Subject: RE: Barrett's Privateers .. Garnet's views
From:
Clinton Hammond
Date: 22 Jun 06 - 11:21 AM
The whole thing....
Stan By Me
Garnet Rogers is glad to be back in the Maritimes
(just don't ask him to sing that famous song of his brother's)
By Grant Kerr
Telegraph - Journal
Three decades into his music career, Garnet Rogers is still searching for a shining thing not entirely convinced he's ever going to find it.
In fact, the vetern singer-songwriter isn't even sure he has another album in him, let alone any more songs. This isn't unusual. With each of his ten studio albums, Rogers has always approached it like it may be his last.
But when he finished up 2004's Shining Thing, particularly when he laid down the title track, Rogers wondered what else there was to say.
"They are just brief moments" Rogers said of the element he was trying to capture in the title track. "Like when you're driving through upstate NY in the Adirondacks, then sun breaks through and you're on some little mental journey and it takes you back to your childhood. I spend alot of my life trying to get into that dream state.
It wasn't easy capturing that feeling and he wasn't particularly satisfied with the results.
"In some ways it's almost uncomfortable to write about it. It's just a brief glimpse of something. Writing about it is like trying to catch a butterfly with a howitzer."
Whether or not he had another album in him or not, Rogers still writes songs occasionally.
"You write it down because you have to. Sometimes I think that if I don't write it down, it will block other songs"
He's still touring, though, stopping for in for a rare New Brunswick visit. Garnet Rogers plays two shows at Sessions Cafe in Rothesay this Sunday.
While songwriting may be off the radar, for now at least, he's got other projects on the go. One is his memoirs if life on the road with the late Stan Rogers, his older brother.
"I'm working on a very lyrical, messy life-on-the-road-with-Stan book. It was a different time. It's not an attempt to ruin anyones life view. It's supposed to be funny." Rogers said, explaining that many names will be changed to protect the innocent (as well as guilty) from potential lawsuits and marital explosions.
Rogers, now 50, spoke freely of his long-lost brother, their musical career, Garnet's boozy past and his tempestuous relationship with the Maritimes.
"I am glad to be coming down there. It's almost sick how much I am looking forward to playing down in the Maritimes." Rogers said. Straight out of high school, Garnet Rogers began his musical career with brother Stan, six years his senior, in the early 1970's. Both their parents were from Nova Scotia and they spent many summers in Canso, now home of the Stan Rogers Folk Festival.
For seven yearsm starting in 1976 when Stan Rogers released his debut album, Fogarty's Cove, he, Garnet and band toured relentlessly, often to empty, or indifferent pubs and taverns.
For years, Garnet Rogers had refused to played Stanfest, nervous about some of the "people peripheral to the festival, stuff surrounding it that wasn't sitting right with me," although he was quick to point out that festival founder Troy Greencorn is a "great guy". Two years ago he finally played Stanfest and he's back again this year.
Rogers, although he loves this part of the world, didn't always have an easy time on the East Coast. despite Stan's music being sung in pubs seven nights a week with musicians aping Garnet's fiddle and guitar stylings.
"All the years Stan and I played the Maritimes and we didn't do that well. We would play places like the Chestnut (in Fredericton) and we were literally taking people outside and beating the crap out of them, and bringing them back in to listen. Nobody was into folk music and nobody was listening." Rogers said.
"It was only the last year or so of Stan's life that we setarted doing well in places like Halifax. But before that, we couldn't draw an audience and people didn't want to hear us."
Rogers says this with not a whiff of rancor, but rather as a statement of fact.
His debut solo album, 1984's self-titled effort had been planned between tours and albums with his brother's band.
"There was a block of time he and I allotted for me to record within our schedule. It was never considered that I would leave the band," Rogers said.
But with Stan's death, Garnet found himself in the awkward situation of wanting to continue with music, while dealing with the immense personal loss and the fact that his brother's passing launched Stan Rogers into instant mythical status.
"Rather than being in a band, I was a lone guy with a guitar on stage every night." Rogers said.
Although revered for his rumbling baritone voice, songwriting prowess and ability to play most anything in the string family, his brother's legacy looms large. Although proud of his work with Stan there is one song he would be just as happy if he never heard it again. Unfortunately for him, it's the quintessential pub anthem, belted out by every beer hall band from Saint John to Sydney, NS.
"I think Stan compared that song (Barretts Privateers) to stepping in dog doo. You step in it, it's on your foot and you can never get it off. It was fun to sing for about six months, but it turned into this Frankenstein's monster that wouldn't die, wouldn't shut up and go away.
"It was written as a joke" Rogers said.
The song haunts him to this day, a yo-ho-ho albatross, a pub brawl mug thumper.
"I have had drunken morons in every bar in North America come up and demand that I sing that song. It's like "Go away" And then they try to sing it to you.
That song is like a drunken uncle at a wedding.
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