Garnet Rogers

Yes, Garnet Rogers has a rare and wonderful baritone voice, a bottomless resonance that makes his songs impossible to ignore. But more noticeable, especially in a landscape strewn with folksingers who can't raise their heads from their own navels, is how his songs push images into listeners' heads, how cinematic they can be.

"I wanted to be a painter when I was young," says Rogers, "but I didn't have the moves."

So he does it with music, instead, layering his songs with texture, "to make it as real as possible, so (listeners) can be in the room where the story happens to take place, to try to put them there.

"You try to make the experiences as real as you can for the listener," he adds. "The smell of fresh-cut grass, or something. It's a sensory touchstone, it's evocative, and it may make someone follow you on this journey..."

In a darkened bedroom, lit only by the amber glow from an old floor model radio, two young brothers aged 6 and 12 lay in their beds, listening to the country music broadcasts from the Grand 01' Opry, and practised their harmonies.

It's almost too romantic to believe, the Walton's Mountain description that opens Rogers's biography, yet he swears that it's true. He goes back there often, too, when he catches a whiff of the hot glue or burning cathode tubes from the old amplifiers he still uses in concerts, and he's suddenly no longer a 47-year-old performer on stage, lit by bright 1,000-watt spotlights, but a six- year-old kid with his brother, listening to the static and strings from a world away.

Two years later, the youngest one was playing the definitive 8-year-old's version of Desolation Row on his ukulele.

Another seminal image, this one of a family outing; Mom, Pop, eight-year-old Garnet and his now 14-year-old brother, taking in a show at Toronto's Massey Hall. Bob Dylan is on stage, just at the point in his career that he was going electric and angering the folk traditionalists.

"It was amazing." Says Rogers, "literally life-changing."

At that show, Rogers recalls, Dylan first played an acoustic set, and then returned with The Band, wearing sunglasses, their backs to the audience, for an electric second act.

"All hell broke loose," he says. "People started screaming and ripping up chairs and throwing them and being carried out on stretchers. Fights broke out in the lobby, and I'm sitting there, holding onto my dad's hand, thinking, 'This is the greatest!'"

Rogers's mother and brother stayed for the entire show, while he and his father waited outside, watching the ambulances come and go.

"I couldn't believe it," he says, "I thought I had to be a part of it, somehow."

Eventually, Garnet, who now lives on a farm outside Brantford, Ont., and his brother Stan, struck out on a joint musical path - Garnet as a full-time member of Stan s band - and became best known for maritime historical folk songs like Northwest Passage and Barrett s Privateers.

Stan s death in a plane fire in 1983 elevated his status to that of some near-mythic Canadian music icon, fuelled by a CBC that pretty much adopted him as their own.

Now, nine solo CDs and almost 20 years later, Garnet's career remains - as it likely always will - bound to those earlier days. His rich voice is reminiscent his brother's. He will always be his brother's brother.

"Yeah, haunted and inspired," is how he puts it. "I think I'll always be in that shadow to some degree. If no one's able to get past it, it's a bit frustrating. It's a double-edged sword. On one level, yes, I'm really thrilled that Stan's music is hugely popular.

"After he died," he adds, "there was a period of time when thought, 'My God, I'm going to have to play these songs for the rest of my life.' We'd sold maybe 40,000 of his records in his life time, and now it's in the millions and it was a huge relief not to have to go out and carry this torch and feel that pain ever damn night."

He dropped that torch when he began to write his own songs, and record and perform music not associated with his time with Stan.

But still, the man who once described the Canadian folk scene as akin to the Witness Protection Program ("People know you're out there; they just can't find you"), has no desire for the idolatry heaped on his brother.

When he started playing solo, his and Stan's agent offered to help build his career, promising fame and riches.

"I said, 'I don't want to be famous. Rich would be great. There's nothing about fame that ever, ever attracted me. To have people come up and get all squirmy and fall over and pee on the floor when you go by, or treat you sycophantically, it's creepy.

"I don't like any part of that. I love being able to play music.. It's all I ever wanted to do."