Think of him as a banjo-playing life coach
BRAD WHEELER
From Friday's Globe and Mail
August 29, 2008 at 4:11 AM EDT
Though we still know our way down to that basement, we leave it
behind when we sing these songs.
- Old Man Luedecke's Just Like a River
This fella, Chris Luedecke, inspires practical hope.
He sings honestly about low points - his and maybe yours as well - and
overcoming them. If you know him at all, you know him as Old Man
Luedecke, the stage name he records and performs under. Listen to him
on Just Like a River, an encouraging banjo-strummed tune that
is one of the best parts of Proof of Love, a thoughtful and
enjoyable album released early this year on the Black Hen roots label.
"Fear and doubt are our greatest rivals," he believes, and "action and
joy can carry us along."
Enlarge Image
Chris Luedecke, who performs under the stage name Old Man Luedecke, is
an honest storyteller. (Fred Lum/The Globe and Mail)
Luedecke does not coach tritely. He is not a sugar-coater. Rather, he
is a storyteller who likes the idea that his experiences can be woven
into a folky song and passed on to others.
He tells a true tale in I Quit My Job, from 2006's Hinterland.
Seems Luedecke has folks approaching him on tour, telling him that,
upon hearing that tune, they left their own work. It's enough to make a
songwriter, and the Ministry of Employment, cringe.
"That's an inspiring song," Luedecke agrees, "but it says I quit my
job. It doesn't say you should quit yours." With that, he laughs,
sipping a local brew at a downtown Toronto pub earlier in the summer.
He was working in Halifax selling symphony tickets, sitting in a
basement office where the walls were done in such a dangerously pointy
stucco that his knees were pricked and poked as he phoned potential
subscribers. "The pay was terrible," the Toronto-born troubadour
recalls. "It was underground. All I could see were the sandaled feet of
people walking on the sidewalk outside. That was all I got out of a
nice day."
The new album Proof of Love is an advancement musically for
Luedecke - Vancouver producer Steve Dawson adds textures and band
arrangements - but the doughty theme of I Quit My Job is not
abandoned. The songs often concern road bends and slide-backs, but
ultimately are notable for a determined spirit. "You know we all are
just struggling in our own way to be free," is the refrain of Thrown
by a Bull.
Faced with the task of presenting the stories of his own life as some
sort of lesson for others without it all coming off as cloying, the
McGill-educated performer developed a persona - a rustic character with
glasses, rusty beard, newsboy cap and tweed jacket. "I didn't want to
fall into a trap of being overly sincere or alienating people," he
explains. "I was sensitive to the idea that if I was going to sing the
songs that I wanted to sing, I would have to make them entertaining."
On stage, Old Man Luedecke (who is actually in his early 30s) is a
foot-stomping storytelling type, but not in an affected way. He's kind
of a mix of Garrison Keillor and Roscoe Holcomb, without looking or
sounding like either one of them. The character is a mix of real-person
and persona: "I wanted to make the music about more than me, because me
isn't really all that interesting."
Luedecke sells himself short, a trait that plagued him earlier in life.
He's mostly over that now, and his emboldening, half-blind decision to
strike out on his own as a full-time performer and songwriter is the
reason.
"Long before I was probably ready to do it, I knew it was what I was
going to do," he says. "This whole adventure is kind of a conversion of
experience from fear."
Shelter Valley Folk Festival, Grafton, Ont. (12 kilometres east of
Cobourg). To Sunday. Sheltervalley.com or 866-612-7833.
***
Banjo boy
Old Man Luedecke, a gifted Halifax songster who performs at the
Shelter Valley Folk Festival this weekend, tells of his discovery and
love of the banjo, a quirky "odd duck" of an instrument that, for him,
rings true and loud like no other. "I'm not quite sure how it happened.
I bought the thing on a whim at a Vancouver pawnshop. I was working in
Dawson City, Yukon, and had some money in my pocket. It was always a
sound that thrilled me. The banjo has a frequency; you can always hear
it on any kind of recording - it leaps out. I don't think I have
anything to say and contribute with the guitar. The banjo just seems to
inspire an interesting feeling." B.W.