Singer-songwriters Stephen Fearing and Andy White have joined forces for a cross-Canada tour.
Born and raised in Northern Ireland, White has lived in Australia for the last several years. Fearing, though born in Canada, grew up in the Republic of Ireland and now lives in Canada.
The duo will play the small, intimate venue of The Club at The Banff Centre, Friday (Jan. 27). The Outlook spoke with Fearing about their music.
“We met up backstage at the Winnipeg Folk Fest,” said Fearing, explaining how the two came together. “What’s strange about it is honestly I’ve probably met hundreds, if not thousands, of people backstage at folk festivals and only very few of them actually become friends, and an even smaller number are people I work with.
“The rareness of connecting with somebody beyond ‘Hi, how are ya?’ backstage is great,” he explained. “It’s odd, you’d think we’d all be best of pals, and often we are friends, but it’s just passing acquaintances and it’s hard to make a friendship go. For some reason, Andy and I connected.”
A lot of factors pushed them together, he said.
“There’s no mystery, we both grew up in Ireland – he grew up in the north, in Belfast, and I in the south,” said Fearing. “Immediately it was a real touchstone for us. We both knew of each other, we were both plowing the same kind of furrow – both singer-songwriters – we were both on the same label, so there were a number of reasons why we should start a conversation and luckily, once we did, it sorta went somewhere.”
At the time, in 1998, White was early on into his career as a solo musician and was looking to tour Canada and Fearing, who at that time was with Blackie and the Rodeo Kings, put together a band in Guelph, Ont. to accompany him.
“I had just started playing guitar with Blackie and the Rodeo Kings, and it was an opportunity to learn how to play the bloody thing,” he laughed. “The whole thing was very lighthearted. We put this band together and it had some legs, and the next year we did it again and at some point we decided we should start writing together.
“It’s been an odd friendship, because he lives on the other side of the world. We see each other typically once or twice a year for an intense but brief period of time.”
Thankfully, the friendship has persisted, as it’s led to a great musical collaboration, he said.
“We got together strictly for fun. There was no agenda, no ‘We’re going to make an album down the road,’ it was a friendship and enjoyment of each other’s company and music was caught up in that. The writing was an extension of our friendship, and still is.”
The results of their efforts is the self-titled debut album, Fearing & White, released last spring.
“The writing and music were all over the map, we weren’t aiming at anything,” said Fearing. “A couple of the songs, he took away and recorded, and similarly I took some of the stuff we had written to Blackie and the Rodeo Kings, and we recorded songs over the years.
“Sometimes he would show up from Australia for a period of a week – I was living in Ontario at the time – and often times it was just sitting down with guitars and telling stories and chatting and playing chords and goofing off, and something developed. The process of pulling a song out of nothing, it really grows out of just sitting there and talking and playing, and often those are quite eclectic songs.”
From those eclectic songwriting sessions came the decision to produce an album together, he said.
“When we finally decided it was time to make a record – eight, 10 years into the friendship – we had a body of work that was pretty eclectic and that’s what the record represents,” said Fearing. “There’s elements of a lot of different things.
“One thing that we became aware of early on, and that we really liked, is there’s a roots music element that when you go to England and you play, their interest in Americana and roots music is really strong and their vision of it is kinda skewed. That’s why they’ve come up with odd versions of North American music, which then get fed back to North America, and it really appeals to us, because it’s looking at what we take for granted through an odd lens.”
While Fearing is doing much touring this month with White, he’s still actively involved with Blackie and the Rodeo Kings and will tour with them throughout the month of February.
“When I started doing this music, my manager and record company were very adamant that they wanted me to do just one thing and do it really strongly,” he said. “As a young man living in Ireland, I was always curious when artists would change their image and I clearly remember bands that would suddenly go from glam to punk and we’d all scratch our heads.
“Little crazes would happen, suddenly there was a whole bunch of mod bands, and it seemed like a strange thing. Nowadays, going back to the idea of not being so dogmatic, musically, I think, a lot of people listen to quite an eclectic mix of music, and I really love that. As a player, that’s what interests me, and to have a bunch of different projects.”
For the Blackie tour, the nearest show is in Cochrane on Feb. 5. Fearing hopes to find a place to play in Banff or Canmore at some point later this year.
“Diversity is absolutely essential to me now, he said. “If I don’t have a number of different things on the go at the same time, there’s a good chance that I’ll find myself with a couple of months with nothing to do. Financially that’s death, and creatively it’s not so great either.”
To find out more about Fearing & White, visit their website at www.fearingandwhite.com
