New album a tribute to folksinger and a love letter to Lake Winnipeg

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This article was published 08/01/2016 (3581 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Nearly 50 years ago, Riverton folksinger Sol Sigurdson used an album to document the characters of his fishing community.

The album, The Lake Winnipeg Fisherman, is a colourful celebration of the lake and all who live, work and play by it, peppered with the names, places and events that shaped Sigurdson’s teen years while he worked as a shore hand helping his father, a fish buyer.

Sigurdson recorded The Lake Winnipeg Fisherman in 1970, for Manitoba’s Centennial year, and it went on to sell more than 3,000 copies in the Interlake.

Forty-five years later, one of those copies made its way into the hands of the board of the Lake Winnipeg Foundation, and it didn’t take long for them to realize Sigurdson’s songs would be the perfect soundtrack for their cause.

“The wheels started turning, and we thought, ‘Wouldn’t it be great to bring these songs to life for a new generation of lake lovers?’ ” says Alexis Kanu, executive director of the Lake Winnipeg Foundation. “There’s so much passion in the album and so much love for Lake Winnipeg — we see that in our members today, and we wanted to find a way to celebrate that.”

Two years later and the foundation is set to release Love, Lake Winnipeg: A Tribute to the Songs of Sol Sigurdson, a limited-edition four-song EP featuring covers of Sigurdson’s work by some well-known local musicians, including DJ Co-op, pop-rockers Mise en Scene, folksingers Scott Nolan and Jess Reimer, and John K. Samson, who spearheaded the artistic side of the project.

“We hear a lot of bad news about Lake Winnipeg… especially this fall with the arrival and spread of zebra mussels. We’re really aware of the algae blooms in the summer when green waves of algae are washing up on our beaches, and that tends to be what makes the headlines,” says Kanu. “It’s really important to recognize these challenges, and we have to face them head on. We have to acknowledge them. We can’t ignore the fact the lake is in trouble.

“But, the Lake Winnipeg Foundation really wanted to be part of a good news story about the lake. Our members and we here at LWF really believe that this lake is worth fighting for, it’s worth the effort that we’re putting into finding solutions to the challenges it faces. The project is both a rallying cry and a celebration.”

When the Lake Winnipeg Foundation approached Sigurdson with the idea of doing the EP, he said he was “thrilled” to be part of the project.

“I have a huge attachment to Lake Winnipeg… My grandfather settled in 1876 on Hecla Island and all he had to eat — I mean, they may have had a sack of flour or something — was boiled whitefish from the lake,” he says from his home in Edmonton. “So my attachment to the lake goes back a long way.

“I was a little taken aback,” he adds. “I started thinking, ‘Well, geez, are these songs worth celebrating?’ They weren’t written for that purpose, but the more I thought about it, the big thing was they did resonate with a certain community; they were popular, and I think that says quite a bit. And not only that, but they endure… 50 years later and they’re still talking about it.”

Kanu adds that since the announcement of the tribute album and benefit concert, Sigurdson’s fans are “coming out of the woodwork.”

“So many people are unearthing these albums. They’ve had them for years and they love it. It’s great to see that,” she says.

To get the project rolling, Kanu and the LWF approached Samson, former frontman of the Weakerthans, to help with the artistic vision.

“We felt that his songwriting style really is like Sol’s — a bit of a love letter to a specific time and a specific place, and it highlights the relationships between people and place. And, it turns out, John himself is a fan of Sol Sigurdson, so he was on board.”

The EP will be released at a benefit concert on Thursday at the West End Cultural Centre. Each artist on the EP will perform a set, and the foundation hopes Sigurdson, who is flying in especially to attend, will also take the stage.

Even though 80-year-old Sigurdson has long since moved from Riverton — he was a professor of mathematics at the University of Alberta for 35 years — he returns most summers to see his family and rekindle his connection to the lake. He thoroughly praises the work the foundation is doing.

“This Lake Winnipeg Foundation, I’m just so appreciative of their efforts,” he says. “It (Lake Winnipeg) was so important to people for so long and it still is important to people. I’m just happy to be a part of something that’s trying to pay attention to and look after this wonder.”

erin.lebar@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @NireRabel