YOU COULD SAY DAVID FRANCEY IS A MAN OF THE PEOPLE.
As a child, he and his musical family, who emigrated from Scotland when he was 12, used to tour the Ontario countryside, singing traditional songs as they motored around.
The man has thumbed his way across Canada three times and up into the Yukon. He’s worked in rail yards and the northern bush and, as a lark provided by his wife, Beth, spent time afloat on an ore carrier.
Not only has the man spent years swinging a hammer in the Eastern Townships of Quebec, he wins Juno Awards as a beloved folk artist.
All in all, Francey, who plays The Banff Centre’s Margaret Greenham Theatre, Oct. 23, has had a well-rounded folk roots upbringing which has generated plenty of grist for a singer/songwriter’s mill. Francey will be joined in Banff by Chris Coole (banjo, guitar) and Mike Westberg (guitar, electric guitar).
“They’re both fine men and I love playing with them,” he said while pulled over on Ontario’s Highway 401 while travelling to Guelph for a recording session. “This is our second tour together and it’s already better than the last one.
“That one we called the Rolling Infirmary Tour, because we were all sick most of the time for some reason.”
With his newest effort, 2011’s Late Edition, Francey takes a bit of a step back into his childhood, when he worked as a paperboy and devoured the news. Late Edition, he said, features songs which reflect his reaction to personal news, local and national news and world events.
Songs range from those written some time ago, “from the stack”, to relatively news works for his ninth album. Late Edition was recorded live off the floor, with all musicians in the same room at the same time. “It’s as live as live can be,” said Francey. “We recorded it in two days in Nashville.”
The new songs include a love song dedicated to his wife (“Grateful”), the way the truth and fiction is combined as news on TV in “Pretty Jackals”, a song about what might have been “Wonder” and one which relates to many hours on the road (“Blue Heart of Texas”, among others.
All song feature, of course, Francey’s warm, well-rounded folksy vocals, imbued with a hint of his native Scotland.
Francey’s current tour runs to about 50 gigs’ worth of flying and driving over a month and a half (before the snows fly).
“When we’re not flying, we rent a van and drive,” he said. “I have a Toyota Matrix and had thought about using it, but there’s just not enough room.
“None of us have much luggage, but we have gear out the ying yang.”
While Francey is a late bloomer, performer-wise, because he was too busy working for many years, he’s always been a songwriter. Even on the job, he’d pencil down ideas for songs. “I write anywhere and I don’t use an instrument. When something strikes me, I write it down. A melody can come to you anywhere; in a car, on airplanes, you never know.
“I always have a tape recorder and a notebook and although I don’t have the greatest memory in the world, I always remember the songs. “One time I woke up in London after a bad sleep in a hotel room and if you’d held a gun to my head, I couldn’t have told you what town I was in.”
All along, his songs have reflected a working man’s sensibilities, resulting in tunes like “Torn Screen Door”, the story of a farm lost to a bank, and working man songs like “Hard Steel Mill”, “Gypsy Boys”, “Working Poor” and “Border Line”, among others.
Sometimes, he said, as with “New Jerusalem”, a television broadcast sparks something in him. He penned the song after watching a broadcast from the Middle East where he saw a Palestinian step out from behind a wall, blazing away with a weapon “and looking cocky. But the next instant he was gone, he didn’t see a tank down the road. Then the next day, there was a retaliatory bus bombing.”
Having penned the popular “All Lights Burning Bright”, a tale of a Great Lakes freighter, Francey received many letters from lake captains thanking him for telling their story, and inviting him to tag along on their ship.
Late Edition comes two and a half years after Seaway and three and a half after Right of Passage, which earned Francey a 2008 Juno Award. Junos also followed 2003’s Skating Rink and 2001’s Far End of Summer; with a nomination for 2004’s Waking Hour.
“As a folk artist, I think you’re a chronicler of your time and I think it behooves you as a folk musician to chronicle what is happening in the world.”
Francey changed from workplace songwriter and singer at home to professional musician at the urging of his wife, Beth. “She believed in me so much. I wrote all the time, but had no aspirations of being a musician. But Beth believed in me.”
His inaugural Torn Screen Door in 1999 was followed by his Juno for 2001’s sophomore effort Far End of Summer. “That was a turning point in my life,” he said. “It became impossible to do both jobs (carpenter and performer).
“And that Juno came at a good time. I wasn’t as young as when I started working and the physical work gets harder and harder as you get older.”
These days, home for Francey is small-town Ontario, a 38-person village called Elphin, where he lives with Beth and their three children. Francey lives on what is colloquially known as Juno Road, as both he and two-time winner Jennie Whiteley live there.
Tickets at the Banff Centre box office at 762-6301 or 1-800-413-8368 or at Ticketmaster.
