In 1998, at the Winnipeg Folk Festival, a Blackie and the Rodeo Kings guitarist met an Irish singer/songwriter. They chatted, hit it off, and more than 15 years later—despite living in Canada and Australia respectively—still play together as a duo.
Stephen Fearing and Andy White are the minds and talent behind (the aptly named) folk duo Fearing and White. Talking about the collaboration Jan. 26, Fearing said that for years after that first encounter, every time White came though Fearing’s native Ontario, he would have a place to crash on his couch.
Eventually, more for a lark than anything else, a bunch of musicians formed a band that played behind White every time he came through. For Fearing, The Tall Friends was a chance to try out his “burgeoning” skills as an electric guitar player.
He had been dabbling, and needed an outlet away from the prowess of his regular bandmates.
“In Blackie and the Rodeo Kings I’m right beside one of the greatest players I’m ever going to meet. So it’s a little intimidating when you go to pick up a guitar,” he said.
As time went on, members of the band began to fall away, and it morphed from a five-piece to a quartet to a trio until eventually just Fearing and White remained.
White still lived abroad, but every time he came through Canada he and Fearing would get together and write, until eventually, in 2011, they felt the itch to take the project forward.
“So we recorded our first album and made everything really complicated,” Fearing said with a laugh.
“Once you make a record you’ve got to do something with it. Unless you are independently wealthy enough to just record it and let them sit in a box in your basement, you’ve got to tour: you’ve got to sell them.”
The duo still writes and plays together, meeting up once or twice a year to play some shows and write a few songs. Fearing said jumping in and out of Fearing and White after long hiatuses can be difficult, but the two have been playing together for so long that it doesn’t take much time for them to get into their groove.
Just like his work with Blackie and the Rodeo Kings, Fearing said he and White operate in intense spurts of creativity.
“We are very close, but we might not speak to each other for a month or two months, depending on what’s coming down the road, and suddenly there will be this flurry of activity.”
“It’s like one of those cartoons where you see this cloud of dust coming over the horizon with fists and spars coming out of it, and that’s Blackie and the Rodeo Kings coming for me. With Fearing and White it’s a slightly less violent version of that—the cloud’s a little smaller,” he said with a chuckle.
“In some ways it’s very simple, it’s like falling off a log. We know each other real well: we’ve been playing with one another and touring with each other; we’ve been in pretty sticky situations, and always come out.”
Trevor Nichols
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