Over the last year, singer-songwriter Fred Eaglesmith has been ramping up to one of the most creative times in his career so far.
Eaglesmith entered 2016 with a new album which is in post-production. The award-winning artist finds himself on steady ground in the studio, recording with excitement, amazement, and humor. The release will be much anticipated as his last album, Tambourine, arrived in 2014 – Exclaim! Magazine says it put him at “the very top of his game.”
His songwriting skills have made Tom Waits cry (he told Hobo Magazine: “…and the chorus was ‘And your sister cried all the way home.’ It just tore me up.”) and gains praise from critics across the country. Cleveland Scene praised, “he’s the definition of a songwriter’s songwriter.” The Arizona Daily Star expounded “a prolific singer/songwriter often hailed as a genius at his craft.”
Eaglesmith’s live shows rock and roll through new and classic original material, and are equally applauded. “If you’re missing out on Eaglesmith, you’re really missing out,” The New Yorker simply said. The Los Angeles Times reviewed “Eaglesmith snarled out lyrics that underscore his overriding attitude that music and musicians ought to be cherished in the here-and-now and valued for the quality of their art, not the size of their bank accounts or TV ratings,” while the Bend Bulletin observed, “[Fred is] a singer-songwriter with a loyal fan base: a raconteur known for his funny stories and sometimes funny, sometimes poignant songs…a figure to whom ‘entertainer,’ ‘humorous’ and ‘original’ can be applied in equal measure.”
And as loyal as his growing fan base is, so is Fred with the people that have supported him on his journey. Band members, who settle in for a life long gig, are supported with more than 200 shows every year. Fred even extends his loyalty to his tour bus, a 1990 Bluebird bus with a self-modified biofueled engine, which he is known to be repairing on the side of the road in between tour stops.
