Fred Eaglesmith

folk

Fred Eaglesmith, born Frederick John Elgersma on 9 July 1957, is a Canadian alternative country singer-songwriter from Caistor Centre, Ontario. One of nine children in a farming family in rural southern Ontario, he took up guitar at twelve and left home as a teenager, riding a freight train west and beginning to write and perform. His self-titled debut appeared in 1980, and he has since released more than twenty albums, among them Indiana Road (1987), There Ain't No Easy Road (1992), Drive-In Movie (1996), Lipstick, Lies and Gasoline (1997), 50 Odd Dollars (1999), Falling Stars and Broken Hearts (2002), Dusty (2004), Milly's Cafe (2006), Tinderbox (2008), Cha Cha Cha (2010), 6 Volts (2011), Tambourine (2013), Standard (2017) and A Christmas Card (2023), plus live sets including Ralph's Last Show and an ongoing official bootleg series. His songs are narrative, set among vehicles, farms, lost love and down-and-out characters, and lean on unreliable narrators and late plot twists. He has recorded and toured under several band names, including the Smokin' Losers, the folk-rock Flying Squirrels and the bluegrass-leaning Flathead Noodlers, with a long-running core that included bassist Ralph Schipper and mandolin and harmonica player Willie P. Bennett, who left after a heart attack in 2007. Eaglesmith has won a JUNO Award for Roots and Traditional Album of the Year in the solo category, appeared on the Late Show with David Letterman in 2010, and had his songs built into the stage production Dear Johnny Deere at the Charlottetown Festival in 2013; his audience is devoted enough to have a name, Fredheads. He disbanded the backing band in 2016 and now performs with his wife, the singer and multi-instrumentalist Tif Ginn, whom he married in 2014.

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