FERGUS – Brendan McLeod did a little musical archeology and discovered songs sung by soldiers in the trenches at Vimy Ridge.
He was enamored by the lyrics, which were pretty frank about what the soldiers were witnessing and what life was like for them on the front.
He set the lyrics to new music and created the show Ridge, which is playing at the Fergus Grand Theatre on Nov. 8. The curtain goes up at 8pm.
McLeod is one of the founders of the Fugitives, a band that hails from Vancouver and has been nominated for Juno awards multiple times.
The band is kind of folk, with two guitars, a banjo and violin played by the four singers.
Their regular repertoire is usually upbeat and toe-tapping. The music in Ridge is haunting. And beautiful and deep, they say.
And it puts a fresh spin on what you think you already know about Vimy Ridge, which is often called “the battle that made Canada.”
“I unearthed the songs they were singing in the trenches,” McLeod said in a phone interview from the airport in Vancouver, where the band was travelling from to Edmonton for a few days.
“These are not necessarily patriotic songs. These are the songs they would sing, that they wrote. Often they were parodies of popular songs.”
McLeod said he took those lyrics and wrote new songs for them, paying special attention not to hear them with the original tunes.
“I wanted to take the lyrics and put them somewhere new,” he said. “Somewhere fresh. Somewhere different from the norm. Somewhere where we could interrogate and question what we think we know.”
McLeod said he first learned about Vimy Ridge after reading Pierre Berton’s book Vimy.
He was 13 years old and it made an impression on him that so many teenagers died in battle.
“As a teen reading that, my mind was blown,” he said. “That always stuck with me.”
Ridge, described as “a storytelling music show,” really tunnels into that question, and others, like did this battle really unify the county? And how so, if true?
“My goal was to have a new kind of remembrance,” he said.
“I wanted to go deeper, into the details and the untold stories. And the number of teenagers who fought in the war. Those stories need to be recognized.”
McLeod said he played a few of the songs for the band; they like them, “and organically it grew,” he added. “The band was moved by the material.”
The Fugitives launched Ridge in 2020 and have been refining it each year.
Eric Goudie, theatre coordinator at the Fergus Grand Theatre, said he saw Ridge a few times, “and it really grew on me.”
“They were doing something different with the material.”
Ridge is part of the Presenting with a Purpose series – shows that Goudie selects with an aim to bring something unique and thought-provoking to town.
The First World War was a long time ago, but parts of the world are still at war.
“Brendan’s storytelling makes sense of that,” Goudie said. “We live in a much different world than when these songs were written. This show is about how we understand war and what we know now.
“They do a great job of expressing that and putting it in context.”
Goudie said it’s been a while since the Fergus Grand Theatre has brought in a remembrance-themed performance “and it’s something I really felt we needed to do.”
McLeod called the Battle of Vimy Ridge “a devastating, insane event that happened not that long ago.
“Unfortunately, with wars going on in the world, it gets more relevant every time we perform it.”
Tickets are $38 and can be purchased online at fergusgrandtheatre.ca or at the box office at 519-787-1981.
To learn more about the show visit fugitives.ca/ridge.
