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Folksinger David Francey emerges from blues

Grieving over his best friend’s death, David Francey toppled into a deep depression. Fortunately, being a singer-songwriter, he was able to use his music to pull himself back. The result is So Say We All.
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David Francey confronts his dark days in the album So Say We All.

 

Grieving over his best friend’s death, David Francey toppled into a deep depression.

Fortunately, being a singer-songwriter, he was able to use his music to pull himself back. The result is So Say We All. Francey’s new album confronts his dark days head-on, yet percolates with the gentle humanity and musicianship that distinguishes his finest work.

Next week, Francey and his band play two nights at Hermann’s Jazz Club. Phoning from the road between Grande Prairie and Athabasca, Alta., the Juno award-winning musician spoke candidly about his struggle with depression.

So Say We All, his 10th recording, is dedicated to his late friend Ian MacGregor, who was a contractor. Francey, a full-time carpenter before he became a professional musician, had known and worked with MacGregor for 40 years. Francey, 58, met him after hitchhiking to the Yukon at the age of 18.

“We went back a long way,” said the musician, a native-born Scot who has retained his accent. “He was one of those guys you could always go to if you had something bugging you.”

Although Francey has had the support of friends and family in southern Ontario’s Lanark Highlands, where he lives, the death of MacGregor tipped him deeper than ever before.

“I’ve always been up and down, my entire life. I just couldn’t crawl out of this one. So I did get some help. Making the album [So Say We All] was fantastic. I was playing with some of my best musical friends in the world, so that was great.”

The song Harm stems from this low period. The lyrics include: “Every dread that you can name/It rattles round inside my brain/I’m lucky I’ve got a brain at all/Beating my head against this wall.”

Commenting on the tune, Francey said: “All I could think of was the harm I ever did to anybody in my life. I remember thinking that was a pretty unique thing to wake up to and go to bed to.”

Not all the songs on So Say We All reflect Francey’s battle with the doldrums. Some are older songs, such as Pandora’s Box (about our web-driven information age) and American Blues (an indictment of corporate greed).

Francey travels here with the musicians used on the recording: guitarist Mark Westberg, Chris Coole on guitar/banjo and Darren McMullen on mandolin/bouzouki. In Victoria they will be joined by folksinger Tannis Slimmon, who provided vocal harmonies on the album (Slimmon also performs solo at Norway House on Nov. 3).

Francey’s career is one of the more remarkable stories in Canadian folk. Born in Ayrshire, Scotland, to factory-worker parents, he moved to Canada with them as a 12-year-old. For years Francey was a blue-collar man, working in rail yards and on construction sites.

He won his first Juno in 2002 for his album Far End of Summer. At that time, Francey worked days doing carpentry and as a labourer. When he won the Juno, his wife convinced her late-blooming husband, then in his 40s, to become a full-time musician.

On the phone, Francey stressed that — despite his recent period of grieving — his concert will be an upbeat affair. One thing that pulled him out of his depression was imagining what his departed friend would do in the same circumstances.

“I thought the best tribute I could give him was to just keep going and try to enjoy every single day,” Francey said. “Which is what I’ve tried do since I came out of the hole.”

achamberlain@timescolonist.com