There’s a moment Roy Forbes describes from when he was eight or nine years old, sitting in a theatre in Dawson Creek watching Hank Snow perform. He’d never touched a guitar pick. He fantasized that if Hank lost his mid-show, he’d be ready — he could hand it up. That’s not the daydream of a kid who might become a musician. That’s the daydream of a kid who already was one.
Roy Forbes picked up a guitar at 14, started writing songs not long after, and has never really stopped. More than five decades later, he’s a BC Entertainment Hall of Fame inductee, a UBC honorary doctorate recipient, and the host of Roy’s Record Room on CKUA Radio — a show he’s been running for more than 20 years, spinning 78s and 45s from his own sprawling personal collection. He’s released 14 studio albums. His songs have been covered by Shawn Colvin, Sylvia Tyson, and Steven Page of the Barenaked Ladies, among others.
I had the pleasure of sitting down with Roy recently for the PULSE Community Podcast, and what I kept noticing was how alive the old stories still are for him. He described opening for Santana — probably around 1976, he figured — after years on the coffeehouse circuit. A young Roy Forbes, alone on a stage in front of a wild crowd, finishing his set with a quiet, devastating song and earning two thousand people’s silence before the cheers started. He joked that he did his half-hour set in 23 minutes. He also told me about the night he realized he’d started phrasing a song the same way Sylvia Tyson had recorded it — that the influence had quietly reversed direction on him without his knowing.
The conversation that had the most impact for me – was the one about losing his sight. After a six-month period of just sitting with it, getting used to the idea that it wasn’t coming back, he picked up an old $7 Stella guitar with 10-year-old strings— and started writing again. The result was Edge of Blue, his 14th album, which he says felt like his first. That word — triumphant — was his.
Roy will be at Char’s Landing in Port Alberni in May. The full conversation, including a performance of “More Than a Little Bit Blue,” is here: https://bit.ly/S2EP31PulsePodcast
Peter McCully is a multimedia creator and podcast host based in Parksville, BC. https://mccullymedia.ca/category/blog/