If the voice of his generation – Weird Al Yankovic – taught us anything, it’s that humour and music are not mutually exclusive. And it was that kind of epiphany that struck guitar player Wendell Ferguson in 1999, when he first began incorporating comedy in his compositions.
“I was always a funny guy, and I always wrote funny songs, mostly to make my friends laugh,” said Ferguson. “A friend of mine said, ‘You should record those songs,’ and I said, ‘Well, why not?’”
Wendell Ferguson has been a country musician for most of his life, and has the CV to back it up. He has recorded with the likes of Gordon Lightfoot and Murray McLauchlan; he was Juno-nominated in 1995 for his “Coda the West” group; and he won the Canadian Country Music Association’s Guitar Player of the Year award seven times (so many times, in fact, that he is now ineligible).
![For their show at the Wellesley Community Centre Saturday, singer-songwriters Katherine Wheatley and Wendell Ferguson will be both silly and sweet.[submitted]](https://www.observerxtra.com/content/images/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/arts2.jpg)
But the Wendell Ferguson who will be performing tonight (Saturday) at the Wellesley Community Centre is not the Wendell Ferguson you’ll hear on Lightfoot’s A Painter Passes Through. With albums like Cranky Christmas, Wendell Ferguson Live: The $#!T Hits the Fans, and Menage a Moi (the cover features a drawing of Ferguson in bed with two guitars) to his credit, there is nothing moody about his brand of country.
Ferguson found that for a lighthearted song stylist, the road to mainstream respectability is a daunting one. “I did my first record, and of course, it was completely ignored by the country community,” he recalled. “Because who wants a gap-toothed, grey-haired fat-boy who can’t sing that well singing stupid songs when you’ve got Shania? That made sense, I understood that.”
He continued, “But wonderfully, the CBC embraced it – they like that kind of stuff – so that led to me recording and getting some accolades. Now I’m six or seven products deep, and I’m working on a couple of other albums now.”
As he has accumulated more albums, and performed everywhere from Brampton to Paris, Ferguson has discovered that “mainstream respectability” is a concept past its sell-by date.
“The world’s big enough now that niche markets can sustain you,” said Ferguson. “Somebody said the other day, ‘It used to be 100 artists were selling a million albums each; now, a million artists are selling 100 albums each.’
“I told my father, ‘Only one in a thousand people like me, but that guy goes apes–t.’ That means with a population of 25 million, I could have potentially 250,000 apes–t people.”
Ferguson seldom finds his creative well running dry – he can pump out songs “made to order” – but treasures whenever he finds a song with a lasting impact, like his well-known pastiche “Why Does Every Christmas Song Have So Many Chords?”
“The gold ones, the ones that stay with people the longest, are the true ones,” said Ferguson. “When there’s really humour in what you’re writing, people say, ‘I never thought of that, you’ve said it exactly, that’s so true.’ I hear that all the time, because if it affects me that way, I feel it will affect other people that way.”
Saturday’s performance will offer country fans a well-balanced musical diet. As part of their travelling show together, Ferguson will be performing with Toronto-based singer/songwriter Katherine Wheatley. Ferguson began performing with her as backup in 1997, and in the years since have found their contrastingly silly-and-serious styles to be complementary.
“I only go as deep as the funnybone,” said Ferguson. “I have real feelings, but I don’t expose them. She goes right to the heart in her songs. She’s got them crying, and I’ve got them laughing, and it adds up to a great night of entertainment.”
Ferguson and Wheatley will perform tonight (Saturday) at the Wellesley Community Centre at 8 p.m. Tickets are $15, and can be purchased in advance at Pym’s Village Market, or by calling 519-656-3474. A silent auction and snacks will be available, with profits going to community betterment.
