Alberta's John Wort Hannam packed in a crowd of more than 30 last Saturday night in the Thompson Public Library's Basement Bijou Room for the second-last Home Routes concert of the year.
Hannam, who calls Fort Macleod, near the Porcupine Hills and Saskatchewan River in southern Alberta home now, moved to Canada with his family when he as eight from the Jersey in Britain's Channel Islands.
He has been compared to Gordon Lightfoot, James Keelaghan and John Prine. For five years, he was a full-time schoolteacher teaching Grade 9 language arts on the Kainai First Nation, the largest reserve in Canada and part of the Blackfoot Confederacy.
In 1997, Hannam said, he heard a Loudon Wainwright III record and was hooked by the music and the stories.In 1998 he bought a guitar and learnt some chords and in 2003 he quit teaching to be a working musician. He recently recorded his fourth CD "Queen's Hotel."
Hannam told a Thompson audience of more than 30 March 13 that he still well remembers the day - May 21, 2003 - when he told his principal that would be his last year for teaching and that he was going to follow his passion and become a full-time singer-songwriter.
"You can always sub, John," the principal deadpanned, without missing a beat, Hannam said, which is something he did, in fact, do a few times during those lean early stretches.
Hannam has been nominated for a Juno Award this year in the Roots and Traditional category. The 39th annual Juno Awards are in St. John's April 18.
He was also the grand prize winner last year of the Calgary Folk Music Festival songwriting competition.
Hannam played a wide selection Saturday night from his four albums, including "Church of the Long Grass" and "Annabelle" off of 2004's Dynamite and 'Dozers, "National Hotel" from his 2007 album Two-Bit Suit, and "Queen's Hotel," "Lucky Strikes" and "With The Grain" from last year's Queen's Hotel.
Homes Routes is a not-for-profit organization. The chairperson is Derek Black, a 25-year veteran of the Winnipeg Folk Festival, including eight years as its board president. Black plays guitar and sings as well.
Other board members include Chris White, artistic director of the Ottawa Folk Festival, who is also a songwriter; Troy Greencorn, artistic director of the Stan Rogers Folk Festival in Canso, Nova Scotia; Manitoban Steve Schellenberg, a songwriter who is the artist representative on the board; Robert Lyons of Regina, an owner of nightclubs and restaurants, who is also described as "a very decent lyricist and guitar player and an old hand at producing house concerts" and Les Siemieniuk, general manager of the Calgary Folk Festival and a long-time broadcaster including producing CBC Radio's Simply Folk.
Boston-based husband-and-wife duo Matt and Shannon Heaton round out the season for Home Routes first concert series, which began last September, in Thompson, April 19, offering traditional - and non-traditional - Irish music on Irish wood flute, guitar, bouzouki and accordion. They met in Chicago in 1991.
