Interview with Jeffery Straker

July 30, 2024

What has been inspiring you lately?

I’ve been finding a lot of inspiration on the prairies for the last few years and the tap doesn’t seem to be running dry.  I was born and raised on a grain farm in small town Saskatchewan and when I graduated from high school I went off to university in Saskatoon, though my 3rd year was at the Queen’s University of Belfast in Northern Ireland. I really enjoyed going “somewhere else” and when I finished my degree I wanted more of “somewhere else” so I move to Toronto.  I thought I’d never return to the prairies but I was drawn back – seeing it from afar made me appreciate it more than ever.  My home is in Regina now.  My new album that’s coming out June 7 2024, has several songs on it inspired by some very-prairie things:  the sky, old grain elevators, the hills in the area where I grew up. Growing up, these were all just “things”, and as years have passed by and I really focused in on them and pondered their meaning as part of the scenery that’s always been around me, they’ve become quite fascinating.  I’m still finding more and more inspiration around Saskatchewan.  My partner is a farmer, and though I grew up on a grain farm and am pretty familiar with farming, it’s different watching your partner do it.  Putting seeds into dirt, to grow a plant that will turn into food for someone is an incredible thing.  Being up close to the process and seeing the exhausting hours that go into it is humbling.  Also, the vast space around us on the prairies is inspiring.  We’re so lucky to have all that endless horizon to let our minds wander out to.

Do you have any new singles, videos, or albums out that you would like to tell me and your fans about?

The most recent single we’ve released from my upcoming album is called “More than Two by Fours and Timber”.  It’s an americana-folk flavoured story-song about the disappearance of the old vintage wooden grain elevators across the Canadian prairies.  They hold deep meaning to rural prairie folks and there are fewer and fewer all the time.  At their peak there were more than 3000 in Saskatchewan alone and now there are less than 200.  Every town used to have one, but they burn down, get bulldozed, fall into disrepair, you name it.  They’ve kind of just disappeared.  For some reason I’m really drawn to them.  Possibly because in the rural parts of the province they’re one of the few things that go “up” – they’re almost majestic in a way. They’re kind of our prairie skyscrapers.  The song juxtaposes the idea of trying to hold on while knowing you have to let go.  That’s a pretty universal theme and I’ve seen it really resonate at shows when I perform it.  I also recently released a live-in-studio video of my performing the song at the piano:

Do you have anything else that you would like to talk about or promote?

When my album releases in June, instead of doing a record-release-show in a theatre in Regina or Saskatoon like I usually would, I decided to go about this in a different way.  The idea came from the single “More than Two by Fours and Timber” on the record.  I’m going to perform a series of 7 shows at 7 grain elevators across Saskatchewan from June 15 to July 7.  It’s pretty unusual and I can’t wait to try this out.  Just recently in March I performed a 12-show tour of beautiful theatres across Western Canada in double bill concerts with Royal Wood – it was such as blast. (He’s so good!)  So having just done those theatre gigs, for the release of this record I decided to take a different angle.  One of these grain elevator shows (July 5) has the concert goers riding an old train across the wide-open prairie under the great big sky to the little hamlet where they’ll watch the show in the grain elevator.  The idea has really piqued people’s curiosity. If anyone wants to check out the tour there’s more info here: https://mailchi.mp/jeffstraker/prairie-skyscraper-concert-series 

How can your fans best keep up to date with you, any socials you want people to check out?

I update my Facebook, Instagram and Twitter/X most frequently, and my website is the hub of it all. Here are the links if anyone wants to take a peek:

 

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