Jeffery Straker
Categories: Musicians: Keyboard/Piano, Solo Artists, Songwriters/Composers
Genres: Adult Contemporary, Pop, Roots or Folk
Contact
Jeffery Straker
Regina, SK
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Email: Show email address, Show email address
Web: www.jeffstraker.com, www.facebook.com/jeffery.straker.music/
Description
Singer-songwriter-pianist Jeffery Straker performs over 100 shows per year across Canada and abroad. He’s recorded for CBC radio’s ‘Canada Live’, had a music video chart in the top 10 nationwide and has toured internationally playing pianos in places as far away as Mexico, Chile and Peru. His folk-pop hooks and rootsy story-telling have been featured in Film, TV, and theatrical productions while he maintains a touring schedule in venues ranging from house concerts to theatres and festivals, as well as shows with symphony orchestras. Jeffery was the winner of the Vina Del Mar International Song Competition in Chile in 2014 representing Canada where he earned a Latin American fan following performing each night to a live audience of 20,000 and a TV audience of 150,000,000 viewers around the Spanish speaking world. Originally from small town Saskatchewan, the classically trained pianist was raised by a church organist mother and an auctioneer father. He swears he was born under the piano on the family farm.
Jeffery’s latest album Dirt Road Confessional (May 2017) launched at #5 on the iTunes Canada singer songwriter charts, & has played on CBC radio and college radio across the country. It was voted a Top 10 album in Saskatchewan in 2017 and was also the #1 album in Regina SK as decided by readers of the Prairie Dog magazine. Straker regularly draws comparisons to Harry Chapin, Kris Kristofferson, Jackson Browne and a young Billy Joel.
“Gifted in his ability to write intricate story songs buoyed by melodies that fit a listener's ears like a beloved broken-in glove." - Calgary Herald
Jeffery has launched seven albums over the last 10 years to both warm critical and fan response with several climbing into the iTunes top 10 singer-songwriter charts in Canada. Concert demand has taken him from coast to coast across Canada and through Europe promoting his most recent work. October 2018 sees him reunite with the Saskatoon Symphony Orchestra performing his songs in their 2000 seat concert hall (TCU Place), and in November Straker makes his National Arts Centre debut in Ottawa. www.jeffstraker.com
News
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Unique Album Release Concert Series
May 24, 2024
Folk Singer-Songwriter Jeffery Straker Celebrates the Release of New Album ‘Great Big Sky’ with Unique Performances at Saskatchewan Grain Elevators
by Alan Hustak with contributions from J. Straker
Jeffery Straker’s first job as a kid growing up in the small Saskatchewan town of Punnichy was cleaning out the boot of the Pool grain elevator with a five-gallon bucket. “That’s when I developed an intimate relationship with grain elevators,” he says with his wide trademark grin, “With the mice and the dust and everything.”
The elevator where he worked was the last of four in Punnichy to be torn down several years ago. Its disappearance was part of the inspiration for the prairie troubadour’s latest album, Great Big Sky, that he’s releasing June 7th.
One by one the prairie skyscrapers are disappearing like the dinosaurs. Once there were over 3,000 cribbed grain elevators across Saskatchewan, so tall they stood like exclamation points against the horizon. Now there are only about 180 still standing. Straker has always been bound to the prairies, he’s found infinite inspiration for his music in its landscape and its people. The death of both of his parents in the past 5 years has made him more reflective about his roots.
One of the tunes he has written for the latest album pays homage to the vanishing prairie beacons. “It was so much more than 2X4’s and timber, the last grain elevator was coming down today,” he sings, “Under their breath people said good-bye, they tried their best to take it all in stride, they just got used to people doing it that way. For years that Prairie skyscraper stood guard at the end of main street, farmer’s measuring luck by the bushel, hauled trucks of what they’d reap.”
Most are being demolished because they have been replaced by concrete grain terminals and have become weathered tinder boxes or simply because some people consider them an eyesore.
“Elevators have a lot of meaning to prairie folks, but it’s not something they really talk about unless you ask,” says Straker. “They were the first big, tall things on the prairies to proclaim ‘there’s a community here’. Now we’re watching them come down as our small towns shrivel. Elevators were always part of the furniture. They were part of the topography, they helped to define the geography and the look of the prairies.”
Great Big Sky will be launched in June with a number of concerts in several Saskatchewan communities that still have grain elevators. The “Prairie Skyscraper Concert Series” was Straker’s idea. He has just completed a tour of Western Canada performing “proper theatre concerts”, and wanted to do something “in a totally different way. Instead of being inside a theatre, I’ll take the show outdoors, with the backdrop of a big old elevator,” he says. “And a few of these shows will be staged right inside elevators on the old scale”. The series includes:
June 15 Elbow SK
June 19 The Museum of Wheat, Hepburn
June 20 Southey (a 2nd show has been added June 27)
July 4 Riverhurst
July 5 Take a train excursion with him on the Southern Prairie Railway from Ogema to Horizon where he performs in the old Horizon elevator
July 6 Gravelbourg
July 7 The Sukanen Ship Pioneer Village south of Moose Jaw
Concert info & tickets: https://mailchi.mp/jeffstraker/prairie-skyscraper-concert-series
Jeffery thanks Creative Saskatchewan for the financial support in completing his new recording.