ROOTS RETURNING HOME
Cam Penner finds success in U.K.
When most people give thanks to the BBC, it’s for things such as Monty Python’s Flying Circus, Doctor Who and that Billybob Cummerbund guy or whatever the hell his name is.
For Cam Penner, he gives thanks for a wider audience.
The western Canadian singersongwriter has, for the past seven years, been spending a great deal of time overseas, taking his heavy, earthy roots music there, slowly, incrementally building an audience, not giving up.
“Was it Harrison Ford who said (when asked), ‘How’d you do it?’ and he said, ‘I just outlasted everyone,’ ” the former Calgarian says with a laugh from his home just outside of Nelson, B.C.
“And I think that’s the thing, we just kept going there and we lost our shirts for the first four or five years and worked and worked and worked.”
That changed, however, earlier this year thanks to the Beeb.
A fan of Penner’s was working on the miniseries of the network’s adaptation of the Iain Banks’ novel Stonemouth and passed a few songs off to the director Charles Martin.
Martin, impressed, contacted the musician and asked if he could hear more; asked, too, if Penner would mind him using some of the material in the show.
The result was that the Canuck’s song House of Liars was used as the theme for the 2015 miniseries, his tune Curiosity was played during the final scene, and several other of his tracks were seasoned throughout.
More importantly, Penner’s audience grew significantly in the U.K., a larger audience discovering him faster thanks to the BBC.
He discovered that earlier this year as he and his musical partner Jon Wood made yet one more trek across the pond to perform at a festival in Glasgow.
“We had a show booked in a theatre of about 350 people and I was like, ‘Why did they do that? It’s going to be an empty house,’ ” he says and laughs.
“But it sold out a month before the show. And then we’ve started to sell out other shows out there. And the new album went through the roof over there and has been doing great for us.”
That new album, Sex & Politics, has now finally been released in Penner’s homeland, with he and Wood hitting the road for a western swing that will bring him to the Ironwood Thursday and Friday night to show off the new material.
And the 10-track offering from the veteran artist is a stunner, a burning ember of yearning and brooding — deep, dark, barely restrained intensity one wind-gust away from consuming everything.
The title, itself, says it all, with Penner summing up the sentiment of Sex & Politics as only he can: “You’re f--ked either way.”
Actually, it grew out of overnight shifts he was taking at the homeless shelter in Nelson during one of his lengthy stays at home — he long worked at the Calgary DropIn Centre — and the long, late involved conversations he’d have with one of his co-workers.
“We’d just rap all night. About everything. From pipelines to First Nations people to women’s issues — everything,” he says.
“And at the end of the shift, she just goes, ‘Oh, Cam, it’s just amazing hanging out with you. Sex and politics: What else do you talk about?’ ”
That, to him, as a songwriter made sense — the juxtaposition was one that he thought he could work with, be inspired by.
“You want to talk about those heavy issues … but you still want to have a groovy sound, you still want to have something that moves you, something that will move your hips as well, bring a sexiness to it,” he says. “You don’t want it to be a downer.”
So with that on his mind, he and Wood headed back to the homemade studio on his property to do what they do when they want to create.
Penner calls the immersive process a “selfish” one, where for 10 days it’s just the two friends and musicians, no family, nobody else around.
He says it allows them to leave their inhibitions outside of their songcraft and just trust their own instincts, let anything happen that needs to happen for the art to materialize.
Penner is looking forward to this string of dates before he heads back overseas in November for one more tour before 2016 closes. He’s looking forward to showing off the skills he and Wood have picked up while building their audience and outlasting many others.
Penner says it relies upon wanting to “pull the rug from under your feet … also understanding how to put a show on, how to be an entertainer, how to move people and move yourself, be changing, be a little unpredictable — that helps a lot.”