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Award-winning instrumentalist Joël Fafard

JoëL Fafard
Blue Chair Café (9624-76th Ave).
Feb. 4, 8 p.m.
Tickets: $15, available at the door

Guitarist Joël Fafard has a pretty long list of accomplishments. In 2007, he was a Juno nominee for Instrumental Album of the Year; in 2009 he was a Canadian Folk Music Awards nominee, an International Acoustic Music Awards runner up and a Western Canadian Music Awards nominee. On top of all that, he found time in his busy schedule of attending award ceremonies to sit down and invent the guitar. Not really of course, but I did tell him I was going to title this story, “Joël Fafard invented the guitar.”

“I went to Capilano College in (North) Vancouver and that is where I learned how to learn,” says Fafard. “It is my style that I taught myself. When I was done I asked myself what I was going to do and I became really interested in guitar finger-work and getting a full sound from that. Like having the base line and the other lines happening at the same time, so I sat myself down and taught myself how to do it because what I learned at Capilano was how to learn. It’s creating a style and a technique and putting them together, it’s not like I invented finger-style guitar.”

Doing well in Canada is one thing, but overseas he is accepted as well. So well in fact, that he is a bit surprised. Not at being accepted, but at the level at which people enjoy all types of music including his own.

“People responded to me very well over seas, for example, Germany,” Fafard described. “In Berlin people are fans of music from all over the world and don’t have any allegiances to languages the lyrics have to be in or anything. You could go to a party in Hamburg and listen to some French rap and then some Irish folk music. You never know what is coming on afterwards; they are really open-minded about things.”

To watch him play with a slide and picking away in tempo is a bit hypnotic. For example, a simple YouTube video of him sitting on a river bank in a pair of shorts epitomizes what he does; a wonderful combination of structure and dedication, not unlike the river itself. But, selling people on the idea that instrumentalists are fun to watch is hard to so.

“That happens a lot actually,” says Fafard. “People are dragged to my show and are certain that an instrumentalist can’t hold their attention. Then, they become very surprised by how I do keep them entertained. I take that as a very big compliment. And I stand during my show, I don’t feel like I’m working unless I’m standing. And that video was taken by an African guitar player by the name of Tony Cox. We were just going to a swim in that river together when we were on tour in New Brunswick. He asked me if I had a YouTube video, and I said no. So he said that I should go get my guitar because we were going to make one right now. That’s why I’m in my swimming trunks.”