Canadian folk legend Valdy (Valdemar Horsdal) has been called ‘a man with 1,000 friends’ – not an exaggeration for a musician who has been part of the Canadian music scene for over three decades.
Perhaps it is even an understatement with the amount Valdy continues to tour.
Over the phone from his home in Salt Spring Island, B.C., he described himself as completely addicted to the road.
“I love to sing and I love to play. I also like what music can do to shake a crowd,” said Valdy.
“Music reaches into the soul somehow. There is something subliminal about it that I can’t understand, but I have seen it work for so long and that’s what keeps me going.”
The recording side of the music business is something that Valdy said he also enjoyed because of the long lasting quality of it.
“We get to be part of people’s lives for an extended period of time,” he said.
Valdy said there is talk of him doing a jazz album, which he added would be a new departure for him as an artist.
He talked about growing up listening to jazz composer Henry Mancini and credited him with teaching him the love of melody.
At 12 years old and taking piano lessons, as a young musician, Valdy said he understood rhythm, but learned melody from albums like The Music from Peter Gunn.
“There is something there that I can tap into. It was just marvelous and it has affected me hugely,” he said.
Valdy’s love of melody is something he said has turned him into what he described as ‘a bit of a passing chord freak’, loving to mix them up in his songs.
“Everything flows and is sequential, it is not jarring. I don’t consider it a signature, but people say they like listening to the weird chords that I play,” he said with a laugh.
As for how long Valdy would continue to keep adding to that list of a 1,000 friends through his touring, he said it is something that would be determined naturally.
“If it’s worthy it, it gets the crowd. If I am no longer worthy and don’t get the crowd when the effort has been made, that is one of nature’s subtle warning signs,” he said.
With 14 albums, four gold records and two Juno awards, it seems nature isn’t handing out anything but good signs for Valdy.
Valdy plays Legacy Guitar and Coffee House Dec. 14.
