Garnet Rogers

Love and hate and birds and ponys propel the new Garnet Rogers recording. Oh yes, and, erm... arson. Roddy Campbell fans the flames.

The advance copy of *Firefly* takes flight. Around the room the imploring strength of Garnet Rogers ornate baritone ebbs and flows on a ground swell of raw emotion. But then again, it always does, doesn t it.

Solitude and desolation cast long shadows over this new disc. Desperation and anger too. Yet, its underlying theme is one of celebration. Twenty years married last spring, Rogers counts his blessings with several catholic tributes to his lovely wife Gail. The most obvious include the rockabilly, *Where d You Get That Little Dress?*, and the warm, nostalgic title track. Clearly, he is still head-over-heels . So grab a hanky and read on, dear reader.

"This is the thing that pretty much forms every waking moment of my life - this relationship, this marriage - having this person, this great, great love," says Rogers. "Everyone dreams of having a great love. We re born with that need. We re born with that condition.

"We ve just had 20 years of exceptional friendship and companionship and it s been an extraordinary run that Gail and I have had. This is really an extraordinary thing. Gail and I have been together simply because there s no one in the world I d rather be with, or talk to, or spend time with. I ve been amazingly blessed that way."

We will get to his thoughts on Ontario premier, Mike Harris a little later.

For someone who frequently gives the outward impression of a gruff loner, at odds with all asunder, Garnet Rogers is obviously a disarmingly open, sensitive foot soldier. He also thinks deeply about his music, constantly questioning and broadening writing profoundly inspired by the folk tradition.

*Firefly* offers further ample evidence of his creative capers as he dabbles with trumpets, a cello bought in a pawn shop in Fargo, North Dakota, and the odd orchestral arrangement. Further more, his songs continue to grow in length and strength with the majority clocking in somewhere between six and ten minutes. Considering his whole main stage set at last summer s Calgary folk festival consisted of a sole rendition of his epic environmental clarion, *Stormfront*, from *Sparrow s Wing*, something surely gives.

Mr. Rogers: "There s a sort of moment of clarity I had a few years ago where I realized commercial radio for me is a dead issue. It s not going to happen. I don t fit anyone s format. And that was tremendously freeing. It was just like, "Well screw it. I can do whatever I want. I don t have to worry about format and all that crap. Or Where s the single?" Or any of that stuff.

"I ve always loved longer pieces where there s a little bit of orchestration. I think the first long one I did was *A Row of Small Trees* on *From A High Window*. I don t want to sound pretentious, if you re a songwriter and you say you re heavily influenced by classical music, but you know I am. I m a string player and I listen to a lot of orchestral music. So I love to put these instrumental passages in and they tend to pad the song out a lot.

"I like to build a long piece and try and paint a picture and create moods. I like being free to tell long stories. There s also my background in traditional music, you know. Somebody sits there for three hours and sings you every verse of *Tam Lin*. And that s perfectly acceptable for some people."

Despite the ever-increasing length of his songs, his vivid, frequently moving, lyrical elegance remains astutely spare and economical. Both his last disc, *Sparrow s Wing*, and *Firefly* offer compelling, panoramic lyrical landscapes.

His obvious ardent appreciation for nature he attributes to a childhood frequently spent alone walking in woods near the family home. And, of course, there is also the numerous solitary hours crisscrossing and contemplating rural North America. The uplifting *Better Days*, the joyful celebration of spring, *Redwing*, and the somber existentialism of *Blue Smoke* are all placed in pictorial rustic settings.

"Blue Smoke, that s a continuance of a song I wrote for *At A High Window* called *The Last of The Working Stetsons*, about a guy just trying to deal with a drought. In my mind his place is located up in the hills towards Turner Valley (Alberta). Of course, that s all covered in housing developments now. In the first song, he went to the city to try and find work and that didn t pan out and he went back to the farm. He had nothing else do. He s going to have another go at it.

"In *Blue Smoke*, it s seriously gone bad. He s just sitting there and when he throws the cigarette off the front porch, it starts a little fire. He s at that low ebb; he s watching the fire grow and he can t be bothered. He s really got his back to the wall. He s got nowhere to go so it s all the same to him. It s just this spoor fictional character I m torturing. I m worried about him in the next song."

Like his late, much revered brother Stan, Garnet Rogers drew much of his early inspiration from the British tradition, particularly its story-telling balladry. Instrumentally, particular influences included the guitar playing and open tunings of Nic Jones and Archie Fisher.

The Toronto based informal folk music collective, Friends of Fiddlers Green, also had a profound impact on the brothers. "They were a group of people who showed us we could write in a traditional mode, songs that harken back to an older style of writing - the old ballad styled." Briefly returning to that innocent era, *Firefly* offers a surprisingly appealing rendition of Ralph McTell s *Girl From The Hiring Fair.*

"I used to know 20 of his songs back in the 70s. I just loved his writing . And then I did a couple of shows with him a couple of years ago. There was a lot of trepidation and I thought What if he s an ass-hole? I m just dreading meeting this guy because this could be just awful.

"And it turned out he s just the nicest guy, no ego to him at all. He was friendly and gracious to me. That was just a wonderful thing, it made all the songs come alive for me again. It was like, Wow! And then I heard *Girl From The Hiring Fair* a couple of years ago and it kind of made me swoon. I though it was a beautiful story. I wanted to be able to play it every night."

And in keeping with the social and political content firmly ensconced in the folk tradition, *Firefly* features *Underpass* - a critical look at the human cost of Ontario premier Mike Harris s conservative policies aimed at reducing welfare lines. It s a powerful, dire barn burner more befitting Dire Straits in structure.

"Mike Harris, there s nobody I hate more than him. He and all of his buddies, who are basically running corporate Ontario, they took 50,000 people off the welfare rolls in Toronto his first year in power. And everybody s going Oh yeah, that s wonderful. And in Toronto people are living on hot air grates. Not in any of the worst cities in America have I seen so many homeless people. I hate Mike Harris and everything he stands for.

"It s that smug All you ve got to do is pull yourself up by the boot straps. Fuck it, some of us don t even have fucking boots, you know. We don t have a fucking chance. And it s that sneering kind of Well if you only just applied yourself. This guy has had every break in life and he played golf for a living, for god sakes. What does he know about real life?"

Rogers vitriol turns bluer and bluer but eventually ends in peels of uninhibited laughter. None of his comments, of course, could possibly be repeated in print. Pity.

And so to the rockabilly *Where d You Get That Little Dress?*, a song so totally out of character it clearly demands further investigation.

"That was one that came from the marriage," he laughs. "I was playing Portland, Oregon, opening for Greg Brown. I was driving up to the Aladdin Theater, which holds the world s record for the most consecutive showings of Deep Throat. It was a kind of wild old place, a lovely venue now. They ve cleaned the floor off. But anyway, I was driving along and thinking of home, and it was kind of, "Where d you get that red dress? It was sort of boom-chuck-a-boom-chuck rhythm I had in my head. By the time we got to the sound check, the song was there.

"So I was playing it in the dressing room and writing it down. Greg was sitting there listening to the words smiling. I finished the song, and he said, My God how long have you been on the road? It was just a bit of fun."