Submitted by Lenny Stoute
Here’s a rare Toronto appearance from boldface Canadian Legacy artist Garnet Rogers. Within ten years, and barely out of high school, Garnet Rogers was on the road as a full-time working musician with his older brother Stan. Together they formed what has come to be accepted as one of the most influential acts in North American folk music.
Since then, Rogers has established himself as ‘One of the major talents of our time”. Hailed by the Boston Globe as a “charismatic performer and singer”, Garnet is a man with a powerful physical presence – close to six and a half feet tall – with a voice to match. With a smooth, rich baritone that can sound like it’s coming up from his toes, and thoughtful, dramatic phrasing, Garnet is widely considered by fans and critics alike to be one of the finest singers anywhere.
His music is literate, passionate, highly sensitive, and deeply purposeful. Cinematic in detail, his songs “give expression to the unspoken vocabulary of the heart” (Kitchener Waterloo Record). An optimist at heart, Garnet sings extraordinary songs about people who are not obvious heroes and of the small victories of the everyday. Rogers debuted as a solo with 1977’s Fogarty’s Cove. From then on, Stan’s best writing focused on the Canadian experience, his songs giving a new voice to ordinary folks who worked the fisheries, mines, and farms of this vast country.