By Lyonel Doherty, Times Chronicle
A powerful performance is coming to Frank Venables Theatre on Nov. 6, when The Fugitives bring the battle of Vimy Ridge to town.
The four-member folk collective out of Vancouver has earned a reputation for unforgettable live shows brimming with contagious storytelling and complex harmonies. And this is what the audience will get in Oliver that evening starting at 7:30 p.m.
In their show called “Ridge,” expect to hear hard-hitting interpretations of songs that were sung by soldiers in the trenches in the First World War. It’s a visceral work that passionately argues against the exploitation of young lives.
Songwriters Adrian Glynn and Brendan McLeod are succinctly joined by banjo player Chris Suen and violinist Carly Frey.
Together they weave haunting melodies of what it must have been like for the soldiers in those trenches.
Trench Songs is the group’s fifth record, which was nominated for a Juno Award for Traditional Roots Album of the Year.
These songs were written by frontline soldiers who had to find some mechanism of release while dealing with the horrors around them.
The Fugitives have written new melodies and music for these words to more readily access the emotional content.
McLeod said the collective formed in 2005 and was originally a poetry group. Over the next decade it morphed into a more traditional folk music band.
McLeod wrote the Ridge show based on the trench ballads that soldiers used to sing, such as Hanging On the Old Barbed Wire, Take Me Back to Old Ontario, and The Next Man Who Dies.
McLeod said trench warfare for these young men was brutal, so he had to find a way to explain it for a contemporary audience. He noted the songs were originally sung as a means of companionship, showing the real humanity of the soldiers. All of this truly resonates with McLeod, who vividly recalled reading Pierre Berton’s book ‘Vimy’ at age 12. It was his favourite book because he was staggered at how young the soldiers were. And it still “boggles” his mind.
McLeod asked the same questions: How much of it was true? How much was exaggerated? What was the experience really like for the soldiers, and what have we learned from them?
McLeod said their show does not generalize anything but gets down to specifics of what happened.
“It’s not to be gratuitous but it tells the situation as it was, remembering what the soldiers went through.”
McLeod is confident that the soldiers who sung these ballads would have wanted people to hear them.
As dark as all of this sounds, there is hope, McLeod said. Hope that there is proper reflection, understanding and justice to honour these soldiers who sacrificed so much for the freedom of others.
Tickets to the Ridge can be purchased online at venablestheatre.ca or at the box office at 6100 Gala Street Tuesday to Thursday from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Or by calling 250-498-1626.
