When Murray McLauchlan first picked up a guitar, an old Kay acoustic with a picture of a palm tree on the pickguard, he found something that felt like an extension of himself.
After upgrading guitars a few times, McLauchlan made a name for himself as one of Canada’s premiere songwriters.
“I play a lot of guitar, I play every day because frankly I like the sound of the thing,” McLauchlan said. “I mean, I can play piano but it feels like a typewriter. A guitar feels organic.”
Now, McLauchlan and his 1934 Gibson L30 archtop – a significant upgrade over the Kay – are on tour across Canada in support of the album Hourglass, making a stop in Orillia on Sunday, Dec. 1.
It didn’t come naturally, as McLaughlan put it, he banged away on the guitar trying to learn old train songs and Woody Guthrie classics.
He hopes show attendees will appreciate a little more than just the music.
“Assuming people are willing to come – and I do hope for that – my hope is people are ever so slightly different when they walk out than they were when they walked in,” McLaughlin said.
He continued that the music is about something, that he himself is not necessarily an entertainer or performing artist, but a storyteller, expressing points of view in a song that some may not agree with, but many do.
The performance will feature the songs fans have come to expect, such as Farmer’s Song and Down by the Henry Moore – but is in support of the album Hourglass, released in 2021 and recorded, as McLaughlan put it, during the plague.
“All the people I play with live pretty close to the studio,” McLaughlan said. “We could all get there and take the right precautions, everyone wore their masks when not singing.”
In terms of a recording process, the group kept it simple.
“Put some people in a room that can play, and record it,” McLaughlan said. “The whole record is live off the floor.”
For more information, and to buy tickets, click here.
