Zachary Lucky wraps up 2018 with East Coast dates

With his new album completed, Saskatoon troubadour Zachary Lucky heads out for one last tour before the year ends.

Matt Carter

Leaving home is a little more challenging these days for Zachary Lucky. As his career continues to grow and branch out across the country, his roots at home are strengthening at an equal pace.

“My second daughter was born just over four weeks ago,” said Lucky as he prepares to head out for his last tour of 2018, an outing that will see him play 15 shows throughout New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and his adopted home of Ontario. “Never thought I’d have kids, and now I have two amazing, strong and beautiful girls.”

Born and raised in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Lucky now makes his home in southern Ontario where he works to balance a busy tour schedule and a busy life at home.

For the past few years Lucky has been making regular trips to the East Coast, performing in bars, on festival stages and at house concerts. His visits to Fredericton seem so frequent these days, it’s almost like he lives here and not in Ontario.

“That is kind of the hope – that people might hear my name and go ‘I’ve heard of him, maybe we should go see him this time?’”, said Lucky. “I spent some time living out east, years ago, and I sort of feel like when my time ended out there, I never really got closure. Maybe I keep coming back, trying to get that closure.”

Steeped in country and folk music tradition, Lucky, with his deep baritone voice, finds strong similarities between the people of the Maritimes and his Midwestern roots.

“There is a certain kind of work ethic – a certain way of going about life – that I greatly admire and love,” he said. “I really love those eastern towns and the vibe out there. It keeps me coming back.

“I remember playing Wilser’s Room in Fredericton a few years back for Shivering Songs and really loving it,” he said. “It felt like the kind of place that my songs fit and feel good in.”

With a career that now spans four albums going back over the past eight years, Lucky’s songwriting continues to gather momentum. His last album, Everywhere A Man Can Be, earned him praise from folk music authorities like No Depression and Penguin Eggs to national staples in Exclaim! and The Globe and Mail – all well deserved.

From the beginning, he has always brought a striped down country music esthetic to his songwriting. Simple stories and acoustic guitar work highlighted by the occasional banjo or pedal steel has defined the bulk of his output.

He stepped away from that time-tested formula on his last release by working in more standard drum and bass accompaniment on several of the tracks. And for his new album, due out sometime in 2019, he’s ready to come at things from a new angle once again.

“We essentially made a string band record, an all acoustic roots record, which is exactly what I wanted to make,” he said. “I’ve always been drawn to acoustic music of all stripes whether its Nick Drake’s Pink Moon or the Stanley Brothers, it has just always resonated with me.”

And besides making a record he’s proud of, this last stint in the studio also brought with it a revelation of sorts.

“When I started writing songs for this record I came to the realization that the most joyful, the most tragic, the funniest and the things that people could relate to the most are common everyday things,” he said. “You can write this really long drawn up story about some mythical made up character – and it could be great – but I wanted to try and write about the lives we’re all living every single day. There are songs [on the new record] about having to get a job and working hard, there is a song about coming to terms with having to drive a mini van, and there are also songs about missing home and songs about living out on the road.

“It was definitely the most fun I’ve had making a record in a long time. It felt supernatural, like we were really MAKING music instead of just piecing it together.”