Our local old-growth forests are tall and dark, but very much a modern feature.
Regardless of how many years ago these stout trees were seeded, they canopy over us today.
Saltwater Hank's music might reach back to olden days of strings and wood, but his folk songs are vivid in today's ear and fresh to the senses. The Prince George musician (by way of Prince Rupert, Hartley Bay and the Lakes District) has climbed through the branches of acoustic tradition to this spot now where Stories From The Northwest can be told - his way of chording and narrating an album's worth of tales from his territorial consciousness.
Stories From The Northwest is the debut album by Saltwater Hank, but it's part of a wealthy body of work nonetheless. Saltwater Hank is the stage persona of veteran musician Jeremy Pahl, best known for his part in the popular roots-rock band Black Spruce Bog among other melodic ventures.
The new package of all-local folk songs will be unveiled in concert form tonight at The Legion.
Recorded on a reel to reel machine in the basement of a Prince George church, the album draws on the talents of his fellow Boggers Danny Bell and Amy Blanding, plus the collaborative contributions of other local acts like Naomi Kavka, Big Fancy, Brin Porter and Chloe Nakahara.
The songs are a blend of Saltwater Hank's Tsimshian heritage growing up in the Gitga'at community and the infusion of old-time country shown to him at an early age by his father, Henry (also known as Hank) and his uncles. The most influential name on the list of childhood artists they nudged into his ears was also a Hank, Williams that is. Senior.
To hear Stories From The Northwest is to adjust the radio dial back to those crackly dust bowl years of acoustic guitars, banjos, and ballads. It was recorded, not produced. It has trainwhistle eyes and jugband hands. The songs were nailed together out of weathered boards, lightly sanded, and rubbed with a matte finish.
When Saltwater Hank sings, his natural voice has a signature warble that sometimes adds a micro-yodel to the song. He's hearing the echoes of Jimmie "The Singing Brakeman" Rodgers and Stompin' Tom Connors at his narrative best.
Rodgers immortalized railroaders and mule skinners. Connors regaled the legacies of the Frank slide, the Ironworkers' Memorial Bridge disaster, the serial murder of the Donnelly family.
They are examples of singer-songwriters who, like Saltwater Hank, stare into the eyes of people and places worthy of note, then give an unblinking account of what they see through those windows of the soul.
In this age of techno-looping and mix-mastering, Saltwater Hank bypasses electrical pulses in exchange for mental sparks. This album rips out all the shag carpet of recent decades to reveal hardwood laments, jigs, and lost sepia photographs with familiar scenes. The show starts at 9 p.m. with opening acts Vic Horvath, Kate Romain and The Alkemist sharing the stage.
