FFWD Weekly
Copyright © 2000. All Rights Reserved

Music by Mary-Lynn McEwen Ray Bonneville Friday, March 31 The Uptown Theatre Ray Bonneville is an artist in touch with the yin and yang of his inner feelings. For instance, when he was sitting at the Juno Awards, waiting to hear whether his 1999 album Gust of Wind would be called out as the winner in the best blues album category (it was), he was acutely aware of his emotional contradictions. "I was hoping I wouldn’t be disappointed, and I was hoping I wouldn’t win so I wouldn’t have to get up there in front of all those people," he says. That emotional tandem is there, too, in his concerts, which he describes as, "Just a guy sitting there in a chair with a guitar. I like intimacy in my songs and my performance, even though in my life I’m scared of it." And the man who describes his entire Juno process – from nomination day to walking off with the bizarre little statuette – as a nerve-wracking experience has somehow coaxed those feelings of intimacy to exist within the binary code of Gust of Wind. From the first listen, the album’s connection to the simple traditions of roots music and to the heart is unmistakable. Contributions by producer Colin Linden and The Band’s Rick Bell augment Bonneville’s sweetly simple songs. "People are starved for real things," he says. "The way that I’m interested in writing these days is to allow the listener to put their own circumstances in the song, so I’m suggesting an outline, and I’m trying not to get too specific about the things in the song... rather than stating the obvious. "It’s to be remembered that you’re addressing human beings that have a whole store of baggage that hasn’t been processed that you can tap into without them even knowing it. So if you speak to the emotional human, you’re gonna churn some things up." Bonneville confesses that for the 10 years of his 30-year-long musical career, he’s become a little obsessive about it, sometimes stepping away in mid-conversation to phone his answering machine across the country and leave himself an idea for a song that his verbal intercourse has tweaked. But mainly, life is a free-flowing river of consciousness for a guitarist who fantasizes about a move to Calgary to enjoy the fly fishing. Another lure is the chance to work with and listen to masters like Amos Garrett and the indefatigable Tim Williams, with whom Bonneville just released an album. In the meantime, Bonneville’s Montreal apartment will continue to sit empty most of the time while the writer takes his inspirations on the road, reveling in the therapy that songwriting injects into his attempts to balance the yin and yang of his soul.

| Back To This Issue Table of Contents | Back To Main Index |