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DREAM JOB - Aengus Finnan is singing Canada

"Oh, the price of dreamin' -- hopin' that a break might someday come" ... That line from award-winning folk singer/songwriter Aengus Finnan's new CD North Wind echoes the universal yearning of would-be professional artists.

DOROTHEA HELMS
[ 2002-09-04 ]

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If music is in your heart and soul, Canadian folk singer Aengus Finnan urges you to share your voice. "You owe it to your art. The world cares."

But Finnan is a dreamer who hasn't waited for his break. He's a "self-propelled" entrepreneur who has married left brain business skills with the powerful poetry and riveting music that ebb from a right brain rooted in storytelling.

Finnan's subject matter is found in the mountains, waters, prairies and small towns that punctuate Canada with humanity. At a cemetery in Cobalt, Ont., he noticed the grave of a silver miner whose wife and twin daughters died during childbirth 40 years before he was buried. "I thought about how he must have visited his family's graves all those decades, and I wrote 'O'Shaugnessey's Lament'."

Earlier this year, that song was awarded one of the 31st Annual New Folk Competition awards for emerging songwriters at the Kerrville Folk Festival in Texas.

After four years of touring, the 29-year-old has become a favourite in the folk festival circuit, and he recently signed with Borealis Records. The Irish-born Finnan was young when his family emigrated to Canada to establish an organic vegetable farm in Shelter Valley, Ont. "My parents were actors in Ireland, so they brought with them a love for theatre, language, poetry, stories and songs."


At 16, Finnan left home to study visual arts in Victoria, then ran a children's theatre company in Montreal and worked as a research diver in Alberta. In his early twenties he found himself teaching school in Moosonee on the isolated James Bay coast. "Everything was raw and wild in that town, and music provided the solace that helped me survive psychologically."

A run-in with a Grade 8 student proved to be a watershed in Finnan's life. "The kid phoned me to apologize and shared some of his story about growing up without a father. I looked out the window at packs of wild dogs and the Polar Bear Express waiting on the tracks, and wrote the song 'Fly Away.' That was the first time I gave voice to a story."

At 25 he left both Moosonee and a teaching position with benefits and summer holidays to busk on street corners. "I sang about small town Canada and worked my way into coffee shops and bars, hoping that people would listen and care."

Following in his parents' pioneering footsteps, in 1999 Finnan founded his own record company, Shelter Valley Productions. With help from the Ontario Arts Council, he completed his debut CD called Fool's Gold, an album he says is about "chasing your dream."

Nominated Folk/Roots Album of the Year by Canada Music Week, the album led the talented troubadour on tour from coast to coast.

Shelter Valley Productions was awarded the Year 2000 New Business Achievement Award by the Business Development Bank of Canada. "There is a career to be had in folk music if you keep an open mind to marketing. It's frustrating that so much music by talented artists never sees the public. No one will discover you; you need to pitch and sell. It's the age-old story that it takes 10 years to become an overnight success. I'm four years into the journey. My long-term goal is to help others starting out."

Dreams have their price. Finnan works with a U.S. agent, but would prefer to work with a Canadian representative. "I continue to rent halls and theatres in my hometown and across Canada, yet I am paid to play venues like the Kennedy Centre in Washington D.C. It is frustrating and exhausting to celebrate the country I live in and love, when Americans are more interested in hearing about it."

He cautions, "It's best to approach an agent, manager or record company with a track record -- time on the road, an audience, product sales and bookings."

North Wind will be released on Oct. 4 at Hugh's Room in Toronto, and will be available through www.sheltervalley.com and most record stores.

If music is in your heart and soul, Aengus urges you to share your voice. "You owe it to your art. The world cares."

(Dorothea Helms (writer@wsws.ca) is an internationally published freelance writer who co-owns a communications firm with her husband.)



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