Elvis Presley bit Fred Eaglesmith.
Well, his music did.
“When I was 10 or 12 we got a TV and I saw Elvis on TV,” Eaglesmith said. “I never looked back.”
Forty or so years later Eaglesmith will rock the Down Home in Johnson City on May 4. Inspired to music by Presley, the Canadian singer sounds nothing like the king of rock. He’s been called the Canadian Bruce Springsteen, but that misses the mark.
“Yeah, I’m not any of those things,” Eaglesmith said.
Instead, Fred Eaglesmith sounds like Fred Eaglesmith. He writes bold and sometimes brawny songs with tales to tell.
“You can put a period at the end of that,” Eaglesmith said by phone Monday while en route from Austin, Texas to Fayetteville, Ark.
Just a few years after seeing Presley on television, Eaglesmith leaped. After getting off his school bus at his family’s farm one afternoon, he headed west.
“I got off the school bus, got on the highway, stuck my thumb out, hopped a freight train, got out and hitched some more, and hopped another freight,” Eaglesmith said of his travel to Western Canada. “I turned 16 on the road.”
But for a few stops along the way, he’s been on the road ever since. He lives in Canada, owns a home and studio there, but the road holds Eaglesmith’s wanderlust heart.
“I’m a traveler and I’ve been traveling all my life, since I was 16,” he said. “All that stuff makes sense to me.”
Long before he took off from the family farm, Eaglesmith began writing songs. One, two, sometimes three per day flowed from his mind that wandered and wondered.
“But I was writing pretty badly,” Eaglesmith said. “But by the time I was 22, I had been writing songs for 10 years.”
In other words, he was not writing so badly anymore. He released his first of 17 albums in 1980. Up through his latest, 2008’s “Tinderbox,” critics typically hailed his work. Singers such as Alan Jackson (“Freight Train”) and Toby Keith (“Thinking ‘Bout You”) routinely record his songs.
So why hasn’t he become a household name?
“I think mostly because I don’t want to be one,” Eaglesmith said. “I’m not into that world. There’s a part of me that really likes working under the truck and getting grease up to my elbows.”
Eaglesmith’s a blue-collar man. His songs reflect that. For example, take “Thirty Years of Farming,” which became a number one bluegrass hit for James King.
“That’s a pretty true song,” Eaglesmith said. “I watched all the farms on my road stop turning their lights on. They stopped milking their cows. It was just awful.”
Consequently, the song sounds as raw as rain feels on a cold winter’s day. That’s Eaglesmith, though. As on his 2008 album “Tinderbox,” which delves into the Bible belt, his music gnaws as if through flesh and bone to get at the soul.
“I really wanted to make an album for backsliders, struggling people, people on the verge of losing it,” Eaglesmith said. “I’m really happy with it.”
TOM NETHERLAND is a freelance writer. He can be reached at features@bristolnews.com.
IF YOU GO
Who: Fred Eaglesmith
When: May 4, 8 p.m.
Where: Down Home, 300 W. Main St., Johnson City
Admission: $16n Info: (423) 929-9822
Web/audio: www.fredeaglesmith.com
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