Friday, January 20, 2012

Don Freed

Apropos of nothing, I thought I'd look up "Talkin' Louis Riel Day Blues" by Don Freed on the internet. Isn't that the home of everything these days?

My my, I couldn't find it.

And yet, there I was in 1992 in Saskatoon (what was the name of that place?) in a little club watching Don Freed record a live album. Colin James guested.

I think "Talkin' Louis Riel Day Blues" is a song every Canadian should know.

I'd first seen Freed when he opened for Jane Siberry at the Ontario Place Forum in 1988-ish. Is none of this on YouTube?

From Wikipedia, I learned that the live album was only ever available on cassette. I have a copy. Upstairs. Somewhere.

But I didn't know this - Freed with Johnny Cash - and more.

Here he is from 2007:



Also on MySpace.

Here he is again.



Rock on, Don!

1 comment:

Unknown said...

I just read this post about trying to find Don Freed songs online. My wife and I took our kids to the live recording of the cassette tape you are talking about. It was at the Bassment, what we call the "old" Bassment. The "new" Bassment is now in the basement of the "old" post office...that's toon town for you, I guess. Ford's Drug Store is now a tattoo parlour so things are moving right along here. About a week ago I got a call from one of my kids in Vancouver who was trying to find "Arrrr" online and was gobsmacked that it was unavailable..she works in computer science and couldn't understand how this could be. The songs were stuck in her head and wouldn't go away. I don't know if we wore that tape out playing it in the car on countless family road trips or if it bit the dust in the general purge of cassette technology, but I'm off to the Saskatoon Symphony Music and Book sale to see if they still sell cassette tapes. I will come back later to read some of your book reviews.

Randy Thiesson