Garnet Rogers Live at Old Town School of Folk Music...

Cathy has always been a fan of folk singer Stan Rogers. She has a stack of his cds. Sadly Stan died in a fire aboard Air Canada Flight 797 on the ground at the Cincinnati airport in 1983 as he was returning from the Kerrville Folk Festival. His music was in a  traditional sounding vein exploring the lives of working people of the Canadian prairies and fishing villages and Cathy says no other singer songwriter paints a picture with words like he did. We never saw Stan but we did manage to catch his brother Garnet Rogers at Chicago's Old Town School of Folk Music this past weekend. 

Garnet is a more modern folk singer songwriter with great tunes about love, life, working and the time couple spend together. The music spoke to me because as a married couple spending some years together I know that it will naturally draw to a close one day as we age and it was pleasant to hear this expressed so poetically. Garnet was a man with a rack of guitars weaving tales on a small stage in a listening room with about 150 people quietly listening and laughing at the funny stories he told between songs. We had close seats and due to the intimate nature of the show I took no photos. 

Garnet mostly played acoustic guitar but he did do a couple of songs on an old worn Stratocaster using a volume pedal, delay and reverb to create interesting ambient sounds.

The stories he told between tunes were not always about to song itself but there were many cultural references to Noel Coward, Fred Astaire, Richard Nixon and Wavy Gravy. I'd say he definitely knew his audience. Who would you talk to about these people? Sometimes I think that's why we can't communicate so well with each other anymore because it's a broad world and we cram it all into what's on a screen and there will be many things we don't know anything about, especially between generations, races and nations. 

Garnet is also an author of two books. One Night Drive is the story of life touring with his brother Stan and the other 6 Crows Gold, which I am reading now is kind of a fast paced spy who done it type thing. Not my usual thing but an engaging read that moves along quickly.

I see lots of DAG (dude and guitar) acts around town. I occasionally appear as one myself. It would behoove us all to check out folk singers like Garnet and imitate them. You might risk being a cultural reference one day but least we won't be confused with Nixon.