Many Canadian music fans know Joel Plaskett. Multiple JUNO Award winning songwriter. Multiple times on the Polaris Music Prize Short List. Sold out clubs and concert halls from one side of the country to the other. But in 2017 he’ll be sharing the spotlight with his earliest musical influence - his father, Bill Plaskett. Solidarity, to be released on Pheromone Recordings February 17, 2017, is the first full-length musical collaboration between father and son. The first single from the album dropped over on Exclaim! and American Songwriter will be featuring 'Blank Cheque' this Thursday.
"My father has certainly been one of my biggest musical influences," Joel said. "I grew up around him playing guitars and his love of folk music, particularly music from the British Isles and Ireland is something I've inherited from him – artists like Bert Jansch, Richard Thompson and Paul Brady. Conversely, I have introduced him to some of my favourite records by artists like Those Bastard Souls, Led Zeppelin and Gillian Welch."
Born in 1945 in London, England, Bill Plaskett spent the early 1960s playing tenor banjo (learned from his father) in a traditional jazz and skiffle band and later graduated to playing electric bass in a high-school rock and roll band called Section 62. In 1966, Bill traveled through the United States on a 99 days for $99 Greyhound bus pass. He immigrated to Vancouver, Canada in 1967 before moving to Nova Scotia where Joel was born in 1975. Through much of the 1980s the family lived in historic Lunenburg, a town transitioning from a fishing village to a tourist economy, where Bill played in an old time band called Starb’ard Side and helped found the beloved Lunenburg Folk Festival. Moving to Halifax in 1987, Bill immersed himself in the local folk music scene and watched with pride as his son picked up the guitar and eventually built a full time music career through the 90s with his first band. On Solidarity, father and son celebrate each other and the years of music that’s strengthened their bond.
