BF26: Powers returns to Blyth Festival after 'Christmas Carol' success
BY SHAWN LOUGHLIN
No stranger to Blyth Festival audiences or music lovers throughout Huron and Perth Counties, John Powers is back as part of this season, writing and composing the music for The Last Mayor of Rusty River in a decidedly bluegrass tone.
Powers, who just recently released his latest album, Everyone’s a Critic, composed all of the music for A Huron County Christmas Carol, which has become the Blyth Festival’s annual holiday offering. He worked with Festival Artistic Director Gil Garratt on that show and he’s partnered back up with him for this one.
The two are working together to bring to light the vision of Seaforth’s David Scott, who wrote The Last Mayor of Rusty River. Scott has a rich history with not only the community, but of the subject matter he’s tackling. He was somewhat of a “last mayor” himself, serving as the head of Seaforth Town Council for its last term before it came one of five in the amalgamated Huron East. Furthermore, he has spent much of his life as a local reporter, telling the stories of his community’s people, service clubs, athletes, farmers and, yes, politicians.
Scott has written a handful of plays for the Festival, dating back to 1997 and There’s Nothing in the Paper and coming into the modern age with The Ballad of Stompin’ Tom in 2006 and 2007 and Mr. New Year’s Eve: An Evening with Guy Lombardo in 2017. And while those latter two shows include music, it’s music that had largely been composed by and performed by the subject matter of the play in their real lives and careers. Bringing in Powers for the music on this show was something new.
Scott first wrote the show several years ago as a straight-ahead play about municipal politics, something he’d always wanted to tackle. However, about four years ago, at Garratt’s suggestion, Powers was brought in to help turn the story into a musical.
While Powers has been there and done that in regards to music, he admits that this was a bit of new ground for him. He didn’t exactly stay up at night as a little boy with dreams of writing bluegrass songs about municipal politics, but, he’ll be the first to admit that, once he, Scott and Garratt got down to business, he was surprised at how easily the songs came and how good of a fit the concept was with the subject material.
Powers says he was brought on after a few drafts had been written. On the fourth draft, with the titles of songs being incorporated, it started coming together. Powers got to work and the show started to come together to the surprise of no one. The three creators had so much faith in one another that they knew the creative process would yield tremendous results and Powers thinks that came to pass.
Without giving away too many plot points, Powers said he thought some of the song titles being thrown out by Garratt and Scott were hilarious and they provided him with just the right amount of direction to try and match that level of hilarity with his lyrics and music. In the end, Powers says, the three came up with something they can all be proud of and that has a local flavour like few other shows, even at the Blyth Festival.
As for Powers’ musical career, he is well known for playing local bars, parties, community events and more, often with his wife Melena, who is a singer. On his newest album, Powers incorporated his greatest love of all, his family, into the recording process, which has resulted in a unique and deeply personal recording.