An Old Soul in New Pants

Made the trek back to the big smoke a few days ago. Drove up with one of my friends and we made it in one shot! One more year to go at York University. It has been great catching up with old friends again.

I’m starting to work on a documentary for a school project about folk/country musician Stevedore Steve Foote of Saint John New Brunswick. He was an old compadre of Stompin’ Tom Connors. If you’ve never heard of Steve you might know one of his songs- Lester the Lobster. That was one of his gems, or what he called a “mini-hit.”

Anyhow, I had my first couple of gigs this weekend. Saturday I played at The Local in Roncesvalles. That was a time! Some friends came by. The kitchen staff must have liked the Canadiana tunes as they gracefully served me a big honkin’ bowl of poutine during my break.

One of the courses I am taking this year concerns memory. Much of the curriculum argues that our culture is obsessed with the preservation of history/memories- through museology, public archives and what-not. Ideas of “vintage” and “retro” come up a lot. Vintage clothing, the vinyl record comeback… you might say people are stuck in the past (but who says that’s a bad thing!)

There’s a lot of romanticizing in folk music- and it creates some dilemmas in regards to carrying traditions forward. Take the folk music of PEI for example. One ubiquitous theme is the need to leave the Island to find work. Many older songs describe such events. Larry Gorman’s The Boys of the Island describes Island men going to Bangor, Maine to work in the woods. The Harvest Excursion is about fellas going off to Saskatchewan to reap the harvest in early autumn. Later songs continued the theme in more contemporary ways- like Stompin’ Tom’s To It and At It.

So if I’m to write a PEI folk song about leaving to find work, is it more worthwhile to write in a modern context- let’s say a song about working in the Alberta oil fields, or to write a song about an older historic occurrence? Folk music is all about preserving and continuing tradition: so which method furthers the “going off to seek work” motif/tradition more effectively?

I like to write songs in a personal/modern context, but it’s just as fun to write a song that is ambiguous (or even deceptive) in regards to origin. Oftentimes a modern folk song utilizes conventions of historical folk songs in terms of melody, structure, or diction. Sometimes audience members inquire about certain songs of mine and are surprised to hear that a particular song was written in 2018 and not 1918!

At the end of the day writing folk songs is a lawless game so it doesn’t much matter if you write about current affairs, history, or both- but it is something I am conscious of.

An elderly lady once described my folk-musician father as an “old soul in new pants.” That’s one way to put it!