Garnet Rogers

Folk trio, Rogers, Fearing and Finnan, will share best music, stories, at Centre in the Square's Songwriters Circle

June 4, 2002
ROBERT REID
RECORD STAFF

The Songwriters' Circle remains the cornerstone of Centre in the Square's On-Stage series because of the quality of artists assembled for the annual concert.
Celebrating its third year, Thursday's sold-out concert features two of Canada's most popular veteran artists and one of the county's most exciting new voices with Garnet Rogers and Stephen Fearing joining Aengus Finnan.
All of the artists are well-known to local acoustic music buffs, having performed in the area on numerous occasions in the past.
However, with new albums by Rogers (Firefly) and Fearing (That's How I Walk) and with Finnan about to release his sophomore album, there's lots of new material in the offing.
Although the new kid on the block, Finnan just received good news confirming his talent.
Chosen from 600 international performers, he's one of six winners of the Kerrville Folk Festival competition for emerging songwriters, joining such illustrious artists as Shawn Colvin, Lyle Lovett, Nanci Griffith and John Gorka.

Meanwhile, Rogers was in fine form during a recent interview from the farm he shares with wife Gail outside of Brantford.
"The only time I feel ashamed as a musician is when I go to Nashville," he snapped in his signature baritone.
"It's like being downwind from a sausage factory."
Actually, what led to the succinct tirade is the fact that he was watching Robert Altman's Nashville on TV before being interrupted by a reporter's phone call.
Rogers agrees Firefly is the best collection of songs he has assembled for an album. His eight originals are augmented by covers of Ralph McTell and his good friend Marcus Vichert.
Although Rogers employs electric guitars and various other instruments, Firefly is a folk album in terms of songs.
"I view folk music more broadly than some people," he observes, adding he considers artists as diverse as Bruce Springsteen, The Clash, Sex Pistols and U2 to be folk artists.
"There's a lot of folk music I loathe. The cosy, female singer/songwriter stuff is sickening."
Turning his attention to some individual songs, he confesses The Painted Pony, a 20-verse narrative ballad, "came to me in a dream."

As usual, Rogers produced the album and his arrangement of McTell's The Girl from the Hiring Fair was inspired by the great 20th century English composer Ralph Vaughan Williams.
"Vaughan Williams' Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis has affected me deeply over the last 10 years. He has these big, thick, churning orchestrations."

One of the album's highlights is an instrumental (Nightfall) that segues into Who Could Have Known, an eloquent and deeply felt song about passing through the dark night of pain, anger and grief to the sunlight of emotional redemption.
Who could have known
That the sky could turn so calm after a storm?
Who could have known that the
Evening breeze might feel this sweet and warm?
Rogers admits the song comes from the same deep well from which he drew Golden Fields and Night Drive, two of the most powerful songs he has ever written.

"I've spent a lot of my adulthood being angry, not only because of Stan's death," he said, referring to his brother, Stan Rogers, who died at the age of 33 in a 1983 airplane fire.
"I haven't reached the point of the narrator in the song, but I have learned how to deal more effectively with the stress and strain of anger."

Ironically, Rogers didn't write the song during a tranquil moment of intense introspection. Rather, he wrote it between hasty trips to the bathroom.
"I was in a New Bedford (Mass.,) motel room suffering from food poisoning after eating a batch of calamari," he laughs.
"The reality is less poetic than the song might suggest."
His recollection of writing the album's title song, a moving love letter to Gail, is happier.
He was on a patio in Mendocino, Calif., with his good friend and songwriting soulmate Greg Brown when he caught a couple of lines for a song he had been working on for eight years.
"I always knew where I wanted to go with it, but I just didn't know how to start. Then I heard a distant harbour bell and the lines just came to me."
He excused himself, and 20 minutes later, he had the title track for Firefly.