THE FRETLESS
Where: Alix Goolden Performance Hall, 900 Johnson St.
When: Saturday, Oct. 5, 7:30 p.m. (doors at 7)
Tickets: $24-$40 from showpass.com/the-glasswing-tour-experience
Note: The Fretless also perform Oct. 3 at Fanny Bay Community Hall and Oct. 4 in Comox at Merville Hall
Comox fiddler Trent Freeman has been a professional musician for nearly a quarter-century, amassing more than a few highlights during that time.
But when The Fretless put rubber to the road this week, it will be the first time the 35 year-old has ever driven across the country with his Juno Award-winning band. Freeman and his bandmates (cellist Eric Wright, fiddlers Karrnnel Sawitsky and Ben Plotnick, and guest singer Madeleine Roger) are part of an eight-person convoy that will travel in two vans from Vancouver Island to Quebec over the next two-and-a-half weeks, a new — and somewhat daunting — proposition for the group.
“This is our first time going all the way across the country,” Freeman said Tuesday, during an interview with the Times Colonist. “We’ve always flown in and done [small] tours. We do manage to get around the whole country in a year, but it’s always fly-in dates.”
The band was stationed in the Comox Valley for three days of rehearsals this week, ahead of tonight’s tour launch at the Fanny Bay Community Hall. The Fretless will also perform Friday in Comox at Merville Hall, not far from where Freeman was born and raised, and Saturday in Victoria at the Alix Goolden Performance Hall as part of the 14-date tour to support its sixth album, Glasswing, which arrived Sept. 13.
Anticipation is high within the group. Traditional folk and bluegrass music never goes out of style, but the genre is proving increasingly popular in 2024, with breakout stars like Noah Kahan putting folk music on the radar of younger pop music fans. The classical-leaning Fretless is hardly a new act, with appearances over the years at the Shetland Folk Festival in Scotland, Festival Internacional Cervantino in Mexico, and the Winnipeg Folk Festival, but it wouldn’t be a shock to see them playing to new and bigger audiences down the road.
“[Folk music] feels very appreciated at the moment,” Freeman said. “Roots music really seems to be touched on in the music by many of the popular acts these days. There’s reference to it and there’s homage to it, and that does trickle into appreciation and respect for the authentic, traditional players.”
Fretless members are spread throughout North America, with the Vancouver-based Freeman the only band member stationed in B.C. at present. Plotnick lives in Nashville, while Sawitsky and Wright are in Toronto. Freeman lived in Toronto for several years, but moved back to B.C. three years ago — a decision he has he not once regretted. There’s a strong acoustic music community on the Mainland, he said, and he finds regular studio session work and gigs as a touring musician with everyone from bluegrass veteran John Reischman to acclaimed folk duo Pharis and Jason Romero.
The band recorded Glasswing in Prospect Lake at Baker Studios, with Victoria engineer-producer Joby Baker assisting the band in its efforts to keep sessions as off-the-floor as possible, Freeman said. The Winnipeg-based Roger co-wrote and sings on three songs, which gave the largely instrumental album an additional layer of texture. Freeman said he loves where the new direction is headed.
“We wanted to keep the feeling of the intimacy we have when we’re playing together, and trust our arrangements and our compositions. We leaned into the moment of playing the pieces together, which is exciting to me.”
He has strong ties to Vancouver Island, with family and friends back home in Comox. Freeman was disappointed to hear that Courtenay’s Vancouver Island Music Festival won’t go forward in 2025, after 30 years of operation. The festival was a fixture in the area while he was growing up, Freeman said. “It was my first professional gig when I was 12.”
The fiddler and violist was destined to be a performer, having started violin lessons at age five. He later studied at Boston’s Berklee College of Music, which is where he met future bandmates Sawitsky and Wright. The storied school (whose alumni includes John Mayer, Diana Krall and Melissa Etheridge) prepared him for the music side of things, but Freeman said he was forced to learn the business side on his own. “The real training for a career comes afterwards, when you’re on the road or in the studio or running a band.”
That learning curve has continued unabated, even though the group is signed to a record label (Winnipeg’s Birthday Cake Records) and has booking agents in Canada, United States, Europe, and Australia. Each member has a defined role in the group, Freeman said. “You’re not going to avoid doing a lot of work once you’re in a band.”
