$42
This event is not presented by the Marigold
Folk Legend Valdy, born Paul Valdemar Horsdal, has been part of the fabric of Canadian pop and folk music for half a century. He is well known for “Play Me a Rock ‘n’ Roll Song” but also delights audiences everywhere performing classics such as “Peter & Lou”, “Yes I Can”, “Renaissance”, “Sonny’s Dream” and many, many more.
Valdy continues to entertain audiences from British Columbia to Newfoundland & Labrador and many points in between with frequent wintertime performances for Canadian Snowbirds south of the border.
One of Canada’s premier folk artists, Valdy had an improbable hit with a song about a decidedly hostile audience heckling a soft-spoken minstrel. The square-peg-in-a-round-hole story recounts Valdy’s bitter-sweet memory of finding himself, a relaxed and amiable storyteller, facing a rambunctious audience playing at the Aldergrove Rock Festival in 1968, where the rock-loving audience jeered his folk offerings.
Valdy has always recognized the irony that a bad gig turned into a hit. He once told an interviewer, “I was hired as a folk singer to go and play at a rock festival. I was out of place and … I got the reception I deserved, let’s put it that way. They wanted rock, they gave me a hard time about it, and I got a great song out of it.” Ironically, Valdy is in the Victoria Rock and Roll Music Hall of Fame.
Play Me a Rock and Roll Song’s success is attributable in part to several factors. It cleverly played into the hippy counter-culture movement, while embodying the tensions between rock and folk fans (which Bob Dylan discovered when he infamously used electric instruments at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival).
A man with a thousand friends, from Newfoundland and Labrador to Vancouver Island to Texas to New Zealand and many points in between; he's a singer, guitarist and songwriter who catches the small but telling moments that make up life.
Valdy has been named to the Order of Canada (Arts/Music) for his achievements as a folk musician and for his support of charitable causes.
Joining Valdy will be Nova Scotia’s own Doris Mason. Doris grew up in a big musical family and was playing piano before her feet could touch the pedals. She wrote her first song at seven. Her training with the Royal Conservatory of Music garnered her many awards in Music Festivals across Canada. She formed a Pop/Jazz band and recorded a self-titled album “The Mason Chapman Band”. “Photograph” is her solo CD which garnered Doris an ECMA nomination. She was MD and Co-Producer of the Dutch Mason Blues Bash CD and Concert, honouring the “Prime Minister of the Blues” 60th Birthday.
Nova Scotia native Doris Mason, a well known performer who has successfully juggled a busy solo career, work as Musical Director for the hit touring show “DRUM!”, and starred in Denny Doherty’s “Dream a Little Dream”- the nearly true story of the Mamas and Papas, as his special guest.
Ms. Mason has been a featured Artist with Symphony Nova Scotia as part of their Pops Concert Series along with singer/songwriters Ron Hynes, Terry Kelly, Gordie Sampson and Ian Janes. She paid tribute to Dutchy, Denny and John Allan Cameron on the 2008 ECMAs with J.P. Cormier, Charlie Acourt, George Canyon, Gordie and Shea. Doris has been fortunate to have a multi-faceted background of Celtic, folk ,blues and jazz which has afforded her a rich and diverse career throughout Nova Scotia, Canada, Europe and the United States.