Willie Thrasher ready for his second coming
Willie Thrasher and the Indigenous Trailblazers, Vancouver Folk Music Festival
July 15, 4:20 p.m. | Stage 3, Jericho Beach Park
Tickets and info: From $45 at thefestival.ticketzone.com
Willie Thrasher picks up the phone at his Nanaimo home on a hot July day and it’s abundantly clear where the spirit of his classic 1981 album, Spirit Child (CBC Northern Service) comes from.
The Inuit musician from Aklavik, N.W.T., is both a quick wit and a deep thinker, and his music is some of the first recorded to address Inuit and other First Nations issues in the dominant, singer-songwriter fashion of the era.
“Hello, hello, I’m talking to you as an Inuit person who is supposed to live in an igloo just melting and turning on all the fans to cool off and I’m just laughing as I’m enjoying it,” Thrasher said. “I’m feeling so honoured to be part of the three different tours taking place across the country this summer. It’s back on the Greyhound dog team again.”
Thrasher appears at this weekend’s Vancouver Folk Music Festival Saturday in the Indigenous Trailblazers with Duke Redbird, Linda Saddleback, Willy Mitchell, Lloyd Cheechoo and Gordon Dick Sr. Many of these artists are experiencing a career revival since the 2014 Grammy and Polaris Prize-nominated Native North America, Vol. 1: Aboriginal Folk, Rock and Country 1966-1985 compilation gave their work new exposure.
Thrasher, who has plied his trade since his teens as both a solo act and in celebrated bands ranging from The Cordells and Red Cedar to Morley Loon, has never stopped performing. There just wasn’t the tour circuit or music industry support for First Nations music that there is today — and it’s not exactly great now.
“I was a long-haired Inuit singer who toured 39 states and Alaska, went back and forth across Canada 13 times and, you know, it was very hard and very lonely and not always good times,” he said. “But now I’m performing and getting great respect from people who want to hear the music and hear the stories from someone who was around back then in the ’70s and ’80s when it was a very different time.”
Kevin “DJ Sipreano” Howes researched, compiled and curated Native North America, Vol. 1.
“The craziest thing was the pertinent nature of lyrics from 40 or 50 years ago, which could be taken from front-page topics today,” Howes said. “From the environment, to residential-school experiences and other native issues, as well as beautiful love songs and more, the material was so incredibly strong and needed to be heard.”
Thrasher says it has meant being able to take a song such as Eskimo Named Johnny to listeners who might really benefit from hearing it right now. Thrasher says the story of someone in the city missing family, culture and lifestyle, and turning to drinking and more, has particular resonance.
“I wrote it for my brother, who died of alcohol on skid row in Vancouver, and for other family and friends who did the same,” Thrasher said. “But then someone said I was writing about me, too, because I was having a really difficult time keeping my stuff together after residential school, being far from home and so on. It meant a lot and I started to heal and have been so for over 15 years.”
Even with past hardships, the singer says going out on the road is so exciting. Meeting young artists who are giving his music, and that of his many contemporaries, new life has Thrasher buzzing with passion.