The Daily Times

Singer-songwriter Fred Eaglesmith developed his comedic wit out of necessity.

He’s known for somber songs of longing and regret, of lost loves and lives spent looking in the rearview mirror or toward an uncertain future �" classics like “Time to Get a Gun,” recorded by Miranda Lambert and “Freight Train,” tapped by Alan Jackson as the title track for the CD he released last year.

But for Eaglesmith fans �" especially the diehard followers known as “Fredheads” �" their guru is known for his stories, jokes and barbs as much as he is a song that touches their hearts.

“A long time ago when I first started, all of my songs were so sad,” Eaglesmith told The Daily Times this week. “I didn’t have any funny songs. But I did come from a family of nine children, where you had to be funny or die. So I just started applying what I learned around the dinner table at my shows to lighten the mood a little bit.

“At first, there was some resistance because people thought I was being irreverent toward folk music. It took a little while, but people started getting into it �" they cry a little, and they laugh a little. And it’s a different thing depending on where I play. I can’t really play that way in Ireland, because they don’t understand it. But in the South they really like the show, even more than up North.

“A lot of it is that in the South, they come from that school of thought that when times are tough, you laugh it off,” he added.

One of the reasons Eaglesmith writes so poignantly of tough times is because he’s lived them all his life. Growing up on farms in southern Ontario, he’d hopped freight trains throughout the Midwest and back by the time he was 16, when, captivated by country-rock radio stations skimming across the waters of the Great Lakes, he decided to be a musician.

He released his first album in 1980, working steadily in Canada and growing a catalog of songs that eventually got him noticed in the United States. Over the past 25 years, he’s recorded more than a dozen other albums, making a name for himself as a Bruce Springsteen of the Great White North, his gravel-voiced melancholy equally perfect for songs that bemoan the passing of the rural way of life and for the ones that developed out of his more humorous side, like the fan favorite “I Shot Your Dog.” (The protagonist sings it as an apology and an explanation �" he mistook his neighbor’s canine for a coyote.)

First and foremost, he’s a storyteller �" sometimes a soul-searching man, as he was on the 2009 album “Tinderbox,” which explored spirituality from the perspective of a doubting man (Eaglesmith himself practices Zen Buddhism); other times, a heartbroken man, whether he’s singing as a guy who sets cars on fire for fun wondering why he’s not good enough for the girl who once shared his misadventures or a snowplow driver who longs to keep driving into the sun.

One thing he’s not is predictable. His strategy confounds and frustrates his followers at times, but that’s why they love him. They may grumble when he follows up a somber album like “Tinderbox” with a salsa-influenced lighter-themed album like “Cha Cha Cha,” as he did last year, but that’s just Fred.

“‘Tinderbox’ was such a good record that the obvious thing would have been to go in and do part two,” he said. “That would have been the savvy thing to do �" but I can’t do that. It’s just not in me to do it. I really like the kind of music (on “Cha Cha Cha”) �" that sound of a ’50s Hollywood attitude �" and the mood in the country was changing a little bit. I wanted to make this ‘let’s-go-home-and-dance-around-the-stereo’ record, something lighter and not in the same world as ‘Tinderbox.’

“I’ve done this again and again in my career �" the record I put out is not like the last record, and my fans don’t always understand it. Consequently, ‘Cha Cha Cha’ won’t do as well right out of the box as it will in three or four years.”

Of course, by that time it’ll stand up as another stellar entry in the canon of a man whose songs are coveted by Nashville and zealously guarded by fans.

“People get a little possessive when somebody like Miranda Lambert records one of my songs,” he said with a chuckle. “They’ll tell me, ‘We knew you first!’ In Canada, they’ll say, ‘You’re not getting too big for us now, are you?’ But Americans are always excited for you to do well. But yeah, I’m getting calls from some of the heavy hitters in Nashville who want me to come write with them.

“They’re so confused about the state of country music these days, and I’m so whacked out that I’m like, ‘This is fun!’ Country is just in such a conundrum that they’re grasping at straws. And where I used to not be a good straw to grasp, now I am.”

Just wait, then, until he tackles an old-school country music album head-on �" one of two albums he’s working on. (The other, he said, is a folk-rock record that will take him back to his roots.)

“I wrote so many songs last year, I can’t even count them,” he said. “I’d like to do this really old country record and just kick country in the testicles. Right now I’m just plowing the field. I haven’t decided what crop I’m going to plant, but I’ve got a few things in mind.”

Regardless of what he decides, he’ll keep riding the roads �" solo and with his band, which accompanies him to a stop this weekend at “The Shed” at Smoky Mountain Harley-Davidson in Maryville �" and playing his shows. He’ll keep waxing philosophical on spiritual and political matters. And he’ll keep making fans laugh.

“People always tell me, ‘I don’t always agree with you, but you always make me think,’” he said. “So many artists just pander to the audience that it’s just sales. But when you say to someone, I’m not going to make you completely comfortable, but I will make you think,’ that really resonates with the listener.

“It’s all about change. I’ve changed and changed and changed, and I’ve matured, and my career is still accelerating. We all have artists we loved 20 years ago, but we’re not buying their new records because they’re all the same. I’m not interested in being that guy.”