I’ve known the name Fred Eaglesmith for over a decade but I hadn’t heard even one note of his music until I went to see him at the Café Carpe tonight. In my mind he was a gigantic man, at least half Native American, with a booming voice. Boy, was I wrong. He isn’t particularly tall, he’s Canadian, and I wouldn’t describe his voice as booming, though he is very loud. And very opinionated, about, well, pretty much everything, but especially people. He hates hippies, because after all, “it’s not like they were born that way. It’s not like the doctor looked at the ultrasound and said, ‘I have some bad news, I see a dreadlock.’” He’s a Buddhist, but that doesn’t seem to have made him any more patient; in fact, it may make him angrier.
It’s OK though, because he likes to yell, almost more than he likes to sing. The majority of his first set was talking, he maybe played six short songs in a set that lasted nearly an hour. His fans, known as “Fredheads” seem to like it that way. When we asked one fan who had seen him the previous two nights how tonight compared, he said that it was the best so far, and “he is really on tonight.” He reminded me a bit of Hamell on Trial who also includes a fair amount of other material in his sets and whose jokes and practiced tirades sometimes get in the way of his songs. For the second set he seemed to have gotten most of it out of his system, allowing him to sing more and rant less. When he did sing he reminded me a lot of Todd Snider with an easy drawl of a voice and knack for drawing complete characters in his songs. It isn’t a surprise that Snider has covered one of Eaglesmith’s songs, “Alcohol & Pills” which he played tonight.
I enjoyed Eaglesmith, but I think I would like him better with a band; one that keeps him on task, talking less and singing more. Still, any night at the Café Carpe, one of my absolute favorite places on earth, is a good night.
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