Traveling Grey is Jerry Leger’s
fourthalbum and finds him poised to indelibly add his name to the roll
call that hasbuilt Toronto’s international reputationas a
singer/songwriter Mecca. One ofthe members of that elite group, Ron Sexsmith, has said, “Jerry Leger is one of the best songwriters I’ve heard inquite some time,” while another, Fred Eaglesmith,
has on several occasionsinvited Leger to share stages with him. Whether
it has been one of those nightsin front of someone else’s large,
unsuspecting crowd, or one of hiscountless weekly performances at
Castro’s Lounge in Toronto’s east end—another nod to his heroes who
foundtheir audiences through small club residencies—the experience of
hearing Jerry Leger is always the same.
It is here that mention must be made of his band, the Situation,
whose innate versatility is in line with the various incarnations of
Dylan’s Never-Ending Tour supporting cast. Yet, no matter who is
listening, they are inevitably drawn into Leger’s “own little world”
whenever he sings. In many respects, it is a world that is
all-too-real, a side of Canada that has slowly been disappearing in the
post-industrial age. The characters that populate Traveling Grey provide the testimonial; some havemade bad decisions and are living with the consequences, like the narrator of “Isabella,”
while some have s …
Traveling Grey is Jerry Leger’s
fourthalbum and finds him poised to indelibly add his name to the roll
call that hasbuilt Toronto’s international reputationas a
singer/songwriter Mecca. One ofthe members of that elite group, Ron Sexsmith, has said, “Jerry Leger is one of the best songwriters I’ve heard inquite some time,” while another, Fred Eaglesmith,
has on several occasionsinvited Leger to share stages with him. Whether
it has been one of those nightsin front of someone else’s large,
unsuspecting crowd, or one of hiscountless weekly performances at
Castro’s Lounge in Toronto’s east end—another nod to his heroes who
foundtheir audiences through small club residencies—the experience of
hearing Jerry Leger is always the same.
It is here that mention must be made of his band, the Situation,
whose innate versatility is in line with the various incarnations of
Dylan’s Never-Ending Tour supporting cast. Yet, no matter who is
listening, they are inevitably drawn into Leger’s “own little world”
whenever he sings. In many respects, it is a world that is
all-too-real, a side of Canada that has slowly been disappearing in the
post-industrial age. The characters that populate Traveling Grey provide the testimonial; some havemade bad decisions and are living with the consequences, like the narrator of “Isabella,”
while some have simply neverhad the chance—“Looking out the window of
the old hardware store / Twenty-five feels a lot like twenty-four.” (“Truth Is All Around You”)
When everything is at a standstill, every word, glimpse, and touch is
packed with potential to be lifealtering. Leger catches these moments
like June bugs, allowing us to briefly observe their gorgeous nuances
in the jarbefore they must be set free back into the ether. That’s the
sense I got from songs like “Wrong Kind Of Girl,” andespecially “Is He Treating You Good,”
which cuts as deep as any love song I’ve heard in a long time: “Is he
there every dinner, there every night? / Waits for your decisions, does
nothing for spite.” It’s the kind of songwriting that was second nature
to the artists who defined country music’s golden era of the 1950s and
early ‘60s, and one of them, Nova Scotia’s Hank Snow, is surely smiling
somewhere knowing that Leger has writtena song as bawdy and rollicking
as “East Coast Queen.”
“Whenever I write, I’ m just dipping into myself or keeping my ears
and eyes open,” Leger says. “ I study conversation, pay close attention
to detail.” Nowhere is that more evident than in Traveling Grey’
s centrepiece, “John Lewis,” aportrait of a despised man, like Tom
Dooley before him, but also of a despicable community eager to pass
swift and severe judgment. All we know is that a girl has died, a girl
known to associate with Mr. Lewis, and someone must pay. It’ s another
example on Traveling Grey of Leger’ s greatest gift of being
able to bring us to the point of knowing the outcome of the tale
without explicitly revealing anything. Few songwriters possess that
skill. Fewer still even had their names written down. Only the songs
themselves have survived over the decades and centuries; survived
because they contained undeniable truth. Jerry Leger writes thosekinds
of songs. And now you know his name. – Jason Schneider
