A Six String Nation story for January 12th on the occcasion of the birthday of Stephen Fearing

First of all, forgive me if you know this story. It is often told — including in some version in my book. However, I can’t resist on this special day….

I would have first met Stephen in the early 1990s when I was a production coordinator at Harbourfront Centre and he was one of the many artists hired for our stages with whom I’d coordinate around gear and schedules and that kind of thing. He always seemed to be a guy who was happiest in those moments on stage connecting with people and he was exceedingly good at it. And at no time better than when he sang “The Longest Road”. I must have seen him perform that song a dozen times over a few years doing shows with him and not only did it never fail to move audiences but it choked me up every single time. When I conceived the whole idea of this guitar, Stephen is one of the first people I contacted. I told him: when we get this guitar built, I want you to be the first to play it and for “The Longest Road” to be the first song sung on it!”. He smiled and said “OK”, though I’m quite sure he thought I was out of my mind. And he could be forgiven for thinking so — it did, after all, take 11 years to get this thing built.
But true to my word, when I had my first meetings with the National Capital Commission about how the debut of Voyageur would figure in the 2006 Canada Day program, I told them about my promise to Stephen Fearing. I sent the whole team a copy of the song and how could they not fall in love with it as a moment on which to announce the arrival of this guitar. Soon afterwards, they booked Stephen to do the honours and brought in the whole Blackie and the Rodeo Kings gang while they were at it. Watching him perform that song in front of 80,000 people that day was literally a dream come true.

Stephen has been a good friend and supporter for the whole life of this project. He has played Voyageur on many occasions in public at events in various parts of the country — within a couple of months I saw him at his kid’s school in Halifax and a bar in Lethbridge — and played it for a recording by Bonnie St. Croix. He has kept his eye on the instrument as its components settle into their long term relationship and offered advice about set up and maintenance. He even attempted to give me fair and honest warning about what I was getting into in certain aspects of the organization of the project that I truly wish I had been able to act on (would have saved me a lot of grief). He has introduced me to all kinds of people, sung my praises, written a blurb for my book and completely worn out a couple of rare Six String Nation T-shirts.

Happy birthday, Stephen!

Six String Nation is a project centred around a world-exclusive acoustic guitar literally built from pieces of history and heritage that reveal the stories of different communities, cultures, characters and events from every part of Canada. The guitar is nicknamed Voyageur.

It offers a conception of Canada that is at once historical, contemporary, dynamic, personal, emotional, generous, inclusive and proudly Canadian.

The portrait, part of a collection of approximately 150,000 images of 15,000 different people taken at events in every province and territory of Canada, is by Doug Nicholson — as is the live shot from the Parliament Hill debut.

Jowi Taylor is a Peabody Award winning broadcaster, bestselling author and a recipient of Canada’s Meritorious Service Medal for his work on Six String Nation.