Full House at Folk Harbour Roars It Up For Lennie

Stephen Pedersen on August 8, 2009

Lunenburg loves Lennie and Lennie loves Lunenburg. Repeated standing ovations at his outstanding set Friday night in the Tent on Blockhouse Hill, echoed the thunder but also completely wiped away the memory of the extraordinary cloudburst and lightning storm that swept over the site minutes before the show began.

Lennie Gallant’s genius at writing and singing his own songs has given us not only classics like Peter’s Dream, And The Band Played On, and Which Way Does The River Run, but new songs on their way to the Lennie Gallant Hall of Fame.

These would include Wounded, his compassionate tribute to broken soldiers from Iraq and Afghanistan suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome in an atmosphere of our collective silence and neglect. And the poignancy of Before You Sell This Car (from his latest album If We Had A Fire). An old car is full of memories from first kisses to coffee spills that often mark the landmarks of our lives.

There is an energy in Lennie’s singing, an inner fire of Acadian French rhythms performed at blazing speeds, and also an orchestral fullness to the fat chords he pulls or strikes from his guitar.

A further sign of Lennie’s musical taste is the musicians he chooses for his bands. It’s a highly refined taste, that penetrates more often than most singer-songwriters to the inner sanctum of music’s wizardry, of it’s ability when approached with utter honesty, to penetrate the cosmos, to rip away the veil of the familiar to reveal the fabled Music of the Spheres talked about in earlier centuries.

Anthony Rissessco on violin and Jamie Alcorn on acoustic electric guitar are two veteran practitioners who, like Lennie, are at the peak of their musicality having broken through to the glory of speaking it’s language with the ease and eloquence of great poets.

Both of them stunned the audience repeatedly with their improvised solo breaks and interior fills and ornaments. Brilliant as they were, they topped it all with the kind of professional confidence and support that cleared the path for Lennie and only surged in after he had passed, like the Red Sea after the Army of Jehovah reached the far shore dry-footed.

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