“I saw him perform many times, when he was in the area, often in the Garden Street Café in Guelph,” said musician Jack Cole of Canadian folk legend Stan Rogers. “You’d spend half the time laughing, half the time just absorbing the music.”
“Stan was a great performer,” he continued. “He knew the power of being up there and singing one of his really moving songs, then moving onto something a little less serious, and telling a funny story in between.”
Known for songs that put rural Canada – its working-class citizens, its scenic beauty, its history – to the forefront, Stan Rogers completed just four albums in his lifetime, but his influence is still felt in folk music circles today. This month marks the thirtieth anniversary of his death in a plane crash at age 33, and Cole’s Folk Night series at the Registry Theatre is paying tribute with a celebration of his life and work.
“Remembering Stan Rogers” will unite Cole with performers Paul Mills, Anne Lederman, Brad Nelson, and Dan Patterson for a run-through of Rogers’ greatest-hits, as well as some lesser-known tracks. The show, which began life five years ago, has connections to the late folk star: Mills, a friend of Rogers’, will play Rogers’ own 12-string guitar, which survived the crash that claimed his life.
Well-known standards like “Barrett’s Privateers” and “45 Years from Now” (plus deep cuts like “Second Effort,” “Working Joe,” and “Made on the Shore”) will be brought out for the audience, in a memorial show that Cole promises will be more celebratory than solemn. “We’ve chosen a lineup of songs that will let people who know Stan’s music sing along and join in,” said Cole.
“The song ‘Second Effort’ was commissioned by the CBC, and it’s a song about being an Olympic athlete,” said Cole. “Stan, being Stan, didn’t write it from the point of view of, ‘Wow, I’m an Olympic athlete.’ He wrote it from the point of view of the person who lost, and how hard it would be to pick himself up again.
“There are just little gems of lines, like, ‘I bet they cleared away the parlour so my ma could dance me in the door’ … That little line captures so much, and that was Stan’s trademark.”
But given how important albums like Fogarty’s Cove, Turnaround, and Northwest Passage are to Canadian music fans, is it intimidating trying to follow in Rogers’ footsteps?
“Absolutely,” Cole replied. “Stan’s songs are almost holy ground. Nathan Rogers, Stan’s son, is really the only one I think who has successfully re-arranged them and had everyone say, ‘Oh, that’s really good.’ Most people who tackle his songs do Stan’s version, and that’s tough competition.”
For Cole, Rogers has been an important influence throughout his career. “I was in university until ’78, and that’s about when Stan started playing around. The types of songs that he did were the types of songs that I wanted to do,” said Cole.
“Stan could really work the emotions. Part of it was his amazing voice. He could go everywhere with that voice – a low rumble, or a loud bellow, and pull you right in. When you were at a Stan show, you weren’t looking around and focusing on other things. You really got engrossed in what he was doing.”
“Folk Night: Remembering Stan Rogers” will take place at the Registry Theatre in Kitchener (122 Frederick St.) on June 15. Tickets are $18 in advance or $20 at the door, and can be purchased at www.centre-square.com, or by calling 519-578-1570.
