Unusual Suspects: A'Court defies stereotype
By Rachel Boomer
December 6, 2005 - The Daily News
Imagine the stereotypical bluesman. He’s a grizzled old guy with a three-day beard, singing about life’s hardships, sucking back whiskey and smoking his 20th cigarette of the night.
That’s not Charlie A’Court.
The 27-year-old blues guitarist doesn’t smoke. He doesn’t drink much, and never while performing. The songs on his debut album, Colour Me Gone, seem to contain a lifetime of love and loss — yet he wrote two of its songs in high school.
And would you believe this bluesman is an optimist?
“You have to have optimism, particularly when it comes to something you love,” says A’Court, stirring honey into his tea. “When you have passion and a dream, you have to have optimism that you’re going to reach that goal.”
A’Court grew up in tiny MacCallum Settlement, outside Truro. His parents divorced when he was eight. At 12, he wanted to learn an instrument, but his fingers were “just too damn stubby” for fiddle or piano. Then he noticed his dad’s guitar sitting in a corner.
“It grabbed me right off the bat,” A’Court says. “I would literally come home from school and lock myself into my bedroom till eight or nine at night, listening to Eric Clapton’s Unplugged album.”
While his classmates were listening to New Kids on the Block, A’Court was exploring his dad’s album collection: Frank MacKay and the Lincolns, Matt Minglewood and Dutch Mason. The blues bit him hard in high school, which A’Court says is natural: at some point, doesn’t every kid feel like they don’t belong? That was the premise of his debut single, You’ve Got A Friend In Me, a song he wrote at age 17.
A’Court signed up for the intensive band program in high school, and played with his dad in some local bars. He never applied to university.
“In my heart, I knew I needed to be on the stage. That’s where I would get my education.”
He spent two years as music columnist for the Truro Daily News, playing with a band on the side and making music-industry contacts. Then he moved to Halifax.
Busking on the waterfront earned him a gig at Murphy’s on the Water, then at the defunct Tickle Trunk bar and Ma’fia’s restaurant. At the Tickle Trunk, he met a manager and started working on his first album, Colour Me Gone, which earned him an ECMA for blues artist of the year in 2003.
“I was on a cloud for weeks after that. I was so excited.”
A’Court says it’s hard to fill a small venue in western Canada, but he’s got a huge fan base in Germany — a legacy from his performance at the ECMA awards ceremony in 2003, where a couple of German delegates caught his act.
He’s toured in Germany and headlined a festival in Luxembourg, where more than 6,000 fans could sing his songs by heart.
Today he’s managing himself, with help from a publicist and a tour company; designing the cover to his next CD, Bring On The Storm, due out in early 2006; and arranging tours. On Dec. 10, he’s playing a sold-out show with Little Derek and the Haemo Blues Band to celebrate $20,000 raised for leukemia research.
A’Court wears a silver band on his wedding finger inscribed “In Blues We Trust.
” He’s committed to his girlfriend, Emily, but that ring is for his music.
“I want something that’s lasting, that people are going to enjoy for years to come. This isn’t a fling for me. This is something that drives me to wake up in the morning.”
rboomer@hfxnews.ca
