BELLOWS FALLS-It will be like old times when Fred Eaglesmith returns to Bellows Falls for a show at the Bellows Falls Opera House Saturday, Oct. 17, at 7:30 p.m. He will be joined by his wife and musical partner, Tif Ginn, and their band, the Velvet Frogs.
The popular Roots on the River Festival, held in Bellows Falls for 20 years, was built around Eaglesmith’s outlaw country music for the 14 years that he headlined the event.
The Canadian singer-songwriter first played in Bellows Falls in 1999, when his former manager artist–promoter, Charlie Hunter, booked him for a show at Nick’s Pub (now Donovan’s). Hunter was impressed when twice as many people as expected showed up.
This was partly due to Eaglesmith’s devoted following, known as “Fred Heads,” who would follow him around on tour, much as Grateful Dead fans, known as “Dead Heads” were known to do.
Eaglesmith started writing songs as a teenager and released his first album in 1980, but he didn’t grow his fan base until the 1990s. At that time, he hit the road hard, playing a couple hundred shows a year with his ace band, the Flying Squirrels.
Fans connected to his songs about trucks, family farms, good dogs, and bad women. Eaglesmith writes about real people facing real struggles, delivered with a fierce mix of humor and heart that has led some to compare his shows to the spirit of a revival meeting. And his between-songs stories are often hilarious.
Eaglesmith has won a Juno Award and had his songs covered by Alan Jackson, Toby Keith, and Miranda Lambert, yet mainstream success has eluded him. Fiercely independent and uninterested in the music business, he is fine with that. He has always had a rebel streak, evident in the fact that he ran away from the family farm at age 15 to hop freight trains.
Hunter figured these fans would come out for a weekend devoted to Eaglesmith’s music, so he and Eaglesmith joined forces, and the first Fred Eaglesmith weekend, Fred Fest, was held in Bellows Falls in 1999.
And Hunter was proven right — the fans showed up.
“That first one was in a biker bar,” said Eaglesmith in a phone call from his home in Ontario. “My fans were new at the time, and their eyes were popping out of their heads just being at this bar. But they liked it.”
“Charlie sort of started it, and I was sort of like an innocent victim,” he added. “He ran it, and I just showed up and took all the credit. You know, we did a lot of things together, Charlie and I.”
There were train trips through Canada (including one to spot polar bears), a boat trip to Newfoundland, and even a bus trip called the “Tin Can Caravan.”
But festivals were where he made his biggest impact, and the Bellows Falls festivals led to some calling the village the Holy Land for Fred Eaglesmith fans.
“People always talk about the music at those festivals, but I think about the great hockey games we had,” Eaglesmith said, referring to the street hockey games he and his band played against locals on Sunday afternoons.
Then there were the all-acoustic shows, which started at noon on Sundays at the Rockingham Meeting House. “People be hung over and start crying,” he added, laughing.
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Starting in 2002, Fred Fest added a new component, Roots on the River, as the event expanded to include roots-music artists from all over, and eventually the name encompassed all the artists, with Eaglesmith as the headliner. In 2007, Hunter turned the festival over to the late Ray Massucco, who ran it until its end in 2019.
Eaglesmith, who remained the festival’s focal point until 2013, went through various looks, bands, and musical styles before he played his last festival that year with the Traveling Steam Show and the Ginn Sisters.
In 2014, he married Ginn Sister singer–multi-instrumentalist Tif Ginn, who became his musical partner. He let the band go, and the pair spent five years happily touring as a duo.
Life was good. Then, right before the Covid lockdown, Eaglesmith fell ill with an undisclosed sickness.
“I was sick for a really long time, so I was out of the game for about six years,” he recalled. “Nobody noticed because of the pandemic — everybody was gone.”
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However, something unexpected happened while he was at home recuperating — his career took off.
Eaglesmith had no idea how this could be happening, but the answer was simple: TikTok.
“Our whole career turned around, and I can’t take any credit for it because I was just lying in bed. I didn’t even know it was happening,” he said about his online success. “We have this huge following on TikTok, and we don’t even have a TikTok account!”
Chartmetric, a company that tracks streaming numbers, indicates that videos of covers of Eaglesmith’s song “Trucker Speed,” mostly performed by young people, have had 67.7 million views, making his work — and that particular song, mostly — a TikTok sensation.
With a catalog of 25 albums, Eaglesmith also maintains a strong presence on streaming services like Spotify.
“We have young people showing up at our shows now,” he said with excitement. “We don’t even have to tour if we don’t want to. It’s changed our life.”
But Eaglesmith still loves performing. “I love music, and I love playing. I want to go out there, have a good show, and come home.”
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Eaglesmith is now working with a new band, the Velvet Frogs, which includes Ginn and her 17-year-old son, Blue, and two other young musicians.
“We got tired of doing the folkie thing, and the bus keeps breaking down and I’m getting too old to fix it,” he said of the couple’s decision to work with a band again. “Plus, this is a real rocking band.”
Eaglesmith’s new material, like “Another Old Guy in a Muscle Car,” is on par with the classics such as “I Like Trains” and “Alcohol and Pills.” He plans to perform a mix of new and old when he plays the Opera House.
His last studio album was Standard, from 2017, although he and Ginn have released a Christmas album and a live album.
Eaglesmith said he’s long been working on a new album and hopes to have it out in another year.
His days of playing hundreds of shows a year are long over, and he and Ginn are selective about when and where they play, preferring small towns like Bellows Falls.
“We play a lot of rock and roll shows in small towns where hardly anyone else goes,” Eaglesmith said. “When we do that, those people love to come out, and it’s really fun.”
He still plays at some weekend festivals that are devoted to his music, so would he ever consider doing another Fred Fest in Bellows Falls?
“We had great time doing Bellows Falls, and it’s over now,” he said. “I really think it’s good once the party’s over to say, ‘Let’s have a different party,’ not the same party.”
Sheryl Hunter is a freelance writer from Easthampton, Massachusetts, whose work has appeared in various regional and national publications.
This Arts column by Sheryl Hunter was written for The Commons.