On the loose

Canadian Stephen Fearing takes on the States

by David Ritchie

Despite years of touring and five critically acclaimed recordings, Stephen Fearing now faces his first real opportunity for success in the States. Though he received a Juno nomination (the Canadian equivalent of the Grammy) for all five CDs, he's had few chances to perform outside of his Canadian homeland. "Yeah, it's very strange. I think that we get more American music up here because the festival circuit is so strong and alive up here . . . but it doesn't always work the other way around."

That situation will be rectified locally this weekend. Touring in support of his first US release, Industrial Lullaby (released on Red House Records in July), Fearing plays the Bull Run, in Shirley, this Friday, and then appears at Ben & Jerry's Newport Folk Festival on Saturday. Since the inaugural show in 1959, the Newport festival has provided exposure for some of the best songwriters, and Fearing is ready to join their ranks. "Pretty much every date I do in the States is brand new, so it's pretty exciting for me."

Industrial Lullaby is a breakthrough album for Fearing. He's incorporated rock, pop, and folk styles and collaborated with fellow Canadians like Bruce Cockburn, Margo Timmins of the Cowboy Junkies, Richard Bell of the Band, and folk hero Willie P. Bennett who plays harmonica on several tracks.

The CD is produced by blues/gospel/ R&B legend Colin Linden, an artist Fearing has worked with before. After four solo CDs, he and Linden had a side project called Blackie & the Rodeo Kings, a band who exclusively performed the songs of Willie P. Bennett, a strong and early influence on both men. Fearing sees that project as responsible for a stylistic shift between his first four solo records and the new one. "In the past, I've been a bit of a . . . what's a nice way of putting it . . . slightly anal-retentive in the studio -- a bit of a perfectionist. And y'know, it's not a bad thing, but I definitely was made to realize that that can seriously get in the way of the actual music. If you spend a lot of time figuring out whether that note's flat, or there's a buzz somewhere, you can kill a record." Linden encouraged Fearing to work quickly, stressing the importance of first getting the feel of the song onto tape. As a result, this record has a looser, grittier feel.

Fearing's beautiful acoustic guitar work shines throughout the album. "Coryanna" is one of the CD's strongest tracks, and it's one of few without a full band. Given the fuller arrangements on the record, it will be interesting to hear how he approaches the songs on this solo tour. "You can get around stuff like that by adding a little delay on the guitar, which makes it sound a little bigger. They're all built up around me and a guitar; so actually, at the heart of it, it's pretty easy to find the root of the song."

Although born in Vancouver, Fearing spent most of his youth in Dublin, Ireland. He picked up some Celtic elements, but his real exposure was to the variety of music on British radio, where he heard English folk artists like John Martyn and Fairport Convention's Richard Thompson (who played on Fearing's 1990 release, Blue Line). After moving to Minneapolis for two years, Fearing returned to Vancouver where he made three records that were popular on the folk circuit. In 1994, he married and settled in Guelph, Ontario, "a good little music town," about an hour outside of Toronto.

Fearing spent a lot of time in early interviews discussing the limitations he says he felt were inherent in descriptions like "folk." He cites bands like Wilco and Beck as breaking the barriers, bringing different styles back to Top 40 radio. "If you make a folk record, a very obviously folk record, your next three records could be grindcore but you'd still be put in the folk section." These days, though, he's content to make the kind of records he wants to make and to let people call them what they want.

The new CD has been his best received to date, and after a decade of hard work, Fearing is excited about the opportunity to play in the US. "Canada's tiny even though it's huge. Y'know, you can pretty much play Canada in eight weeks if you put your head down; and so I'm really looking forward to working south because there's this huge population of people, and there's all these musicians that I've run into -- I'm quite excited about getting down and gettin' in their faces." He laughs. "Y'know. It's not that far away, it's crazy. Canadians they go back and forth east to west and there's this huge population of people just two hours south."

Stephen Fearing opens for Lucy Kaplansky on August 7 at the Bull Run, in Shirley. Tickets for the 8:30 p.m. show are $12. Call (978) 425-4311. He also appears at Ben & Jerry's Newport Folk Festival Saturday afternoon. Tickets are $42. Call (401) 847-3700.