JOEL PLASKETT
Where: Charlie White Theatre, 2243 Beacon Ave., Sidney
When: Wednesday, Sept. 18, 7:30 p.m.
Tickets: Sold out
Note: Plaskett also performs Tuesday in Nanaimo at St. Andrew’s United Church
The latest tour by Nova Scotia singer-songwriter Joel Plaskett gets underway tonight on Vancouver Island, a region that is becoming an unofficial home away from home for the Juno Award winner.
Plaskett, 49, has begun to spend more time on the Island, which is home to the family of his wife, artist Rebecca Kraatz, a former Stelly’s Secondary student and University of Victoria graduate. “I’m kind of on both coasts right now,” Plaskett told the Times Colonist during a recent interview.
When he’s off the road, Plaskett said he’s happy to split his time between cities like Dartmouth (where the couple lives) and Victoria (which they visit often). Plaskett first toured Vancouver Island in 1997, when he was a member of Halifax favourites Thrush Hermit, and always loved what the city had to offer, he said.
“In Victoria, the natural world is on full display. It’s remarkable. You can go out into it all year, so in that way [the two cities] are quite different. But I actually feel quite comfortable in Victoria, because of the size of the city. I’m not a big city guy, and don’t function well in cities much larger than Halifax or Victoria.”
The tour to support One Real Reveal, Plaskett’s 11th album, kicks off tonight in Nanaimo at St. Andrew’s United Church, followed by a performance Wednesday in Sidney at the Charlie White Theatre. The rooms are roughly half the size of his usual haunts in Victoria — in recent years, Plaskett has played both the 600-person Capital Ballroom and 800-person Alix Goolden Performance Hall — but that was by design, he said.
One Real Reveal was recorded on four-track cassette tape, a somewhat primitive manner of recording used only by the smallest of indie bands these days. He eschewed studio sheen for the set of spare, personal songs and wanted venues on the tour to reflect the direction of the album.
In order to put a greater emphasis on the words, Plaskett said he will politely ask members of the audience to put away their phones during the upcoming concerts. “It will make for a more interesting show. With the ubiquity of technology, people on their phones is a distraction.”
The no-tech approach of his “songs and stories” solo tour [as Plaskett calls it] was inspired by Window Inn Wednesdays, a concert series he co-produces at the mixed-use building in Dartmouth which houses his own recording studio, Fang Recording.
These were also strict no-cellphone events, and the element of surprise was a revelation for Plaskett. “It was really cool. People come, they talk to each other. Nothing is being documented. And artists take different risks when they don’t feel like they are being recorded. Going out on a limb or doing something weird was welcome.”
The art-first events played into the direction of Plaskett’s new album, which broke from tradition in several ways. Not only was it recorded away from the confines of a traditional studio, One Real Reveal includes Plaskett’s first-ever spoken word performance. “I’m always curious to see what I can do next,” he said of the poetry piece, The New Joys.
“There’s some songs I write, and I think, ‘I know what to do with this. This sounds like me.’ But every once in a while I stumble upon something that sounds like something I would never do.”
The version of The New Joys included on the album is a live recording from a performance at Halifax venue The Carleton, with jazz pianist Bill Stevenson improvising on the piano and Plaskett reciting the words to the poem from his phone.
Plaskett said he’s been more open to experimentation since the pandemic. 44, his quadruple-album from 2020, was an immense effort, recorded in several cities, with 33 musicians participating over a four-year period.
That energized Plaskett, pushing him to explore new artistic avenues. “I felt less precious about stuff. I started to explore a little.”
The pristine, big-budget sound of the mainstream music world is consistently lost on Plaskett, whose solo career balances everything from indie rock to adventuresome folk. He’s rarely surprised by what he hears on the radio, if at all. “You don’t know what’s real, and you don’t know what’s a computer. Everything sounds great, which makes it kind of boring. Predictable.”
Plaskett has made great-sounding records in the past —2007’s Ashtray Rock, for example — but he opted for the “warble” of the cassette recorder this time out. “It instantly imparts this patina that is a bit mystical to me sometimes. It feels feels imperfect in a way. It has a hazy quality that I find quite romantic.”
