Fred Eaglesmith
Acclaimed singer, songwriter and bandleader Fred Eaglesmith is a genuine iconoclast and true original. It’s the natural consequence of following the arc of his musical inclinations and for doggedly sticking with an affirmation he made long ago, “I’m gonna play good, sing good, write good and act good.”
The result is one of the most fascinating and musically rewarding careers in contemporary music. Throughout the years since his first album in 1980, Eaglesmith has both transcended and blended elements of 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 won 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), wowed David Letterman in his U.S. network debut in 2010, and found 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 and 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 superstars Toby Keith (“White Rose”), Alan Jackson (“Freight Train”) and Miranda 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, traveling 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 staying in hotels, and they cook 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,” Fred 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.
![Image of Tinderbox [Vinyl]](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51USv0B-mgL._SL75_.jpg "Tinderbox [Vinyl]")
