Canadian folksinger Garnet Rogers, who performs Oct. 11 in Shoreline, has a fondness for guitars.
“I have a huge and stupid collection of about 50, from about 1927 to 1964. I’ve probably owned 300 guitars the last 10 years. It’s a compulsive thing,” Rogers said.
“I’ll go into a music store and pick up a guitar and it smells old and it’s got a vibe to it. I start playing a few chords and suddenly it’s speaking to me in some way. Then it’s, ‘Well, gee, maybe I need this guitar.’
“I’ll keep it for two days, or six hours, write a song on it and sell it to someone else.”
Rogers is creating a songbook out of 25 years of music.
“I’m also writing a pretty lurid memoir. I don’t know how much is publishable. There was a lot of bad behavior in those days.
“I was always the youngest one and saw all this craziness going on but my older brother (Canadian legend Stan Rogers) was always taking an interest in my well-being: ‘No, she isn’t even remotely interested in you and beside she’s a transvestite … No, you can’t drink that.’
“I witnessed a lot of wild stuff. I’ve been reading bits and pieces on stage … it’s funny, it’s lurid, it’s pathetic.”
Stan died in a plane fire at an Ohio airport in 1983. After a month of indecision, Garnet decided to continue performing.
“The hardest part was coming into a town where I played with him before and he wasn’t there … I still miss the guy.”
The brothers’ obsession when they were growing up was music. Rogers recalled a third-grade thrill, seeing Bob Dylan when he made the shift from acoustic to electric guitar.
“People literally were throwing chairs and screaming, ‘False prophet!’ Dad dragged us out of the concert hall but I was thinking, ‘Wow, this is great.’
“I have an incredible reverence for those songs and the anger that the loud music generated and the excitement about how loud the music sounded; that’s where I’ve been living ever since.
“I love the quiet tender part of folk but I also have that terrible mutant gene of rock ‘n roll there.”
Rogers is known for his ability to blend song, melody and story into captivating songs, creating a literate landscape in which his characters share their lives.
“A lot of time I’m working through whatever’s going on in my life, trying to make sense of it.”
Folk music continues as the 21st century’s version of wandering troubadours crisscrossing North America.
“I always get tired of ‘societies for the preservation of folk music.’ It doesn’t need help. People will continue to write songs to make sense of what’s going on around them, just as I’m doing.
“A huge portion of my audience (is) involved in the writing process in their own life. They tend to do journals, diaries, letters.
“Part of the continued appeal is that it feels like a dialog to them. Often they come back at the end of the show and tell me their side of the story.”
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