Music in the City is winding up August with a Juno winner tonight and a tribute to a musical legend next Thursday. Canadian folksinger Valdy, born Valdemar Horsdal, performs at Spirit Square this evening.

The singer and songwriter was a fixture in Vancouver Island coffeehouses in the early 1970s before finding countrywide fame in 1972 when his first hit single, “Rock and Roll Song”, was released.

“Rock and Roll Song”, from the album Country Man, peaked at number 17 on the Canadian pop chart of the time.
“Rock and Roll Song” describes Valdy’s experience facing a rowdy crowd at the Aldergrove Rock Festival in the late 1960s despite his own mellow style.

Another single from the same album with an equally cryptic name, “A Good Song”, was released the next year and made number 9 on the charts. That song was recorded by famed producer Quincy Jones.

Valdy has won Junos, Canada’s top music award, for Folk Singer of the Year and Folk Entertainer of the Year and has released over a dozen albums.

His most recent was a collaboration with fellow singer-songwriter Gary Fjellgard called Contenders Two: Still in the Running, which came out in 2007. The album was a sequel of sorts to their first collaboration, Contenders.

Valdy has appeared on TV programs from CTV’s Canada AM to the now-defunct Mike Bullard Show and CBC’s Front Page Challenge.

Looking back on his career, Valdy says, “I’ve been lucky.

“I've worked with some amazing people, players, innovative producers, great songwriters.”

Musical tours have taken him from Vancouver Island to Nunavut and a cornucopia of foreign countries, Denmark, Spain, Australia, and Mexico among them.

Today, he is based on Salt Spring Island, but tonight he brings his amiable, folksy tunes to Merritt.

Next Thursday, Aug. 26, Music in the City returns to its pre-Spirit Square haunt, the Rotary Park Bandshell, for an evening with Cliff Elvis Moody.

Though he was only five years old when the original Elvis died, Moody has been a fan of the King since listening to the Blue Christmas album as a child.

Now an Elvis “tribute artist” (unlike an impersonator, he sings rather than lip-synchs to the music) based in Kamloops, Moody took top honours at the Seattle Elvis Invitationals, a gathering of Elvis tribute artists, in 2007.

Music in the City is hosted by the City of Merritt and a variety of local business sponsors.