Singers and musicians, but first and foremost Canadian storytellers.
If you walked into Petit Campus on Nov. 2, you wouldn’t think you were in Montreal. Accents from across the country, primarily the Maritimes, filled the air as concertgoers awaited musician Adam Baldwin and opener Mariel Buckley.
As Buckley walked on stage with her guitar and began adjusting her microphone, she jokingly told the crowd to expect “thirty minutes of me bumming you out before an hour of Adam bumming you out.”
Her voice and alternative folk music were enchanting. Born and raised in Calgary, her music brings attention to the darker sides of living out West.
She played some unreleased songs, including “Vending Machine,” letting the audience into some of the most intimate parts of her life. It felt like listening to a friend share a story around a campfire.
“If you bum 200 cigarettes from Adam Baldwin, drink only brown beer, and eat gas station food, you too could sound like that,” said Buckley at the end of her set. “Adam has become a great hero of mine.”
Both artists, although from opposite ends of the country, have a lot in common, not just in their lived experiences but in the way they use the medium of song as storytellers. “Write about what you love and ignore the noise” was the best advice Baldwin gave her, she said. “This was one of the single best touring experiences I’ve had so far,” said Buckley.
By the time Baldwin got on stage, not a single empty seat remained. Wearing his classic bandana, he sat at a piano draped in green fishing nets and a yellow rope with buoys. Kendall Carson joined him on the fiddle and Zach McClain on the guitar.
Baldwin opened with “Causeway Road,” the first song on his album Concertos & Serenades. He shared the story behind the song, which is about a local man from Fall River known as “Crazy Donny.” The singer explained that to get that name in a small town like his, you had to be pretty crazy.
He was sure “Crazy Donny” was dead until he recently found him standing at the bottom of his driveway, wearing a winter coat and no shirt on, asking him, “Are you the one that wrote that song about me?”
Baldwin acknowledged that some of his songs about betrayal and drugs “can get a little dark,” which is why he balances them “with laughter and by gabbing with the audience.” As a storyteller, he prides himself in singing the stories of “the downtrodden and complicated” people he understands.
A few songs in, he asked, “Who’s from Nova Scotia?” About half the audience, mostly the people close to the stage, raised their hands and cheered loudly. It was clear that folks wanted a piece of home, at least for the night.
The crowd may have been drunk and rowdy, but they swayed silently and sat attentively for solemn songs like “The Voice of the Eastern Passage” and “No. 2 Colliery.” For “Gone to the Dogs,” he got up to play guitar as the band left the stage. This set the tone for the last half of the show, with fiddle and guitar solos, stronger backup vocals, and the song “Thirteen with Buckley.”
In Montreal, it can be easy to forget or overlook the hardships of living in more rural areas with fewer opportunities and harsher conditions. By sharing the most intimate parts of their lives with us, Baldwin and Buckey showed us that our country, while praised for its beauty, comes with its fair share of hardships and challenges.
