Father, son combine talents in cross-country tour

ARTS & LIFE
MONDAY, OCTOBER 28, 2013 | BREA KI NG NE WS: V ANCOUV ER SUN.COM
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Father, son combine talents in cross-country tour
Joe and Joel Fafard
Oct. 28, 7:30 p.m. | Heritage Hall,
3102 Main St.
Tickets: $25 plus charges at thefestival.bc.ca
ROGER LEVESQUE
POSTMEDIA NEWS
In the annals of art tours, it’s
not every day that father and
son hit the road together.
As roots musician Joel Fafard
and his sculptor father Joe
Fafard explain it, fans have
been asking for it for years.
“We tried it at a couple of popup art shows about a year ago,”
Joel Fafard says. “I was playing
during the quieter parts at my
dad’s opening and I loved being
surrounded by his sculptures.
You could really feel the energy
playing along with them.”
This time, there are two musicians named Joel involved.
Joel Fafard and Joel Schwartz
will play tunes from their new
independently produced Fafard
& Schwartz duo album, Borrowed Horses. Then Joe Fafard
will be on hand to chat afterwards when 17 of his bronze
figures are displayed at each
venue. The set-up changes to
suit each venue on the crosscountry tour, which stretches
into November.
There’s a thematic glue
that holds the music and the
sculptures together, a connection that runs deep in the
souls of the Fafards, born
from the fact that they both
grew up on the prairie in rural
Saskatchewan.
“I think it defines my sound,”
Joel Fafard offers. “I draw from
southern influences, the Appalachians and the blues, but the
prairie was like an empty canvas for my imagination.”
Joe Fafard echoes his son’s
words.
“One is marked by one’s first
impressions. It remains with
you the rest of your life and you
cannot deny that. I guess I’ll
always have that baggage but I
think that can be a good thing,
because we have to maintain
certain values.”
The sculptures were done specifically for the tour and some
pieces even take their titles
from the tunes, though father
and son emphasize that the animal or human figures are only
loosely suggested by the characters in the songs. Some of the
works are nearly a metre high.
While Joe Fafard wanted to
include a range of animals to
reflect the country, several of
the most interesting pieces are
mythical animal-human figures, like a Minotaur with a
bull’s head and a man’s body.
Those crossover figures reflect
a new development in his
vision, something the sculptor
“
I loved being
surrounded by
his sculptures. You
could really feel the
energy playing along
with them.
JOEL FAFARD
ROOTS MUSICIAN
STUART GRADON/POSTMEDIA NEWS
Joe Fafard, shown with his sculpture Do Re Mi Fa Sol La Si Do in
Calgary, has created new sculptures for a tour with his son.
began exploring just last year.
“ I t h in k w e h av e b as i c
instincts that are not very different from animals because we
are still animals ourselves. It’s
a marvellous thing that we have
been able to go to the moon and
harness computers, but at the
same time we’re still caught in
the basic instincts of wanting to
eat, to reproduce and to play.”
At 71, Joe Fafard enjoys an
international reputation as one
of Canada’s best-known sculptors. Apart from his vision
of prairie life represented in
sometimes life-size bronzes
of cows, horses and other animals, he has also modelled figures of Emily Carr and several
prime ministers. The artist was
made an officer in the Order of
Canada in 1981.
For son Joel Fafard, 44, creative examples were always
there. Both his mother and
father are artists (he’s also married to painter Megan Mansbridge). Musical talent goes
back to earlier generations, and
he credits his father for planting the influence of folk music
in his life, starting with the
records he heard growing up
at the family homestead on the
edge of Pense, Sask.
The Fafard & Schwartz duo
is a relatively new thing for
Joel Fafard following six solo
albums, nominations for Juno
and Canadian Folk Music
Awards, and early work in
other bands. As he explains,
the two guitarists met in a festival workshop two years back
and noticed an immediate
chemistry.
Joel Schwartz “was a sideman
with another artist but as everyone was taking turns, we just
started playing off each other,
jiving,” Joel Fafard says, “and
when I invited him to join me
on my mainstage set, we had a
great time.”
Their collaboration Borrowed
Horses continues the focus on
early country blues and Appalachian folk that Fafard has
plumbed for years, adding
several original tunes and a
cover of Bruce Springsteen’s
State Trooper. Fafard takes the
vocals with his resonator guitar
while Schwartz complements
him on hollow-body electric,
bringing new life to classics like
Pay Day, Trouble In Mind and
Sitting on Top of the World.
Despite the distance between
them — Joel Fafard moved to
British Columbia about five
years ago, Schwartz is based
in Toronto — the two Joels
are pretty sure the duo will be
a regular part of their varied
career opportunities.