Fabulous Fafard

Review
Tales From The Gap
Joel Fafard
Thursday
Globe Theatre (Sandbox Series)

He made us laugh, he made us cry and he dazzled us with speedy, soulful acoustic guitar playing.
Pense-raised guitarist Joel Fafard opened his run at the Globe Theatre Thursday to a packed Sandbox Series house, telling folksy, Prairie-style stories and playing the mostly-instrumental numbers that have made him a staple at folk festivals in Canada and beyond.
“My staring woke her,” Fafard told the packed crowd as he explained the first night his soon-to-be-wife spent at his apartment in Calgary.
“The first thing she said when she got up was ‘when was the last time you washed this comforter?’ I replied: ‘You can wash this thing?’”
Charming stories provided an appropriate backdrop to Fafard’s music performance that allowed the 30-something guitarist to tell stories without words on his guitar, named after his friends, wife and sons. As he tuned his guitar for the next number, he told us about Morley the Lumsden barber, how his bed would rattle each time a train roared past his childhood home and the generosity of a motorist in New Zealand who gave him four-and-a-half hour ride to Auckland, even though his boots reeked of pig poo.
Fafard’s show, which was created with Stefan Riches, doesn’t exactly conform to the Shumiatcher Sandbox Series mandate of being “theatre without a safety net.” Given Fafard’s local reputation, booking him was most certainly a safe bet. And this quite excellent coffee house-style show may not qualify as “theatre.”
But such suggestions are moot since Fafard managed to share anecdotes from his life as a dad and husband, as well as show-off his ability to nimbly speed through acoustic numbers in a style of Don Ross, Bella Fleck or Leo Kottke while managing to retain some soul.
But it was his stories that made the show, given the audience (Joel’s dad, famed artist Joe Fafard was in the front row) giggled, clapped and even cried at all the right spots.
He told the story of the time his young son had learned how to ride a two-wheeler and signed up to participate in the Lumsden parade – assuming it was a race, he sped past all other participants and assumed he was victorious after overtaking the police escort.
“He doesn’t like it when we tell the story,” Fafard said.
Earlier in the night, he explained how his son wanted to play hockey, and after his dad signed him up in the local novice league, he said the first game was a road game, to which his son replied: “Aw, dad, I wanted you to sign me up because I didn’t want to play on the road anymore.”
But the best story was the most difficult story for Fafard to tell – the family’s golden retriever had been diagnosed with cancer, and on its dying day, his sons wrapped their arms around his neck as she passed away.
With his eyes tearing and his voice cracking, Fafard said: “Whenever we go walking in the Qu’Appelle Valley, it’s as if she’s there with us.”

(Tales from The Gap continues Friday and Saturday, and next week on Oct. 29,30,21 and Nov. 1. For ticket information, visit http://www.globetheatrelive.com/20082009season/Sandbox%20Series/0809%20Playbill.html