Just Us Folk

A few years ago singer-songwriter Zachary Lucky was on his way to a festival in northern Saskatchewan. Stopping to take a break, he stood by the side of the gravel road and took in the vista before him.

“There was just the hum of the wind across the plains and the grasses moving,” he related at this year’s Folk Alliance International conference. “I thought to myself, ‘It’s the wind; that’s what that sound is.’ So this new album is called The Wind.”

As Zachary tours in support of the new album, he’s realized that quite a number of the songs he’s written throughout his career have the wind as a theme or a person.

“This album is about characters who are a little windswept, who find themselves in places they didn’t expect to,” he said. “They’re kind of tossed by that prairie wind.”

If there’s one thing Zachary knows, it’s the prairies, having grown up in Saskatchewan. He’s also grown up with music in his life. His grandfather was country singer Smilin’ Johnnie Lucky, who toured across Canada from the late ’40s ’til the early 2000s. But one of Zachary’s earliest musical influences was far removed from country music.

“I grew up in Saskatoon, which was a dusty prairie town when I was a kid. The only concerts you could go to were all-ages shows, which were punk rock shows. So that was my indoctrination into seeing people making a life in music.”

What he witnessed were bands that toured for two months at a time, playing every night and thinking to himself this was how you had a career in music.

“Turns out that’s not a healthy way to do it! But it was a crash course in being an independent musician,” he said.

As time went on, Zachary came across bands like Deep Dark Woods and the early stages of The Sheepdogs, whose edgy roots/pre-Americana styles were influential.

“As the years came on, you’d see artists like Kacy and Clayton, Colter Wall and others that made you think there’s something in the water in Saskatchewan,” he said.

Whether the water or the wind, Zachary knows his music wouldn’t be what it is today if he hadn’t been raised in the province.

About 10 years ago, he moved to Orillia, ON after meeting his partner at the 2014 Mariposa Folk Festival. Now raising two young kids, home is a refuge from the rigours of touring.

“When I’m home, I kind of hibernate a bit because when you’re in Toronto and part of the music scene there, it’s pretty hectic,” he said. “To be honest I struggled to find my place in Ontario, but I'm starting to feel more at home."

A big change for Zachary was staying at home during the pandemic, mainly because he’d never been in one place for all four seasons before. But with the lead-up to the release of The Wind, Zachary’s spending more time on the road than he ever has before. He’s also hitting markets where his music is being heard even though he’s never played there before.

“It’s interesting,” he said. “We go to Toledo, which we’ve never played, and you get people saying, ‘We drove an hour from Ann Arbor to see you.’ So we’re trying to connect with people who are into this music and what we’re doing.”

The Wind was produced with fellow singer-songwriter Benjamin Dakota Rogers, who’s kind of a kindred spirit of Zachary’s.

“I think we see eye-to-eye on a lot of things,” he said. “I get the feeling he’s been a fan of what I’ve been doing for a while.”

Recorded in three days, with Zachary’s parts done live off the floor, the finished album is the closest he’s come to releasing an album that sounds like what he originally envisioned.

As Zachary progresses as a songwriter, these days he’s letting the songs write themselves in a way.

“I’ve spent so much time in the past 15 years touring from coast to coast, the thing I’ve found the most inspiring are people,” he said.

Being an independent artist means relying on a lot of people for booking and promoting shows to spread the word about your music. You also spend time after the shows talking to the folks who came out to see you.

“They become like your family,” he said. “So I’ve taken to writing songs about people because we’re all quirky and have a story to tell. It’s just a matter of finding the little details of someone’s life and putting it under a microscope. You can find a lot of juice there for a song.”

For more on Zachary Lucky and The Wind, go to http://www.zacharylucky.com