Legendary folk singer Valdy has been coming to play in Brackendale for more than 40 years, and this Saturday he’ll be back.
He and his bandmates will be performing at the annual Wing Ding, and with the Brackendale Art Gallery up for sale, there is a thought this could be the coda for the event.
“People are coming because they don’t know how much longer the Brackendale Art Gallery will be an art gallery, so that does spur it on,” Valdy told The Squamish Chief. “It’s fun. It’s just darned fun.”
The concert is one of the fixtures for the BAG’s Eagle Fest and the annual eagle count every January.
“We support the gallery and the counting of the eagles is a valuable bit of data to have… It’s worth supporting,” he said.
Valdy says he tries to change things up every time by making a point of mixing up his sets.
“It changes every year. I seldom do the same set twice,” he said.
He is also looking to have another guest player come up on the stage, but he was still trying to line this up earlier in the week.
One other change this year will be the lineup. Longtime guitar player Doug Edwards passed away recently, and Valdy and friends held a celebration of his life a couple of weeks ago at the Arts Club Theatre in Vancouver.
For this Saturday’s show, Valdy will have Norman MacPherson joining him on guitar, Laurent Boucher on drums and longtime collaborator Lee Morin, also known as “The man of a thousand songs,” on bass and guitar, while Valdy will play guitar and spell off Morin on bass.
Valdy often plays on his own, but he says the BAG show is one of only a couple of gigs each year he does with the band, along with one in Big White.
At 71, he is still impressed to see young people in the crowd.
“We’re still playing for 18- to 25-year olds,” he said. “And they’re having a ball ’cause it’s rock and roll.”
Valdy first played in Brackendale in 1976, but his ties to the BAG’s Thor Froslev go back even further to the late 1960s and early 1970s when Froslev met the singer at the Classical Joint, the former musical heart of Vancouver’s Gastown.
“We go way, way back. Probably 50 years,” Froslev said.
The Wing Ding dinner and dance takes place at the BAG on Saturday. Dinner, which includes Caesar salad, salmon bisque, bread and “real Danish” lemon mousse, is at 7 p.m. and Valdy and the band take to the stage about 8 p.m.
Tickets are available at XOCO and the BAG.
Also at Eagle Festival on Sunday at the BAG is researcher Michael Allen’s presentation on bears and wolves at 7 p.m.
