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Branden Gates fiddles, sings and strums his way to a new creative plateau

"Creating is the pursuit for me.” - Braden Gates

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I knew Braden Gates was a devout Edmonton Oilers fan before I met him in person, but he was easy to pick out in a downtown cafe recently by the bright blue and orange jersey that covered his person. The young poet-guitarist-fiddler and singer has written songs about his attachment to hockey, but ultimately he’s inspired by many great and small events in life.

Here’s guessing Gates will be torn between the stage at Blue Chair Cafe this Friday night and the Oilers playoff game that’s set to happen around the same hour,  but that coincidence shouldn’t keep you away from taking in his new CD release event.

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On Gates’ latest album, Much Rather Be Sleeping, you’ll find numbers about his twin sister finding love, about some of the characters on Whyte Avenue, about a summer afternoon baseball game, and my favourite, the title track, a spare, stripped-down piece with a hard to ignore swinging groove about a daydreamer who wakes up to the grey sky of winter in Edmonton.

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It’s his deceptively simple musings on life that make the tune feel as if it could have been sung a century ago, but for the quality of the recording and a few tidbits of 21-century imagery. It doesn’t hurt that the album’s short Prelude and Epilogue come with scratchy, monophonic old-time gramophone sounds, or that his voice sounds like he could be Tom Waits’ younger brother.

“I’ve never pursued this with the intention to have a career,” Gates admits, proving the wisdom of that maxim that you should do what you love. “It’s just something I’ve been drawn to, that I just worked at, and everything else has fallen into place. Creating is the pursuit for me.”

Beyond any specific tune, Gates’ gifts as a wordsmith, or his talents arranging fine melodies for acoustic strings, there’s an intangible quality to the man’s work — call it sincerity — that makes you want to listen. His tunes remind you again why we’re all called to explore art at some time or other, for that sense of sharing the common human experience.

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A native of Fort Saskatchewan, he had the benefit of a fiddling father and pianist mother and the sort of inspiration that comes from hearing live music at home frequently. Gates was writing his first fiddle tunes at 13 and fingerpicking songs on guitar a few years later. Influenced by his father’s traditional folk sound and American fiddle great John Hartford, he was one of five finalists in Canada’s Grand Masters Fiddle Championship around age 20. He played Edmonton’s Folk Music Festival at 19, and now at the ripe old age of 25, he’s evolving.

“My style is a little less clean now, and more greasy, kind of like John Hartford, so I don’t do so well in contests. When I wanted to start writing songs, I switched to guitar and focused on my guitar style, but sometimes I still feel like a song could better be played on the fiddle, so I change it over.”

Much Rather Be Sleeping is the third time Gates has worked with Edmonton’s expert Nashville transplant, producer Miles Wilkinson, this time at Danlyn and CJSR studios. Canadian Grand Master fiddling champion Daniel Gervais takes most of the fiddle parts alongside other guests. Bassist Harry Gregg and drummer Dan Stadnicki will join Gates live this Friday. When he’s not on guitar, Gates bows his fiddle or plays it horizontally like a mandolin or guitar, adding rhythm with his feet.

Gates’ CD release party hits Blue Chair Cafe at 8:30 p.m. Friday. Tickets are $15 (phone 780-989-2861 or reserve online at bluechair.ca).

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