If there is one word that sums up the irrepressible Valdy, it is “energy.” The smiling, impish, red-suspendered septuagenarian is constantly on the go. By his count, Valdy has played an average of 200 shows a year for four decades — approximately 8,000 concerts all told. “I enjoy it still,” he said. “I like to make music, and I can’t make it sitting still in one place for very long.”
Valdy was recently in concert on our little island on the west coast, the auditorium was packed and the place was rocking. The audience, most of whom are of Valdy’s vintage, were swaying and clapping to the music and occasionally even singing along. Everyone felt close to his music, which is folk, happy in spirit and still contains elements of protest.
Valdy’s enduring popularity as a folk singer is thanks to more than his enormous energy and easy-going friendliness; it is also because he evokes memories of a nostalgic time when we were much younger, when there was love, peace and tie-dye.
As one lady, with a tinge of grey in her hair said after the performance, “I went to one of Valdy’s concerts back in the ’70s. It was the first concert our parents allowed us to attend unchaperoned. We doused ourselves with patchouli, put flowers in our hair and smoked some pot before the show. It was friggin’ awesome! I was 14.”
I met with Valdy and his wife Kathleen at the funky Tree House Café on Salt Spring Island. Over a coffee, he explains that he was born as Paul Valdemar Horsdal in 1945 in Ottawa to a Danish father. “My father was also named Paul, so I got Valdemar, which was shortened to Valdy. I like it because it fits perfectly on a marquee.”
“I grew up as a back-to-the-woods hippy,” he says, and went on to explain how he took piano lessons when young, but changed to bass and then guitar. He loved to jam and was constantly getting together to play with musical friends.
In 1966, Valdy left Ottawa and travelled west, arriving in Victoria, where he parked cars at the Century Inn “to support his musical habit.” He wound up staying permanently. “There was no point going back to Ottawa — the West Coast is as close to the promised land as it gets.”
Valdy became part of the hippy culture with long hair, a beard and embraced peace and love and sang protest songs against nuclear arms and war. For a few years, he lived on a farm, Headacres, which was part of the underground railway helping US draft dodgers escape to Canada.
His solo career as a folk singer and songwriter began to take off in the early 1970s. He scored early successes with a string of hits including “Yes I Can,” “Peter and Lou,” “Sonny’s Dream” and, especially, “Rock and Roll Song,” which tells a humorous story of a concert where his folk songs were heckled by a crowd wanting rock ‘n’ roll.
In 1976, Valdy moved to Salt Spring Island and has lived there since. His career continued to soar. Over the ensuing years, Valdy won two Juno Awards and was nominated seven additional times. He has recorded 17 albums, 24 singles and four gold albums.
In 1986, Valdy married Kathleen Mary Fraser Horsdal, who is his creative advisor, a hospice counsellor and also a talented sculptor. “She has been keeping me on track for years,” he says, “without her, I don’t know where I would be.” They live with three dogs and a cat on a lake in the same home where his parents lived.
Even at age 70, Valdy remains a groovin’, eccentric hippy at heart. His hair is sparser, but he still wears red suspenders, is full of energy and believes life is to be lived to the fullest, but in a kind, low-impact way. And he continues to write songs and tour. As the Globe and Mail said, “Few performers are capable of achieving the kind of energy he generates on stage.”
With his height (6 feet, 2 inches) and good looks, Valdy is a natural for television and has appeared on the The Beachcombers, The New Beachcombers, Front Page Challenge and a few movie roles.
Our talk turned to his remarkable health. “I’m lucky,” he says, “I’ve always had a Viking constitution.” Valdy eats one grapefruit every day, and he showed his devotion to garlic by asking the waitress for lots of it in his scrambled eggs. “My blood pressure is 117 over 75. I avoid the world of pharmaceuticals and take no pills. But the true key to good health,” he says leaning forward as though imparting a great secret, “is music. It boosts the immune system. If you want health, join a choir.”
When I asked about his most memorable moments, Kathleen chimes in with a smile, “In 1991, we danced in the same ballroom with Prince Charles and Princess Diana in Toronto.” Valdy adds, “I remember a cross-Canada train trip. The performance boxcar could open either way to face whichever side the station platform was on. We went right across the country and played to audiences from as small as 10 to as many as 9,000.”
In 2011, Valdy was awarded the member of the Order of Canada for his work as a folk musician and his support of charitable causes. “Kathleen and I went to Ottawa,” he says. “It was a moving and elegant ceremony at Rideau Hall.”
Our conversation turned to Valdy’s prolific song writing. “I write between 1 and 10 songs a year,” he says. He’s written hundreds of songs in total of which about 100 have been recorded.
Valdy has an easy way with words and even answered interview questions with a poetic lilt. “I was blown towards a career in music. As a sailboat is blown in a chosen direction, so I set a course for the stage and the studio, back in the late ’60s. The helm was my decision, the winds were favourable audiences and presenters, as well as material that pleased the ear.”
“Inspiration comes, I think, from things that come across my bow, and something that piques my interest and is worthy of being commented on. There’s not a lot of Stompin’ Tom Connors music around anymore, so I wrote him a tribute song. And a woman on Salt Spring had an exhibition of all the pictures she’d taken of people for 30 years — she asked me to play for the opening, so I wrote a song called ‘Faces’ for her.”
Since the start of his career, Valdy has believed in the power of music to affect change. He says, “Political content… is present in all our daily interactions. To imagine it being absent from poems and songs would be like draining colour from a canvas. Music and song are the most effective media for change, the longest lasting and the most intimate.”
Valdy says his writing is not time or location specific, but instead is interior specific. “I start with a tabula rasa and just let ideas come. It’s totally random. When I try to crank the spirit, it leads to mediocrity.”
Valdy likes to read about near-future high-tech. His writing focuses on ordinary Janes and Joes and how they deal with catastrophe. It’s heart driven, not preaching. “I occasionally include superhero types but as minor characters to bounce ideas off.”
He’s currently writing a song about safe sex, which was triggered by young clean-cut kids handing out condoms at rock festivals. Another song in development is about driving a Nash to Nashville. “I used to have a Nash Metropolitan,” he explains. And, of course, he still rails against the establishment. “I’m writing a song about the great gap between the rich and the poor. I’m against the economic warfare that’s isolating money into the grasp of a small minority.”
The enthusiastic folk singer doesn’t just write songs. He is currently penning his memoir, which will probably be titled Viva Valdy, or Valdy’s Canon. He has notes taped all over the walls of his office to help him along.
For the past 15 years, Valdy has been performing regularly with country singer and friend Gary Fjellgaard as the Contenders, a blending of harmonies, lyrics, humour and guitars. Fjellgaard says, “Valdy is a part of the very fabric of Canada. I’ve never heard anyone utter a bad word about Valdy.”
“One of my favourite things about Salt Spring Island is the weird combination of humanity that lives here,” says Valdy. “It is a difference of opinion surrounded by water. I love that.”
And Valdy is a pillar of the community. As one Salt Spring Islander says, “Whenever there is a benefit event or fundraiser, Valdy is there using his music and talent to help promote the cause.”
It looks like he’ll be doing it for decades to come.
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