Audience members play a critical role every time an Ontario folk singer heads onto the stage with his guitar and harmonica.
Despite having plenty of material in his back pocket, solo singer/songwriter Craig Cardiff is always looking to his fans to help shape the tone of the night. Foothills fans will get a taste of that personally during his performance at The Westwood in Black Diamond June 23 at 8 p.m.
“I just realized that everybody is going through stuff and that everybody has this immense ocean of stories inside them,” he said.
For Cardiff, it’s all about love.
“I’m looking at people who have made love work, but it didn’t always,” he said.
Cardiff recalls a couple he met at a venue in rural Saskatchewan who had a “beautiful long love” that seemed would last forever.
“Everything was perfect and good,” he said. “Coming back a few years later, I didn’t realize how sick the fellow had been when I had visited before. He had passed away and she was grieving, but not just her, everyone who knew him.”
Cardiff met another couple in northern British Columbia who was on an adventure to accomplish everything on their bucket list.
“My general audience is in their 20s and 30 but they were in their late 70s,” he said. “She was in a wheelchair and they came and sat right up front because it was the only seat left.”
At one point during the concert, Cardiff sang a slow song at which point the woman put her hand out and her husband took it, then picked her up out of the wheelchair and held her as they slow danced.
“It’s just moments like that where you get shivers,” he said.
These types of inspirational moments has been shaping Cardiff’s songs and performances for years, with love being the focus in recent years.
In creating his 17th album Love is Louder (Than All This Noise), released in 2013, Cardiff had his fans write secrets they were too afraid to say aloud in a journal he called A Book of Truths to inspire songs for the record.
Since the release of his album, Cardiff has directed his focus to love stories – but not those that are fresh, exciting and new that many musicians write about, but those that are in the middle or even coming to an end where people have had more time together.
To make his concerts even more intimate, Cardiff encourages his audience members to take part by singing along and slow dancing to his songs.
“The idea is to connect,” he said. “It’s about the exploration of love through songs.”
Whether on stage or enjoying the communities his music brings him to, Cardiff is always observing the interactions of those around him.
“It’s all the same stories that gets played out between people like lovers whether it’s couples or families,” he said. “It’s just watching common themes get played out and enjoying the same things that happen between people and trying to bring those into songs.”
The ability to people watch is something Cardiff has picked up since he was young.
“I was always quiet, a bit of a wallflower,” he said. “I’m pretty shy without a guitar.”
This has allowed Cardiff plenty of time to sit back and observe his surrounding, and in his observations he’s learned that much of what he sees has to do with love.
“It’s either love or a lack of love,” he said. “Even people doing terrible things to each other is because they’re trying to fix the lack of love, even when it makes no sense in the world.”
Those observations has become apparent in Cardiff’s performances, which he said removes him from autopilot mode and gets him in the moment with his audiences.
“I’m putting myself on the spot and writing songs on the spot,” he said. “It keeps me on my toes.”
Selecting the folk genre as his avenue for sharing his messages, well that just came naturally.
“I was in a lot of curious high school bands that were definitely not folk,” he laughed. “It’s what stays on after the band goes away. The words and the basic presentation that I found myself really drawn to.”
Tickets to see Craig Cardiff perform cost $30 and are available at The Westwood in Black Diamond.
