives in Bend, Oregon, and he’s not surprised that Drew is thriving as Crested Butte’s barber. “I imagine there’s a line out the door and everyone can’t wait to have a one-on-one with him,” says Doug. “He’s so inspiring, a glass-half-full kind of guy. If you’re having a bad day, he’s the guy you want to sit down with. I think that’s why he’s so successful: the haircuts are good; the conversation is great.”

Drew isn’t the first to make a living barbering at the north end of the valley. Years ago Kathy Joyce ran a barber shop behind Clark’s Market. She was on the tail end of her career when Drew moved to town in 2005, and she has since passed away. Drew keeps her in mind while he works; on his wall he has a small image of her dressed as Crested Butte’s 2000 Flauschink Queen.

He also has tremendous respect for the well-known barber at the south end of the valley known as “Fast Eddy.” Drew appreciates the culture Eddy has created in his shop: groups of men often hang out and socialize – and many of them aren’t even there for haircuts.

Drew hopes to create a similar culture in his own shop. “It really is a place where people can stop in, catch up a little bit, and shoot the breeze.” He wants Blue Spruce Barber Shop to be a safe space where guys can relax and take time out of their day for themselves – something he thinks most men don’t do.

For every guy who walks in the door, Drew takes extra care, whether it’s opening the door for a customer, holding a warm towel in place after a neck shave, or trimming some pesky ear hairs. “I try to pay special attention to the details and the friendliness,” says Drew. “The guys are busy and they’ve got stuff going on. To provide a calm, cool environment for them to get a little self-care is huge.”

Drew knows his work isn’t going to pay huge dividends, but that’s not why he does it. “You’re not going to make a million bucks cutting hair in a little town. But I didn’t care; I just wanted to work for myself and find a career that could justify me living here.”

Moving into his third year of booming business, Drew has hired a second hairstylist, and he’s gaining such a reputation that people stop him on the street to make appointments. “It’s like a dream come true, to be the barber in the Butte,” he says. b

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