Lately Lethbridge Folk Club Shows at the Lethbridge College Cave have become real events.
I caught the end of an intimate, sold out show from Canadian folk icon Valdy, Nov. 19. I missed all of his more popular songs as well as the opening set from Jolene Draper and the Inquisitive Few, but that was all right.
I arrived in the middle of a speech about the American election and the need for more empathy, which lead to an explanation of a song “Save the Rookery” about saving herons living on a golf course in Port Roberts. He played the song, which was excellent.
Valdy told plenty of jokes and stories and played lots of pretty guitar picking, which the captivated crowd listened intently to.
He asked the audience to make a toast to all of the musicians who have passed on this year and talked about Leonard Cohen passing on and played “ Cohen’s song “ Bernadette” after that. Staying in that somewhat morbid vein, he gave a shout out to Leon Russell, who also passed away this year, and played a song from Doug Edwards, one of his friends who also passed away.
He regained his vis comica with the next song, the whimsical “Misery of Rosie.”
He followed that up by writing a song as part of a contest to win tickets to a Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell and Van Morrison concert, and not winning it but buying a ticket from a scalper for the show anyway, which he followed up by playing his song “Kathryn.”
And you can’t have a Valdy concert without having a singalong, so he lead the crowd through a singalong of Ian Tyson’s “ Four Strong Winds,” saying “ this is your song.”
he called it a night on an upbeat, optimistic note by playing the Youngbloods’ 1967 classic “Get Together and “As Time Goes By.”
