There’s nothing like a kitchen concert, complete with a couple hands of cards on the go, some classic Saskatchewan stubbies and mugs for the cowboy coffee. That’s exactly the ambience the audience was treated to when Zachary Lucky and Richard Inman rolled into the Watson and District Museum on Sunday night.
Inman and Lucky are on an extensive tour and made a lengthy drive to Watson from Edmonton to delight the audience with their soulful melodies and engaging storytelling. At a time when the folk and story spinning song community has bid farewell to giants like Ian Tyson, Gordon Lightfoot, and stateside trop-pop narrator Jimmy Buffet, it’s comforting to know that Canada continues to produce artists like Lucky and Inman.
Their songs are warm and inviting, largely about the people and landscape of the prairies and those they’ve encountered in their extensive travels. This is the first tour they’ve embarked on together, but it’s been in the making for quite some time.
Lucky explained that he’d first encountered Inman in Dauphin, MB when the two wound up singing at the same restaurant years ago. Inman followed Lucky’s regimen of gruelling touring, criss-crossing Canada and the States, each amassing an impressive catalogue of songs. The Watson audience had the benefit of listening to two country influenced folk artists at their prime, singing songs that harken back to what the genre used to be.
Both artists are accomplished musicians. Lucky’s fluid fingerpicking style is reminiscent of the likes of Steve Goodman and Arlo Guthrie, and his voice is variously smooth and wistful or growling and resonant. His songs took the audience back to Lucky’s early days in his Saskatoon home and Sunday afternoon memories of the Saskatchewan International Drag Strip south of the city. There were songs of longing, sometimes homesickness.
Beautiful tunes like Lucky’s “Leaves Are Falling,” with Inman pitching in on harmonies, were perfect accompaniments to an autumn evening. Inman’s blues-tinged offerings combined his rich, soulful voice with masterful lyrics that painted both people and experience. A standout moment was Inman’s “Cut Fence (Let God Sort ‘Em Out)”, a retelling of the summer of 2017 when the north slope of an interior range went up in flames.
The evening wound down with the moody ballad, “Rain in December.” co-penned by the duo in a creative email exchange. The appreciative audience earned an encore, a cover of Fred Eaglesmith’s trucking lament, “Fuel in the Water.”
The pair is performing in clubs, halls and community venues across the prairies on their “Live From the Kitchen Table” tour, but the pair remarked that Watson was the only spot to actually break out a kitchen table with all the accoutrements. In that setting, the audience truly felt at home with the pair of Canadian storytelling masters.
Stay up to date with local news, sports and weather by downloading the Discover Humboldt app HERE.