Juno-award winning singer songwriter Fred Eaglesmith has been touring the world singing his amazing songs for close to 40 years, but he tries not to analyze things so much, especially his fruitful relationship with Austin songwriter Tif Ginn, with whom he is currently in the middle of another tour with which brings him to the Geomatic Attic, Oct. 20.
He is playing with Austin Texas based Tiff Ginn a lot more. In addition to playing harp, two different ukuleles, mandolin, melodica and accordion she also sings and has no fear on stage.
“She’s not afraid to play a bad note. She reminds me of another person who used to be in the band— Willie P Bennett. He was never worried about playing a bad note either,” said the 60-year-old Eaglesmith from a tour stop in Kelowna. He has always played by his own rules, never being swayed by the trend of the week.
“Now I’m more concerned with being honest than good. A lot of people can be as good as me, but nobody can be as bad as me,” he said.
“Even Keith Richard plays bad notes,” he said.
“Anybody can make a good record. I think there’s a button you can push which says ‘make a good sounding record, but not everyone can make an honest sounding record,” he laughed.
“I’m lucky I can keep playing new songs and not have to play the same old songs. A lot of my friends who are big stars have to keep playing their older songs. I can play new songs and people are okay with it,” said Eaglesmith, who has a lot of good songs people always want to hear like “49 tons,”“Freight Train,” and “Time to Get A Gun.” which have been covered by artists like Toby Keith, Allan Jackson, Miranda Lambert and the Cowboy Junkies.
“The Travelling Steamshow broke up. I did that for two years. And the new album is late, so I’m touring with Tif,” he said.
“It’s hard to describe what it is. It has the band on it. Tiff engineered it. I didn’t know what I was doing. I know how to produce an album, but I don’t know how to engineer. So one day Tiff shoved me aside and said ‘let me try it.’ She had never engineered an album either and we found out she was really good at it,” he said.
“ There really are no rules, which is how rock and roll should be. We’ve just put a box around it,” he said.
He noted songs tell him where they should be in a set.
“We’re playing three or four new songs. I like the sound of ‘Tambourine’ (His last album). But the songs aren’t really great live. It works better as a record. We Some of the rockers were really good to me. But usually a song will tell me ‘this would sound good here in this part of the set.”
As usual, Eaglesmith is spending most of the year touring.
“We’re doing a big tour. Then Tif has an album coming out, so we’ll tour on that until December. Then I’ll be back touring from January to May and then I’ll decide what to do,” he said.
“It’s been an interesting year. A new record company has come into the picture. So It’s been interesting and really fun,” he continued.
Fred Eaglesmith and Tiff Ginn play the Geomatic Attic, Oct. 20 at 8 p.m. Tickets are $32.50 plus GST.
