Salt Spring Folk Club presents: Fred Eaglesmith Traveling Steam Show

add to outlook add to google calendar remind me

Monday, February 23rd, 2015
Show at 7:00. Doors open at 6:00 for season pass holders, 6:15 for general admission.

The Salt Spring Folk Club presents the Fred Eaglesmith Traveling Steam Show at Fulford Hall on February 23.

Throughout the years since his first album in 1980, Eaglesmith has usefully managed to both transcend and blend such genres and categories as rock’n’roll, country, folk, singer-songwriter, Americana, blues and bluegrass to fashion his own distinctive brand of literate, melodic and rhythmic rocking elecro-acoustic North American music. Along the way he has gathered a unique set of accomplishments: a Juno Award for Best Roots & Traditional Album, had his music used in films by Martin Scorsese, James Caan and Toby Keith, wrote a hit #1 on the bluegrass charts (“Thirty Years of Farming,” recorded by James King), wowing David Letterman in his U. S. network debut in 2010, and finding his songs included in the curriculum at two colleges. His followers are so devoted that he is the host and centerpiece of a number of music festivals in the U.S. and Canada. He also inspired the Roots on the Rails rolling music fests and hosts its excursions on scenic railways as well as, last year, at sea. When not writing recording and performing music, Eaglesmith creates visual art that is exhibited in commercial galleries and museums.

In addition to having his compositions featured on best-selling albums by country singers and writers themselves like Keith (“White Rose”), Jackson (“Freight Train”) and Lambert (“Time To Get A Gun”), such fellow songwriting talents as The Cowboy Junkies, Chris Knight, Kasey Chambers, Mary Gauthier, Todd Snider and Dar Williams have all recorded Eaglesmith songs.

One of nine children raised on a farm in Ontario, Eaglesmith remains genuinely tied to the land and the lives, labors, trials, tribulations and triumphs of everyday people that have consistently given his work its enduring emotional resonance. After his family lost its farm, he set out on his own at age 15, hitchhiking and hopping trains across North America and honing his craft as a writer, singer and musical entertainer in hobo camps and for crews of fellow forest firefighters before working his way upward in small clubs and coffeehouses.

These days Eaglesmith is in motion most of the year from show to show in a school bus and RV that have been converted to run on both gas and used cooking oil they get from restaurants and diners along the way. The troupe pulls into campgrounds, RV parks, truckstops and WalMart parking lots to spend the night rather than in
hotels, and cooks up their own feasts in the morning for breakfast. “Times are hard and things are tough for people, and we shouldn’t be riding in buses that look like bachelor apartments,” he states. As a result, ”It makes me sound like the truth when I’m up there singing because it is the truth.”

It’s all part and parcel of his mission of delivering a memorable and moving entertainment experience for the masses with his band, the Traveling Steam Show.

In the final analysis, it’s a simple equation. “We just play rock’n’roll,” Eaglesmith asserts. And in the process deliver music based on passion and truth, with an emotional union and a shared sense of fun. “The root of it all is my little bit of creativity, that little ball of fire inside me. I just do what feels like the truth to me. And when it feels like the truth it’s really not that hard to do or hard to listen to.

Eaglesmith concludes. So he’s happily left with a decision made long ago that he continues to follow that delivers essential affirmation with every step of life he takes. “I’m gonna play good, sing good, write good and act good.”

http://www.fredeaglesmith.com/listen.html

Ticket Information

Seasons passes are $100 (includes all 6 concerts) and are available at:

- The Fall Fair (mid September)
- Our first show (October) or
- Send cheque payable to Salt Spring Folk Club to Salt Spring Folk Club, 486 Mt. Belcher Heights, Salt Spring Island, BC, V8K 2J6

Individual concert tickets are available at:

- Salt Spring Books (537-2812)
- Stuff and Nonsense (653-4620)