Alt-country's Fred Eaglesmith sets a high Standard with new tour
Credit to Author: Stuart Derdeyn| Date: Mon, 13 Jan 2020 16:00:41 +0000
When: Thursday, Jan. 16, 7 p.m.
Where: Mel Lehan Hall, St. James, 3214 W. 10th Ave.
Tickets and info: $36 at roguefolk.bc.ca, Highlife, Tapestry or 604-736-3022
Fred Eaglesmith freely admits he’s accumulated more miles than money. But the 62-year-old singer-songwriter is excited to be heading out on the road again to play places most would have to look up on a map to find.
Bringing his distinctive alternative country to barns, back porches and all points in between has been his passion for over 40 years.
Backed by legendary acts such as the Flying Squirrels, the Flathead Noodlers and the Travelling Steam Band, this time around it’s just Eaglesmith and Texas multi-instrumentalist Tif Ginn on stage. The two players met in 2009 at an impromptu session at the Texas Old Settler’s Music Festival and hit it off musically and emotionally. They married in 2014.
“We had two buses and 10-plus people on the road for almost 10 years, which was as crazy as I’d ever lived,” said Eaglesmith. “Tif and I keep some of that energy going, at times touring in the bus and sleeping in Walmart parking lots with our 10-year-old son and dog with us. We did that just a few weeks back when we played the Grand Ole Opry.”
For this coming tour, the duo is showcasing songs from Eaglesmith’s 2017 gem Standard as well as material from throughout his and Ginn’s extensive back catalogues. The 22nd studio recording from Eaglesmith, Standard easily ranks among his finest work. The album boasts a spare, atmospheric sound that is equal parts Daniel Lanois-style reverb chamber and a live-off-the-floor session.
He says Ginn deserves the credit for the newfound sound.
Fred Eaglesmith says his partner in music (and life) Tif Ginn deserves the credit for the newfound sound. ‘I credit her with the final results in how the album sounds and feels,’ he says.
“The band that I played with during the recording of the album just up and quit when I was finishing it up,” said Eaglesmith. “So I found myself down in the basement working on it constantly and Tif would come down and hip check me out of the way and suggest ideas. She hadn’t done much studio work at that time, but it turned out she had great ears, could mix really well and I credit her with the final results in how the album sounds and feels.”
Raised in the farming community of Schulenberg, Texas, Tiffani and Britani Ginn had music around them all the time. The family band — The Unplanned Parenthood Association — performed everywhere, from Lion’s Club meetings to weddings and parties. The siblings formed the Fabulous Ginn Sisters and relocated to Austin. They released a debut album in 2003 and put out two other records, including the Eaglesmith-produced You Can’t Take A Bad Girl Home before disbanding. Tif became a solo artist in 2012.
Her 2018 record Moving Day takes its title from her relocation to Canada following her marriage.
“Tif plays accordion, guitar, mandolin, stand-up bass, drums and more, all equally well,” said Eaglesmith. “The two of us have been touring as a duo for the past three years, but it’s eight instruments on stage. So it’s a band gig, not a folk music show.”
Eaglesmith has always had a knack for storytelling, showcasing the lives of the rural working class and the tough times that come with that background. Songs such as Freight Train, Alcohol and Pills or Johnny Cash are defiant, rocking tunes that can easily be considered Canadian cousins to the outlaw country of such legends as Waylon Jennings, Billy Joe Shaver and Willie Nelson. His big grey beard, signature top hat and old school Western jackets all contribute to the image.
Raised in a large farming family that was religiously doctrinaire, Eaglesmith wrote his first song at age 10 but such secular excesses were frowned upon. By age 16, he had run away from home and begun the rail-riding, guitar-strumming hobo life of a defiantly indie musician. His 1997 album Drive-In Movie won the Juno Award in the roots/traditional solo category and he has been nominated two other times. Other career peaks include a 2010 appearance on Late Night with David Lettermen.
All of that was nice, he says, but what has really been the driving force in his career is to be true to himself and the fans.
“We’re still living an adventure and, as long as you’re doing that, as long as you’re living a real life, you’ve got yourself in the right place,” he says. “We played to over 4,000 at the Grand Ole Opry and then our next gig was for 55 people in a town nobody has heard of an hour from our house who showed up in the middle of a snowstorm to have a great time, and that’s so beautiful. When you become that motel to dressing room and back on the bus musician is when things can really go sour.”
That genuine love of the “real fans, real shows and real lives” informs his songwriting, too.
Country music duo and husband-and-wife team Tif Ginn and Fred Eaglesmith on stage at the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville last October.
Some of the best songs on Standard are, literally, affectionate odes to farm machinery. Twin City Mini, Old Machine, Thermostat and Steam are poems to the passion that develops between the vehicle and the operator after years of working together, and how frustrating change can be. A failed flower farmer, Eaglesmith knows the life very well.
Other tracks, such as the heartbreaking Tom Turkey, almost certainly seem like fanciful dreams.
“I write songs all the time, jotting down ideas or a line and sometimes not coming back to them for years,” he said. “And a lot of them are stories I imagine and then get right into telling. But that song is entirely true, all about a woman who lived on our farm and had a pet turkey who just adored her, and when she moved away it withered away and died.
“How weird is that?”
In a world of where presidential tweets and technological leaps leave most of us gasping for a break, an inter-species tragedy about heartbreak and abandonment doesn’t seem that weird. Rather, it’s a slice of life that brings the listener back to the basics of life, love and survival.
Those qualities infuse Eaglesmith’s writing and explain his enduring importance to roots music. Visit fredeaglesmith.com for tour info, news and more.
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