It doesn't matter what form the music might take, audiences respond to stories and literate lyrics. When your medium is an entire language married to the entire tonal spectrum, it makes for an infinite number of combinations and Jeffery Straker is gathering power as a master locksmith of song.
The Saskatchewan singer-musician-songwriter-performer makes his Prince George debut this week, to show northern B.C. what the rest of Canada has been buzzing about.
Straker causes a stir wherever he holds court. From the first chorus of the first song, each new fan invariably scrolls through their memories trying to place whom he reminds them of, so forceful is his work, and the names that leap forth most are Billy Joel and Elton John at their 1970s artistic heights.
For those too young to remember the intellectual entertainment oomph those two were so capable of, imagine Jim Cuddy if he had wound up the frontman for The Fray. Imagine the vocal tones and emotional dialing of Five For Fighting, Jason Mraz or Bruno Mars with an added prairie sensibility. He is instantly likable to the ear and sets himself a high bar he refuses to fall under, from song to song.
Like John and like Joel, he has more than a few songs to stand on and he is unafraid to take differing genre stances - sometimes sounding like soft rock, sometimes like country, sometimes like progressive folk throwing in anything from a brass section to twangy fiddle if he feels like it - because his vocal personality and production values always jump out front and make it unmistakably Jeffery Straker.
There is almost a theatrical quality to what he does and the literal example of this is the complexity and quality and frequency of his music videos. YouTube is the 21st century radio, and he gets 10,000 views here, 35,000 views there, all adding up to a massive following that knows exactly who he is and what Straker stands for, musically.
It's a magnetic effect. It rubbed off on the organizers of TED Talks, who brought Straker to their stage in Regina to talk about one song in particular, due to its emblematic form. It's a story, an authentic slice of life wrapped in music sauce, and the track was called The Wonderful Mrs. Bell about an actual person he observed time after time in his tiny home village of Punnichy. The 300 people in that rural hamlet dotted on the thin map-line of Highway 15 were predominantly Caucasian farmers and blue-collar residents or First Nations residents. They were not from India, as was the lonely Mrs. Bell, married to one of the town's teachers. Her introversion and social isolation struck Straker enough to write it down and sing it out.
The consequences of expressing personal stories, nonfiction stories, aren't usually predictable. Stories (be they jokes, novels, paintings or songs) usually come from places of conflict, pain, adversity and moral tension. Mrs. Bell passed away before hearing Straker's song but Mr. Bell and other members of the Bell family were certain to hear his version of their life in Punnichy.
"Well, you ask a very good question. In fact, he has heard it," said Straker. "And he really liked it. And it wasn't without apprehension on my part because there's a way the song can be listened to. At the end of the day he was very well aware that she wasn't having as smooth of a ride as many who are different in a small town. He was an extrovert, my science teacher in high school, a pretty outgoing guy, he did a lot in the community, and was pretty well integrated. Now, there is an asterisk on that. Compared to most other people, he wasn't as well integrated but he was certainly more integrated than she was, by virtue of his personality. He also, I think, probably also felt excluded and I think he sees himself, in a way, in this song about her."
He was never more nervous about performing the song than when he got to sing it backed by the Saskatoon Symphony Orchestra with many members of the Bell family in attendance. Their response was so understanding, so accepting of the spirit in which it was intended that Mr. Bell has now asked Straker's permission to use the lyrics in a book he is writing about his life. Art is now inspiring and intermingling with other art, due to the authenticity of the source material.
Sincere stories got autobiographically personal when Straker wrote about a childhood friend. The song was entitled Tykie's Coming Out and illuminated his classmate's gay disclosure.
"Tykie's a real guy. Tykie was in my grade from Kindergarden or Grade 1 all the way up to Grade 12," Straker told The Citizen. "He was just a creature before his time, in that he was a First Nations guy and I'll say gay but probably now would - with the broad spectrum of labels in the LGBTQ community - be described as two-spirited.
"Unabashedly in Grades 1, 2, 3 I recall him at recess going to the place where the outdoor clothes were, and he'd put on girls' shoes and run around the soccer field waving his hands around above his head, just being this being no one else had ever seen before. He wasn't trying to do anything, he was simply being himself. He was just this individual. He almost didn't have to 'come out' but one day he did, which was a bit like the Pope having a press conference to tell everyone he was Catholic."
Tykie was a curiosity to him, but Straker also recognized the other interpretations of that behaviour by the inflexible traditionalists of the town.
"The crazy thing was, while some people referred to him in derogatory terms we need not get into, by and large he was quite accepted," Straker said. "Thinking back it was probably because he was who he was from the get-go. He never pretended. He was an open book. And the thing of it was, I ultimately came out years later, and people said to me 'wasn't it easier to come out because Tykie was around?' but in a small town, I didn't even know I was gay, really. This was before the Googles, this was before the internet, so reference points were few and far between. So if my reference point was Tykie, I knew I wasn't that. I didn't feel that, I didn't act like that, so in my mind I thought therefore I'm not gay, I must be something else. But then, surprise, I was. But knowing what we know now, the range within the LGBTQ community is so huge, and many spices make a great dish. But it took a long time and Tykie was more of the trailblazer in that regard."
Again, the true-life subject may be offended at being fashioned into a character in someone else's work of art, but truthful stories are bigger than any one person and Tykie gave Straker no backlash.
"He's never talked to me directly about the song, but mutual friends tell me that he liked it," he said.
Straker's family is still connected to Punnichy, and he visits from time to time, but he now splits his residential time between a place in Regina and a place in Toronto that act as east-west bases of operation for his busy music career. He performs an average of 100 shows per year, plus composing time, rehearsals, recordings, and other things he likes to do. Canada's gigs are spread so far apart that he also routinely travels to the United States, Asia, Latin America, Europe and Africa to reach further audiences in closer proximity from night to night.
It's a formula that has paid off handsomely. Straker has won awards, national profile and a steady demand for his talents.
What he is not, he said, is a rarity for Saskatchewan. He lists traditionalist country balladeer Colton Wall and nouveau bluegrass band The Dead South as others who are blazing out from his prairie province right now as well, and only a short distance down the road from Punnichy is Langenburg, which reigning Canadian diva Jess Moskaluke calls home. Perhaps the two could combine their vocal punch for a showy duet.
"I know her, I should suggest that to her," Straker said. "Her voice is so good. She's a great singer. I remember she was in Grade 12 or 11 and I was just starting (my music career), and the Langenburg arts council brought me in to do a workshop in the school and I remember some of the kids saying 'get Jess to sing' and she wasn't writing anything at the time and she was really shy, but the rest is history."
Straker makes his first mark on Prince George history on Friday at 8:30 p.m. at Artspace. Tickets are available now at Books & Company ($15 in advance or $20 at the door) to see him perform his latest album, Dirt Road Confessional, and past favourites.
