The abundance of talent Toronto has amazes me. One thing we lack though is the support for all these incredible musicians. Many times talent from our neck of the woods have to leave the city, even the country, to pursue their dreams and passions. Why is that? Why do we allow our amazingly talented Torontonians share their talent and skills elsewhere? I’m still trying to figure out the answer to that question.
In comes Jeff Beadle a folk singer-songwriter from Toronto. All his music needs is an acoustic guitar, Beadle’s modern day Neil Young, Bob Dylan inspired vocals with a little bit of harmonica for that extra touch of classic folk. His music is summed up by just a man with his guitar pouring out his soul to an audience. Beadle has ventured off to Europe to pursue his dream of becoming a singer-songwriter because Toronto has been a tough market to break into. Now he’s on tour in Europe, where he plays sold out shows in smaller venues and has received great responses from the European audience.
After playing twenty-five shows (around Germany, Austria, Belgium and Switzerland) in twenty-three nights, Beadle and I talked about his music, his growing success in Europe and what’s next for the up-and-coming folk singer-songwriter.
Tell me a little about how you got into music and how learning to play guitar has been a crucial element to your songwriting.
I’ve been playing in all sorts of bands for years as a lead singer. Eventually, I wanted to start playing guitar in the bands too. I also started picking up the guitar just to write. I like to write music so guitar has been the best avenue for me to write on. So I started playing guitar and all of my bands broke up and I decided, well some friends pushed me, to record some of my songs acoustically and that’s how I became a singer-songwriter …
