Greg MacPherson’s music punches its fist to the sky in joy and anger while the other flips through a people’s history of labour and love. Does it sometimes veer too close to the edge of an overly exposed emotional gesture? Perhaps, but that’s part of the thrill of the stance, the willingness to risk telling an honest story that you grew up with or around. And sometimes you let it spill a little awkwardly like a first date but then at least it’s on the floor in front of us all.

The characters in MacPherson’s music are extraordinary and glaringly ordinary, a friend whose father lives in Call Me When You’re Drunk, B.C., or a woman who settled down in the ordinary ways, a sister in Toronto, a band that plays $50 jazz chords, a ship’s captain, the poor and wretched of the earth. But so do the defiant emerge such as his much beloved barn-burning homage to his coal mining grandfather leading the strike against the Cape Breton mining company. The song ends with the company store in flames.

All this consideration of the characters and you can forget about the music. It really is just rock’n'roll but like all the best rock shows, it’s electrifying in a live context. You can feel MacPherson’s passion, it’s an intensity that burns and like all the best singer songwriters, you feel you have a comrade on stage not playing for you as much as all of you in the room together sharing these stories.
It’s not about wanting to go back to the good old days, but it is about needing the thrill of having someone’s music be raw and honest, without all of the shine smeared all over it. This is how we come to know each other.

Greg MacPherson’s newest album is called “Mr. Invitation” and is available starting on March 30th.

Greg MacPherson website • myspace