Brian Borcherdt brings the show home

By Michael Gorman

THE VANGUARD

NovaNewsNow.com

The last time Brian Borcherdt played in Yarmouth it was before a modest crowd at the Boys and Girls Club space in the old cotton mill.

The crowd should be a little bigger when Borcherdt takes to the stage this Sunday as part of the Nova Scotia Music Week gala at the Mariners Centre.

The gala is the showpiece event of the weekend with some of the top artists from the province scheduled to perform. Besides Borcherdt, music fans will be treated to performances by the likes of Joel Plaskett, Classified, In-Flight Safety and many others.

It’s been some time since Borcherdt played in front of a home audience and he said he’s looking forward to the show. “I’m always honoured, I’m thrilled,” he said. “Yarmouth is still a big part of me. I go home as often as I can; I record there almost always so just about every record I put out has stuff I’ve done in Yarmouth . . . To still feel included, to be invited, is nice. It means something to me.”

Borcherdt, who lives in Toronto, has deep ties to the area’s musical community. Growing up, he inspired a generation of young musicians to pick up instruments when he played in the bands Burnt Black, Chiselhand and Trephines. These days Borcherdt travels the country and beyond playing his solo acoustic material and making masses dance through his work with the group Holy F***.

Following the show in Yarmouth, Borcherdt will hit the road through the east coast to play shows with Julie Fader. He’s also in the finishing stages of the new Holy F*** album, which is due out in March. In the meantime, Brocherdt will release a collection of songs in the coming weeks that he’s written through the years but never released, via his label’s website, www.handdrawndracula.com.

The music, which will be able to be downloaded for free, is material Borcherdt has never been able to find a place for on his previous albums. “I think there will be 16 or 17 (songs),” he said.

All of this writing comes naturally to Borcherdt. He’s a prolific songwriter and has been ever since he was growing up in Yarmouth and started playing in bands. And while some people might find the differences between what he does on his own and what he does with Holy F*** surprising, Borcherdt said it comes naturally. “It feels like something I have to do,” he said. “It’s only natural that people have a lot of different facets to their personality . . . If people read a book, they’re not always going to read the same genre. But I guess for some reason it’s expected that if you write a book you’re only going to write one genre. “We listen to music that’s very different from day to day depending on our mood. I think it’s only natural that as musicians we would be inspired to make music that conveys different moods. I’ve learned from the past that it’s kind of hard to fit (all of the songs) under one heading, under one name or one umbrella because in the end you may be diluting the impact of what it is you’re trying to do.