Tinderbox is the new album by Fred Eaglesmith. He calls it alternative gospel. (Gospel for non-believers). It's full of backsliders and people living on the margins. It rocks and rolls with distortion and preachers and end times. It happens on dirt roads and in little clearings with snakes and fi eld workers and people driving away. People say it is the best album Fred has ever made. Believe.
Award-winning Canadian singer-songwriter Fred Eaglesmith has toured Australia 5 times and is set to return in early ’09, following the release of his new album ‘Tinderbox’. Though a decidedly grassroots artist in the thematic focus of his songs and how he pursues his career, playing some 180 shows a year across North America as well as Europe and Australia and releasing his own records under his cheekily-titled A Major Label imprint, Eaglesmith boasts an impact that far better known musical acts can only dream of.
Fred is the subject of not one but three tribute albums and has a devoted if not rabid coterie of fans known as "Fredheads" who travel hundreds and even thousands of miles to catch his vibrant live performances. His songs have joined the canon of academic curriculum at two universities, illuminating both poetic and societal studies. Eaglesmith has also acted in a number of movies and is a painter who regularly shows in galleries. "Fred Eaglesmith is what Bruce Springsteen aspires to be, the voice of the small-town common man," says Nova Scotia's Berwick Register. His uncommonly good songs illuminate the uniqueness of what are usually thought of as common people and have evoked critical comparisons to such musical icons as Tom Waits, John Prine, T Bone Burnett and Steve Earle, to name a few. He has even been rated as a talent on par with the granddaddy of all populist songwriters. "Eaglesmith delivers passion like few singers since Woody Guthrie," says New York Press. "We know that's a comparison not to be taken lightly."
Eaglesmith writes "songs that rattle around in your head like empty beer bottles in the back of a pickup," as one critic puts it. He has won a Juno Award — the Canadian Grammy — for Best Roots & Traditional Album and a Canadian Independent Music Award for Folk/Roots Album of the Year. "It is not an overstatement to say that Eaglesmith is one of the fi nest songwriters in this country," says the New Brunswick Daily Gleaner. "His canon of well over 1000 songs is stunning."
Eaglemsith's music has been described by reviewers as a "blend of aching country and barroom rock" and a "mixture of hard-edged honky-tonk balanced between rock'n'roll and early '60s country music." His dynamic live shows are "exactly like the sort of music you dream of hearing in some crowded, hot, beery bar near closing time… a truly timeless brand of primitive rock'n'roll," says Amazon.com. Eaglesmith is also known as a between song raconteur whose pointed and illuminating storytelling and comedic skills are as sharp as his songwriting.
