Southsider Mike Robertson enjoys writing songs and is looking forward to performing at the Lakes District Fall Fair and Music Festival again this year. “I first played the fall fair 30 some years ago,” said Robertson, “the fall fair is a good venue and the audience is always really good as well.”
Robertson says he didn’t start out writing songs. “I started writing poetry as a young boy and my brother was quite an accomplished guitar player. So I never could play my songs, I always sang them to him and he played them. And then finally I bought a guitar in my early twenties and spent the next 35 years trying to learn how to play it,” he chuckled.
The key to song writing in Robertson’s experience is to go with the creative process whenever and wherever it hits. I’m always writing ideas for a song on the back of envelopes or scraps of paper and the secret is to either record the melody or write the words down because if you don’t do it right away it’s gone, “he said.
Some of the venues have changed a little over the years since he first started playing at the fair but that’s a good thing he recalls. “I remember in the old days at Tweedsmuir Downs and even at the Francois Lake fair venue they used to pull up a trailer and people would just play out in the open. And even at the new fair grounds; one time I played there and they had tarps covering a tiny little stage and the wind was blowing so bad that you couldn’t hear anything. But they’ve made a lot of great improvements to the stage area since then.”
Robertson says it’s difficult to slot his music into a specific genre although it’s ‘definitely leaning toward country and folk.’ He has played small and large venues both indoors and out, mainly here in the North but also in the U.S.A., including a university in Montana last fall. His claim to fame (he jokes) is that he met and sang with Reba McEntire down in Cheyenne, Wyoming before she became a star.
“She was a barrel racer and one of the barrel racers got killed down there and she had a little benefit, so five or six of us sat on hay bales around the campfire and played. And a couple of years later Reba McEntire was all over the radio so I’ve always been able to say I played with her.”
He’s made some demos and has had a song or two picked up by local artists. “I’ve had seven songs published so far, nothing top 10 or big names or anything. Mostly regional people have picked them up. I’ve done some demos in Prince George and Prince George artists have picked them up. I mainly do it just for the pleasure of the word and the song. I like creating stories that I can sing to people. I really do enjoy it.”
Robertson will be performing at the 69 annual Lakes District Fall Fair and Music Festival at the Eagle Creek Fair Grounds on the week end of Sept. 7 to 9, 2012.
