For his latest album, a Canadian folk-legend will need to make up for lost time.
Throughout his 50-year and 11-Juno career, Murray McLauchlan he has been appointed to the Order of Canada and bestowed an honourary doctor of laws from the University of Calgary.
Some of his songs, now considered to be Canadian Standards, include Farmer’s Song, Down by the Henry Moore, Whispering Rain and Sweeping the Spotlight Away.
Hourglass is his aptly named 20th album, and the singer-songwriter is only just now able to tour it on the West Coast having released the record in 2021.
According to a release, McLauchlan’s touring had been restricted to the group Lunch at Allen’s, whose members include Ian Thomas, Marc Jordan and Cindy Church. With the release of Hourglass, he’s back on the road treating concert-goers to a seamless blend of old and new, noted the release.
His eight-stop tour through B.C. includes five Island dates; May 8 at Duncan’s Cowichan Theatre, May 10 at Nanaimo’s Port Theatre, May 11 at Campbell River’s Tidemark Theatre, May 12 at Courtenay’s Sid Williams Theatre, and May 13 at Victoria’s McPherson Playhouse.
The majority of Hourglass, McLauchlan said, was written over one summer during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“The was a lot of stuff that was on my mind and I had to get it off of my mind – off of my chest,” said the singer-songwriter. “And the only thing in my tool box is writing songs.”
Inspiration for many of his songs explore soci-economic problems like the murder of George Floyd in 2020, I Live on a White Cloud, and the ever-rising problem of income and equality, The One Percent.
“I got a lot of reactions from this record in the United States in particularly … and a lot of people commented on it,” McLauchlan said, adding the album received both criticism and praise at the time it was released. “Basically, some people viewed my efforts as being a bit preachy and some people … don’t really buy into the idea that life happens to be a bit easier if you happen to be a white person … but a lot of people agreed with it. And that was heartening to me.”
He said the idea of I Live on a White Cloud wasn’t to “beat people over the head or throw blame around,” but to effect understanding.
Floyd’s death, just like many other events that happened across the world while he was writing, shocked the songwriter out his socks.
Although included as a track on Hourglass, McLauchlan said he’s still uncertain if he’ll have the heart to perform Lying By the Sea, written about the two-year old boy Alan Kurdi who was found dead along the Mediterranean Sea in 2015, at any specific show on tour.
“But it’s not all dark and horrible,” the songwriter said.
One of the songs he said that people seem to like most is called A Thomson Day which is an ode to the West Wind, the songwriter’s favourite painting of Tom Thomson’s work.
Following the close of McLauchlan’s B.C. tour, he’ll return to Toronto at the Massey Hall to perform a Gordon Lightfoot tribute show with the likes of Burton Cummings, Blue Rodeo and Tom Cochrane.
Tickets for the Nanaimo at the Port Theatre on Friday, May 10, show can be purchased online at www.porttheatre.com.
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