Linda Daniel
Managing Editor’s Note: Dr. Linda Jean Daniel has an extensive record of presenting at conferences such as the International Country Music Conference, performing as a Country music artist, and publishing in journals such as the International Country Music Journal Edited by Dr. Don Cusic of Belmont University’s Curb Music Business Program. Her PhD dissertation dealt with Canadian women in Country Music. Dr. Daniel lives in Mississauga, Ontario, Canada. We are pleased to have a Canadian focus to this article and look forward to more pieces from Dr. Daniel.
If you want to hear some great guitar playing and be entertained by a unique and amusing look at life, Wendell Ferguson’s music is for you. This Canadian Country Music Association Hall of Fame Inductee is a talented guitarist, songwriter, producer, musical director, and comedian who has won the CCMA’s Guitarist of the Year six times (the maximum number allowed). His name is in the National Music Centre in Calgary, Alberta, and a Canadian Folk Music Award sits on his shelf.
Ferguson is a guitar player extraordinaire with a great sense of humour and a love of performing. Country Music News writes: “Wendell Ferguson is recognized by his peers as one of the top pickers in country and known best as having one of the quickest wits in the game. A talented and funny guy to say the least.”
So, when did this guitar phenom begin his musical odyssey? Wendell Ferguson was born on February 28th, 1954, and raised in Streetsville, Ontario. One Christmas, for some unknown reason, the seven-year-old asked his parents for a guitar. Underneath the tree he found a Stella with strings about an inch off the neck. He loved it and spent the next three months strumming until his mother said, “Get him some lessons! He’s driving me crazy!”
Ferguson’s father liked music, so when Wendell started taking guitar lessons, his father joined him. Every Saturday afternoon for a couple of years, they travelled to a music teacher in Brampton, Ontario until his father got a new job and could no longer attend. Wendell continued taking lessons for another two years and learned the basics of reading music. By that time, the Beatles were happening, and he wanted to learn more up-to-date music, so he quit.
But “music still grabbed me,” he says. He liked listening to records and playing the guitar. Wendell perfected the art of mimicking the greats and taught himself how to play the way he wanted. For him, the excitement was in making his guitar sound like the record.
Ferguson’s first gig was for the Kiwanis Club. In grade 11, he met another student, also a guitarist, who invited him to jam at his house with a drummer and another guitar player. Up until that time, Wendell had only played with records, so jamming with a live band was an exciting prospect for the aspiring musician.
Ferguson describes an experience that would have a major effect on him much later in his music career. Around the age of fifteen, his father lined up a summer job for him, directing cars in a parking lot at a brewery event. When the boss told him to go for lunch, he saw Canadian country music stars Myrna Lorrie and Tommy Hunter performing.
Ferguson was impressed and when the band went for a break, he walked over to the guitar player and said, “You guys are really good. I like your music.” He replied, “Oh, thanks, kid.” Green as grass, Wendell told him, “I’m in a band, you know.” The guitarist started to chuckle. Wendell was taken aback. “What? We’re going to make it. We’re going to be like the Beatles.”
He said, “Listen, kid, I’ll give you some advice. … a marriage is really hard to keep together and that’s only two people. Bands are ****ing impossible. If you concentrate on your own skills, you’ll always find work.” The young Wendell could not understand what he was telling him.
Fast forward ten years and thirty bands later, feeling dejected, Wendell remembered the guitarist’s sage advice that day. It had turned out to be true. If you want a career as a musician, learn your own instrument very well and you can make a living doing what you love to do.
After finishing high school, Wendell told his parents he did not want to go to university. When he expressed his desire to become a guitar player, he and his father made a deal. His father would support him for one year but, in return, Wendell would have to practise the guitar six hours a day. It worked out well. Within six months, he had a gig and hit the road.
Ferguson spent his life on the road in the seventies and eighties, playing six nights a week with different bands that changed often and morphed into other bands. He did a lot of co-writing in a country vein and in the eighties made several trips down to Nashville each year which resulted in eight single song publishing deals.
In addition to being a superb instrumentalist, Wendell’s songwriting has a distinctive style. In his late twenties, he began to find his own voice as a songwriter. He knew that he had a different way of thinking than most people.
When he would listen to a song, the lyrics sounded like other words to him, so he would sing the words he heard, and people found it humorous. Then he started writing his own original melodies with funny lyrics.
Wendell has always liked jokes and can remember them. From watching shows like Laurel and Hardy and Jackie Gleason, he acquired comedic timing. His jokes contain a seed of truth and then he embellishes it. He enjoys making people laugh.
In 1980, on a six-week tour across Canada with a couple of folk artists, Wendell came to the realization that you do not always have to write about love. You can write about anything. That is when he began composing songs like his popular “Rocks and Trees,” a kind of Canadiana, but different.
Instead of just being a “cookie-cutter,” he listened to what was coming from within himself. Often, when his songs are almost finished, he will play them before a live audience to see the reaction and then know how to complete them.
From the age of seventeen, Ferguson built his career around a hybrid style of playing the guitar, with a pick but also using his fingers to pull notes. When he was forty-five, he decided to learn to play in the Chet Atkins/Merle Travis style. He hit the books and after about three years, “got up to speed.”
Finger style guitar describes best what he does. Wendell states, “As you grow as a musician, the music you listen to grows and it gets harder and harder as you progress. And then you move on to the next mountain and climb it, piece by little piece.”
Ferguson has played in every province and territory in Canada, including the Arctic. In the nineties, he performed in Egypt, Israel, Syria, Cyprus, Germany, England, France, and Italy, as part of a military entertainment production.
He has also toured the Netherlands, Switzerland, Belgium, and entertained on a Caribbean cruise. Stateside, the Federation of Musicians hired him for a show in Las Vegas and he has played many places in the northeast, around Boston, and, of course, numerous times in Nashville.
Ferguson was totally surprised by his induction into the Canadian Country Music Association Hall of Fame. He received the honour, gave a speech, and was celebrated at the awards show, but felt he “wasn’t wearing it well.”
By nature, a humble person, it was difficult for him to accept being classified in the same group as artists with such luminary careers as Anne Murray and Gordon Lightfoot. However, something happened that changed his way of thinking. After the show, a keyboard player saw Wendell in the hall and said, “Thanks for winning one for us.” It took him a minute to understand. She went on, “You know – for the musicians.”
Wendell went back into the Hall of Fame archives to see how many instrumentalists had won over the years. Turns out, there are just a few, such as fiddlers Al Cherny, King Ganam, and Don Messer. Then he realized that he was being recognized as a musician of note, on behalf of all the hard-working instrumentalists out there, and he accepted the tribute graciously.
Ferguson has been touring for years, making radio and television appearances, and recording with several popular artists in country music like George Fox, Duane Steele, Shania Twain, Martina McBride, the Dixie Chicks, and more. He has also worked with many in the folk genre, such as Gordon Lightfoot, Sylvia Tyson, Quartette, and Jane Siberry.
These days Ferguson splits his time between performing his own comedy show and being a session player or sideman for everybody and anybody. He has a new project in the works coming out soon.
Ferguson has spent his life in the music business in Canada and is a great mentor for others looking to do the same. From his vast experience as a musician, he has learned that “If you’re in it for the glamour and the stardom, you’ll be disappointed.
But if you’re in it because you love the music, then you’re in the right business.” This seasoned veteran continues to enjoy all genres of music including country, folk, blues, rock, and big band.
If you are looking for superb musicianship and a good laugh, listen to the music of Wendell Ferguson, available on his website www.wendellferguson.com. It will be a wonderful musical adventure, bound to make you smile.
From an interview with Wendell Ferguson, December 9th, 2022
