Coughlan tilling new ground
SOLO EXCURSION: Tiller’s Folly veteran taking ‘step back’ so he can ‘be me’
After nearly 20 years, Bruce Coughlan is stepping out from behind Tiller’s Folly.
Coughlan is raising the money needed to record a solo album on Indiegogo. This is not surprising.
From his days in Langley’s Bare Facts to forming Tiller’s Folly, Coughlan presented himself as a versatile singer and songwriter. He simply hadn’t found the right outlet for his talent.
Tiller’s Folly, on the other hand, was surprising. A Celtic-derived folk group, it was a trio devoted to the roots genre. Coughlan largely researched Canadian history and wrote songs based on his findings. For someone with such a broad reach, Tiller’s Folly could be as limiting as it was defining.
“Tiller’s Folly is like a threelegged stool, right?” Coughlan asks, referring to the all-for-one and one-for-all nature of the band. “I felt I’d like to step back and be me.”
With some time on his hands, an album started taking shape that was more personal than what he’d been doing with Tiller’s Folly. It included Yesterday’s News, a song first recorded when Coughlan was 15. He’s in his 50s now.
“Until I was 50, I thought all music was about me,” he says. “I went through most of my career with a chip on my shoulder. I thought I deserved better.”
The album Waiting For Rain will reflect his transformation, which started with humbling, but eye-opening performances at hospitals and care homes. If the first part of his professional life is about aspiration, the album will be more about affirmation — who he is now, his identity.
And Tiller’s Folly will go on with him as part of that three-legged stool.
“I kind of drive the bus,” Coughlan says. “Next year will be Canada’s 150th anniversary and Tiller’s Folly’s 20th.”
Acoustic guitarist Les Finnigan is one of seven musicians at the 18th West Coast Guitar Night Nov. 19 at the Cultch. Finnigan has just released his latest album Out In The Wild.
Daniel Moir’s Swing And Sway is folk based, but punctuated by electric instruments and expansive orchestration. It gets its official release Nov. 1 at a shared record release party with Familiar Wild Nov. 10 at the Media Club.
Rykka’s new LP Beatitudes is out Nov. 4 with a Vancouver gig scheduled at the Biltmore on Nov. 10.
CD of the week COLIN JAMES: Blue Highways
Colin James has stepped back from writing and recording his own material to making a tribute of sorts. Blue Highways contains 13 tracks of startling variety inspired by important influences on his own music.
He has done this before with his Little Big Band or his acoustic blues album. This one is different, though, in that he has recorded quickly with a small, but fluid combo and has mixed electric bluesrock with a few acoustic numbers. James name-checks the known (Muddy Waters, natch) and the little known (Amos Blakemore) and rarely resorts to the obvious (Don Nix’s Going Down).
Blue Highways finds James at his most natural, which will make longtime fans happy. That’s compounded by James’s smokier, livedin voice, which becomes him and is suited to the material.
Gigs
Dino DiNicolo (Friday, Red Truck Brewery; Saturday, Hard Rock Casino, Coquitlam)
Roy Forbes (Saturday, St. James Hall)
Shari Ulrich (Saturday, Blue Frog, White Rock)
Billy Dixon’s Soul Train Express teams up with the So Tight Band for a Halloween Dance (Oct. 29, Columbia Theatre, New Westminster)
Bif Naked (Nov. 2, Blue Frog, White Rock)
Hannah Georgas (Nov. 2, Commodore)
The Vangiv’er benefit for the Vancouver Food Bank boasts a long roster of Vancouver acts (Nov. 4, Rickshaw)
The Pack A.D. (Nov. 26, Fortune Sound Club)
Colin James (March 8, 2017, Orpheum)