Source of the Song returns with David Storey and Soozi Schlanger

Source of the Song 32 will take place on Saturday, April 16, from 2-5 p.m. in Glen Williams Town Hall. Host and co-producer Bruce Madole will be joined by two special guests— Soozi Schlanger and David Storey— whose diverse gifts and styles will bring extra richness to their songwriting as a story-telling art.

Reprinted from Halton Hills Independent Free Press, April 11, 2016

Schlanger is a songwriter, singer, a hot fiddler (and spoon-wrangler) in Swamperella, Toronto’s hottest Cajun band, as well as being a musical participant in Canada’s folk super-group, Betty and The Bobs (where she plays alongside a who’s who of Canadian musical talent.) All that, and she is also a visual artist, with a freshness of expression that crosses into her many creative pursuits.

Storey is similarly diverse in his talents– an early and well-established career as a folk-roots singer-songwriter was expanded for a decade or two by a stellar career in film and television. Storey produced music videos and television specials for the likes of Tom Cochrane, Stompin Tom Connors, Anne Murray, Rita McNeil and the Rankins, and then diverged again into a role as the co-creator, co-writer and co-producer of the television series Corner Gas. Returning to his songwriting roots, Storey has since finished and released a CD with songwriting that clearly demonstrates his ability to focus and tell a story within a song.

“I’m a great believer that all songs are a kind of story-telling,” says Madole, “albeit, a story that includes other elements like beat and groove and tone, which all help to sell and deliver the meaning of the lyric. If an audience is clapping their hands, or tapping (or stomping) their feet, or singing along, or even wiping away a tear, they might not necessarily be thinking of a story. But it’s there, all the same, in some form, if a song is working. If people don’t have a sense of what a song is about, they stop listening. So there has to be a story somewhere.”

Madole himself has been engaged in broadening his story-telling outlets in recent months, having finished a first novel, and now midway through his second novel. He was also a semi-finalist for last year’s John Kenneth Galbraith literary award for short fiction.

“I started my creative life as a poet,” says Madole, “and then I got into songwriting as well as short fiction, and now, 20 years or so later, I’m returning a bit to the longer forms of story-telling. It all depends on the story that needs to be told.”

Tickets are available in Glen Williams at Reeve and Clarke Fine Books, (open Thursday – Sunday, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., at 521 Main Street in Glen Williams), or by contacting co-producers Bruce or Marlene Madole at 905-459-9753 (or via email at brucemadole@sympatico.ca). Tickets are $20.