MUSIC

McGonigel's Mucky Duck presents Fred Eaglesmith.

Rural life, dogs, guns, drinking and farming/ranching are other common themes. Many of his songs are about failing farms and small businesses. Eaglesmith's songs are populated with down and out characters dealing with loss of love or livelihood, and quirky rural folk. His songwriting uses many of the techniques of short-story writing, including unreliable narrators, surprise endings, and plot twists.

Like all great and genuine artists, Fred Eaglesmith lets his muse call the tune on his 18th album, Cha Cha Cha. And this time out it’s the big beat of rock’n’roll. And it is not only rock’n’roll, though that is at the heart of this collection of reflections on the always fertile subject of love by one of the most acclaimed singer-songwriter of our day. With his usual creative panache, Eaglesmith splashes the style with such colors as 1950s movie music, soulful backing vocals, dance rhythms and more. He reconfigures one of the most potent essences of popular music into something all his own as well as both timeless yet urgently contemporary.

Eaglesmith has followed his muse and the music to wherever it takes him since he left the family farm at age 15 to pursue the hitchhiking and freight-hopping trail of a traveling troubadour. As a result he has forged one of the most distinguished and unique independent careers in popular music from the grassroots upwards, marked by a consistent string of critical superlatives for his work. And now after being a leading light in both the new folk and Americana movements, Eaglesmith stays at the cutting edge of the musical zeitgeist to help spark a rock’n’roll renewal. “I still want to be vibrant and I still want to be on fire and I still have passion,” he asserts. “I don’t ever wanna stay in the ghetto.”

Yet for all his plaudits and accomplishments, Eaglesmith continues to stay true to his own populist path as an entertainer. “Yes, I get all these accolades and everything. And we’re cooking eggs in the RV when we’re on tour,” he notes with a wry chuckle. “Which to me is really fantastic, because that makes me loosen up and be able to write the songs. What a great place my life is in now. Alan Jackson is singing my song, and we’re going to start staying in RV parks. I love that. As I get more into the mainstream my lifestyle gets more and more away from it.”

In the end, within what he calls “the weirdest little career that works so well,” the journey is still as important for Eaglesmith as any destinations, if not more so. “No matter where I go in the world there's always 100 or 200 people willing to shell out 20 bucks to see me," says Eaglesmith. “I can drive down some little sheep road in Scotland or Australia for eight hours and there’s people who'll gather up in some shack or some barn or some hall to see my show. It’s the best feeling in the world.”