Fred Eaglesmith only likes to play small music festivals these days.
That’s a good thing, since the southern Ontario musician is slated to play the Live from the Rock folk festival in Red Rock this weekend.
“I pretty much quit playing the big festivals,” he said. “They’re too political. There’s too many people around, too much staff.”
“I like to go to a festival where I just walk in and everybody forgets who I am,” he said, noting one time playing a larger festival, the staff gave him a bodyguard.
“I don’t need a bodyguard,” he said.
Eaglesmith has been playing music more than 30 years now; he’s got 19 albums under his belt and the latest, 6 Volts, was released in January of this year.
He truly went back to his roots for the album, even recording it on tape.
“I just realized when I was making yet another record, I was thinking about it and thinking about it and thought why does this all feel bad to me? … Why don’t I like the music I recorded as much as I did when I was younger?” he said.
Then it came to him; it was because he used tape when he first started in the early 1980s, so he went out and found some tape machines.
“I really liked the way it sounded,” he said. “We were going to try this with one mic, one track, no auto, no mixing and that’s what we did.”
And Eaglesmith has no patience when it comes to things like auto-tune, which is commonplace in today’s music industry with many Top 40 artists.
“I hate that,” he said. “When you record this way, if you don’t have the talent and you can’t write a song, there’s no mercy.”
“You have to have a good song and you have to play it well because the musicians on the floor are making music … not the soundboard,” he added.
Eaglesmith is well-respected in the industry. He’s won a Juno, had his music featured in films and has had country superstars like Toby Keith, Alan Jackson and Miranda Lambert cover his songs.
But the success has never gone to his head. Raised on a farm with eight siblings, Eaglesmith has remained grounded.
He and his band travel from show to show in a school bus and an RV that have been converted to run on both gas and used cooking oil.
They sleep in campgrounds and RV parks and cook up their own breakfast in the mornings.
Fred Eaglesmith plays the Red Rock folk festival both Saturday and Sunday. For more information on the festival visit http://www.livefromtherock.com.
