Fred Eaglesmith at Gemini’s

Don't miss Fred Eaglesmith and the Flying Squirrels, billed as the best band in North America, at Gemini's Cafe, 20 Tarrifville Rd. in Simsbury on Wednesday, December 5 at 7:30 p.m.

Fifty years ago, when the entertainment industry was in its infancy, radio stations and record companies were just finding their way. Musicians followed no set formula. Bluegrass bands toured the country in big cars and beat-up buses. Bill Monroe boxed and played baseball in order to eke out a living playing music. Loretta Lynn drove with her husband from radio station to radio station, urging them to play her first records. They had no tour manager or record rep to look after them. It was a rough road, but it had a simple honesty—in the music, the lifestyle, and the language itself. A few still live this way. One example is the Fred Eaglesmith Band.

With a ragged string of old buses and tour vehicles, they've traveled the back roads and big cities of America and Canada, playing hard driving, rocking, pleading, country soul. They play roadhouses, honky-tonks, old churches and high-ticket soft seat theaters. They have no tour manager, no record rep—just six men between the ages of 23 and 50. They drive their own bus and repair it when it breaks down. They've had fires, they've had accidents, dropped driveshafts, and wheels have fallen off. They've been towed a lot. At shows, they set up their own gear and tear it down themselves. They've been handcuffed, searched and turned back by border guards. They've been stopped dozens of times in the middle of the night, in the middle of nowhere, by cops, roadblocks and wrecks. This is a real band of ordinary men with wives, girlfriends and families, working to make a living. They live the life of another era. But their music is as relevant as any that is being made today.

Eaglesmith grew up on a series of farms in southern Ontario. His father, an evangelical minister, went bankrupt twice. Eaglesmith recalls his childhood as either working the farm or driving to church. By age sixteen he'd left home, hopped freight trains out west and made his way back east to the farms of Ontario. But the hillbilly radio stations that bounced over the Great Lakes when he was a kid promised him an easier road. Like Elvis, the Stanley Brothers and John Prine, he figured he could make it as a musician. Only his songs are populated with blue-collar guys, heartbreaking women, farmers and criminals. Says Eaglesmith, "I think the bottom of the barrel is where the answers are."

The list of Eaglesmith's songs covered by other artists grows steadily: The Cowboy Junkies, Chris Knight, Dar Williams, Kasey Chambers, and James King. Film director Martin Scorsese has used his songs, as have various others, including James Caan in his new movie Viva Los Nowhere. Eaglesmith has won the Juno Award—the Canadian equivalent of a Grammy—and regularly scores albums on critics' top ten lists on both sides of the border.

The band itself is legendary, beginning with the Canadian icon Willie P. Bennett. A singer-songwriter in his own right, Bennett has lately reinvented himself as the "Jimi Hendrix of the mandolin." With relentless feedback, reverb and rafter-shaking distortion, he is considered one of the most innovative players in the world. Then there's Washboard Hank, who has nailed, screwed and riveted wood, bicycle bells and sheet metal onto a washboard and slammed a miner's helmet on his head, thereby becoming a cacophonous rhythm section bar none. One reviewer described him as "a magnet's dream."

The band also includes Kevin Komatsu on drums and Darcy Yates on bass. Despite their young age, they are considered to be one of the tightest rhythm sections ever to emerge from Ontario. They met in jazz school and quit to play the music they really love. Rounding out the sextet is Roger Marin on electric and steel guitars. He learned his chops alongside his father in the country bars of southern Ontario and plays country music of the purest kind.

Their show is a balance between rock and early-sixties country music that's passionate, funny and sentimental all at once, as if Hank Williams joined the Rolling Stones. As one reviewer said, "It takes a jaded soul to leave a Fred Eaglesmith show unaffected." Or as Fred's fans say, "You get religion." Nobody is sure how it works, it just does. There usually isn't chicken wire in front of the stage, but it feels like there should be.

After the show, six men pack up their gear, start up the bus and drive off into the night. No tour manager. No record-company rep. It's just the way it is.

Tickets for the show are $15; for more info and reservations call Baerfeat Productions at 860-693-9694, or 860-658-7400.