Valdy is embarking on another cross-Canada tour, but he’s got two more close-to-home gigs before he leaves, including a show in Nanaimo.
The 78-year-old folk singer will play the Nanaimo Yacht Club on Sept. 6, a show presented by Harbour City Concerts.
Valdy will play his crowd pleasers, including his best-known single from the 1970s, Play Me a Rock and Roll Song.
The song’s prominence as a radio hit cemented a following, but the artist said the rock waltz also has a certain relatability all these years later.
“It’s a story of rejection that many people who’ve suffered that kind of a situation can relate to. So the emotion and the content of the song has a hook to it,” he said. “That record is obviously not singularly responsible for my career, but it certainly was a good ramp.”
While he’s taken some of his other songs down in key as he’s gotten older, he still sings Play Me a Rock and Roll Song in its original key of D. He might have performed the song 10,000 times by now, but it’s important to keep playing it, he said, because show business is about the audience as much as it is about the performer and the show.
“I have not forgotten that – I try not to – when I start thinking that I am the important thing,” Valdy said. “It really is the transfer of entertainment through music or chitchat or stories or whatever that is the key to it all. Therefore, I play my hits.”
While his concert setlists still throw back to decades past, he’s also embracing modern technology with weekly ‘Live at Five’ live-streamed performances on his Facebook fan site www.facebook.com/groups/folksingerdeluxe. Also, he’s working on an original composition leading up to Seniors Climate Action Day on Oct. 1 with a “stop the [oil and gas] subsidies, fund the people” message, and says it’s “nice to be involved in something contemporary.”
Up until the COVID-19 pandemic, Valdy continued to play 200 gigs a year, and while he’s slowed the pace somewhat since then, his upcoming tour will still take him to Newfoundland and Labrador, and he’s got another tour soon after that in Ontario.
“I don’t find it daunting, I find it a challenge and I love to have a challenge like that,” he said.
Waiting for him to return home afterward will be his supportive wife, and their new pet.
“We got a kitten,” he said. “I don’t know if that’s relevant, but when you’re 78 and you get a kitten, it’s kind of hopeful.”
WHAT’S ON … Valdy performs at the Nanaimo Yacht Club on Sept. 6 at 7:30 p.m., doors at 7 p.m. Tickets $30, available at www.eventbrite.ca. For more information, visit www.facebook.com/HarbourCityConcerts.
