A contemporary troubadour, Cam Penner has signed onto this year’s Roots and Blues Festival.
Penner explores new textures and bolder sounds on his newly released album To Build a Fire. An album about departures and new beginnings, To Build a Fire is as full of hope as it is full of love.
It’s also electrifying and provoking, and speaks of things the human heart longs for on the road of life, says festival marketing director Scott Crocker.
Roads are something Penner knows about. At 18, he left small- town life to wander the highways and back roads of North America. Eventually he found himself in Chicago serving mystery soup and stale bread to 250 homeless men a day. Next, a women and children’s shelter, then youth shelters and detox centers.
For 13 years he immersed himself in this subculture of the disenfranchised, absorbing as much raw humanity as he could. When a shift was over, he would spend endless cathartic hours writing and playing his guitar, exorcising heartache through music, a practice that ultimately led to a full-time career as a touring and recording artist.
To Build a Fire is Penner’s seventh recorded album. The lush beauty of the opening brass track lures one in but leaves them wondering what is to come.
“Then it begins – ukuleles, guitars, banjos strummed. Floorboards stomped. Kick drums kicked. Feet stumbled. Thighs, knees, hands slapped and clapped. Voices strained and bent. Fingers gripped, grabbed and picked. Arms and hands flung. Body and sound thrown against wood and metal,” says Crocker. “It’s folk. It’s rock n’ roll. It’s Cam Penner, breathing fire into every note and lyric, carving his own path with music born from the soil and sin of this world.”
Catch him along with an electrifying 2013 lineup at the 21st Annual Salmon Arm Roots & Blues Festival Aug. 16 to 18.
