The cat’s meow

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 05/12/2020 (2080 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The bland title of this documentary on Winnipeg entertainer Fred Penner is a bit disappointing. This Is My World sounds like a random album of pop covers by a ‘60s TV star trying his hand at the music thing, say, Gene Barry: This Is My World.

The title is a play on the premise of Penner’s most persistent legacy, the TV series Fred Penner’s Place, which ran in the ‘80s and ‘90s for 13 seasons on CBC and on the American cable network Nickelodeon Jr. You may remember the opening of the show, in which Penner hiked through the countryside, crawled through a magic hollow log and landed on the leafy, natural-looking set of the show to regale the kids with story and song, alongside some puppets — including the popular Word Bird — and assorted guests.

It was a lovely outdoor fantasy world where kids could fall into Penner’s mellow groove.

The doc, stuck in safe mode, is not about to shake things up in its more-or-less chronological examination of Penner’s life, though the 74-year-old artist has been through his share of tribulation, which, we see, includes an alcoholic father and the loss of a beloved sister, Susie, who died at an early age.

The doc will also touch on the performer’s divorce from his first wife, Odette; it is surely a sign of Penner’s charm that the former Mrs. Penner participates in the doc, speaking glowingly of her ex, as do their four children.

Some surprises pop up, including the fact that Penner gained fame in the early ‘70s as a member of a very successful Winnipeg bar band called Kornstalk, alongside fellow future kids entertainer Al Simmons. (Full disclosure: My brother Bob King was also a member of the band and wrote one of Penner’s hits, Sandwiches.)

Neither Penner nor Simmons like the “bar band” description, by the way. Trust me, I was there. They were a bar band. Perhaps it was that very discomfort that propelled Penner into the realm of children’s entertainment, where one could rely on the fact that the audience members were exponentially less likely to be drunk.

Much of the documentary focuses on Penner’s easy rapport with kids, a phenomenon shared by other artists that saw Canadian artists — including Raffi and Sharon, Lois & Bram — virtually corner the kids entertainment market through much of the ‘80s and ‘90s. The doc makes note of that, but doesn’t investigate further.

The film’s most interesting segment is its final third, where Penner is seen enjoying a career resurgence playing at university pubs to the now-grown kids who used to tune into Fred Penner’s Place decades earlier. For many, presumably, it is an exercise in pure nostalgia. But there is something else there too, captured in a story from one of Penner’s bandmates who came across a burly engineering student quietly weeping by himself after a performance, possibly in mourning for something lost in his own childhood.

It’s a moment that speaks to the importance we might attach to the most seemingly innocuous bits of pop culture. Fred Penner’s Place was, if nothing else, a safe space. These days, the recollection of that is enough to make anyone weep.

randall.king@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @FreepKing