By Robin Tarnowetzki
Journal Staff Reporter
rtarnowetzki@humboldtjournal.ca
It's almost the end of summer, but the Humboldt and District Museum and Gallery's Sounds of Summer concert series is still going strong. Local musician Ray Whitton performed at the gallery on Aug. 14 while surrounded by its current show, Two Perspectives.
"It's a beautiful space," Whitton said. "I hope we continue to do more events like this, so people can come and enjoy art on the walls and the beautiful pieces all over the place."
Whitton began his set with an a cappella song and then launched into the rest of his set accompanied by an acoustic guitar. His performance was rife with self-deprecating humour. While recounting his beginnings in music, he mentioned how he only knew three chords.
"And now I know five," he said proudly.
Whitton was happy to have the opportunity to try out some new material from his upcoming record to see how people react to it. He's hoping to release it in early 2015.
"It's always best to try it out live, see how people react to it. It was a lot of fun," Whitton said. "And I got to do it at home; I didn't have to travel anywhere."
He added that there's a lot of "blood, sweat, and tears" going into the album. It won't differ much genre-wise from his first, but said that he picked five songs out of about 50 to polish and re-work, while his first album was more like a demo.
Whitton has been playing music for about eight years. When he was 30, he entered a treatment centre for alcoholism. When he got out, he said he had no idea what he was going to do. On the suggestion of a friend, he bought a guitar and started "plunking away at it" and eventually started writing his own songs.
Whitton works in Humboldt and says music is a "crazy habit" for him. He and his wife moved here from Saskatoon when they were getting ready to start a family.
"Her parents are already here," Whitton said. "They rave about Humboldt and the community, and it's like three years later and I know exactly what they're talking about. It didn't even take a year before I knew this is where we needed to be."
He performs solo, with a full band as time permits, and with bandmate Trevor Ross (who joined him for a few songs) in Gravel Hound. While he has performed anywhere from Craven Country Jamboree (by winning a contest) to Toronto, he likes having a smaller audience as well.
"I prefer an audience that's captive and one that's listening and you can tell they're listening because they're acknowledging what you're saying and you can feel that from them," he said. "I prefer a smaller venue; the intimacy and the songs tend to resonate a lot better with a crowd that's paying attentionas a songwriter, that's what you want, for people to listen to what you have to say, and hopefully they leave with a song stuck in their head."
Though his music has elements of folk and country, he doesn't like to put a label on it. Since he likes a wide variety of music, that wide variety of influences shows up in his songs. He said that his refusal to fit in a box has cost him gigs in the past, but that hasn't been a big deal for him.
"It all comes back to the music and if people can relate to it and enjoy it," he said.
While he looks comfortable onstage, for him, performing has upsides and downsides.
"My favourite part is when my foot starts stomping, because that's when I know I'm getting into it and I can tell that other people are getting into it," he said "My least favourite is probably seven minutes before show time when the butterflies are going. But once I finish my first song and people clap, then I'm good and I just kind of coast."
