Jeffery Straker celebrating Christmas with Sask. shows amid pandemic

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Christmas is a time of memories for Jeffery Straker — and arguably for a lot of people.

For the Regina singer-songwriter, Christmas brings up thoughts of years past: Long ago, his mom watching him open presents that Santa brought; more recently, performing holiday concerts of festive favourites and new originals.

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This year, that all ties together in Straker’s A Very Prairie Christmas tour and his new EP recording, This Christmas.

“I think a Christmas show is literally a concert of nostalgia,” Straker said in a recent phone interview.

“We’ve all got songs paperclipped in our brains to a memory. So songs become a soundtrack to moments in our life and Christmas songs are no exception. And in fact, because Christmas comes around every year, the importance of those songs gets more and more and more cemented into our fibres.

“So although I think people are buying tickets to a concert, I think they’re buying tickets to a memory.”

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Straker’s tour was a little larger until Wednesday when the Saskatchewan government introduced new gathering restrictions to fight the spread of COVID-19. December dates in Regina and Moose Jaw have been rescheduled (to Jan 8-9 at the Conexus Arts Centre and Jan. 14-15 at Mae Wilson Theatre) so they won’t stick to that holiday theme, but viewers across the province — and anywhere really — will still get a chance to see the Christmas show.

Straker points to his Dec. 5 concert in Prince Albert’s Rawlinson Centre which will be broadcast over a high quality audio and video livestream.

The last-minute changes to the tour, which was to begin Dec. 1, were not entirely surprising to Straker so he’s happy to perform where he can for whom he can.

“It’s a risk to set anything up in this pandemic so I feel really lucky to be able to do this still,” he said.

He also notes there will be 30 people in the crowd in P.A. (the maximum allowed under the new guidelines) so he can feed off their energy for those watching the livestream from their homes.

“That’ll be like the size of a house concert so they’ll be able to give me a little something,” he said.

And from there, it is business as usual once he is on stage.

In choosing his set list, he said it was important to pick songs that would let people “lose track of everything for a moment and go back to those great memories, and it’s way more important now more than ever I think with this cuckoo pandemic.”

During his concerts, there will be a chance for new memories, as Straker performs a couple of brand new songs. “I’ll Be Missing You This Christmas” is about his mom, Beverly, who died in 2019. Last Christmas was his first without her.

In writing this song, “I was able to think about Christmases with mom and some of the amazing memories and times and experiences and how much she loved it. … It’s very reflective and I hope people can insert themselves into it, other people who are missing somebody; that was kind of the hope.”

He also wrote a happy and upbeat love song inspired by a traditional country sound, “Come Walking in the Snow With Me.”

“I think new love is awesome all the time; I think new love is the best at the holiday time, because the holidays are all special and full of magic and tradition and all that sort of stuff, so there’s something that heightens it. So the song just tries to capture the excitement of that, combined with the holidays.”

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Straker is confident the in-person shows that remain will be as safe as can be during a pandemic. He said “the proof’s in the pudding” considering his dates last month with the Regina Symphony Orchestra. Patrons wore masks; even the non-wind instrumentalists on stage wore masks. Everyone was appropriately distanced and, Straker said, there were no cases of COVID-19 traced to those events.

“If people just wear a mask and carry on, everything is so fine,” said Straker.

The distancing was helped by the RSO’s choice of a spacious new venue, the Holy Rosary Cathedral. Given the building’s architecture, Straker said sound floated up to the ceiling.

“I could see people clapping but I really couldn’t hear them,” said Straker.

He couldn’t hear the orchestra either:  “I had to rely on a violinist’s really precise toe-tapping to be my metronome; it was the strangest thing, but thank God he was a good toe-tapper because it saved the whole show.”

He could see everyone, though, which wasn’t the case in his earlier 2020 concerts. Straker (like many local musicians) performed Facebook Live concerts in the first months of the pandemic. During those virtual video events, he couldn’t see his audience at all. It took some getting used to.

“We’ve become so used to the rhythm of a show being ‘perform, applause, perform, applause’ … It’s part of the energy flow from audience to performer back and forth that really keeps the momentum of a show going,” said Straker. “So of course as soon as you get on Facebook Live, the pendulum literally falls off its hinges and crashes to the floor because you’re like, ‘Well, where’s the energy exchange?’ ”

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He was glad when restrictions started to loosen for the summer and he could arrange safely distanced backyard concerts. He performed 36 across the province, to appreciative audiences.

“People sometimes just found themselves, unbeknownst to them why, crying. And I saw it a lot of times,” said Straker.

“People would say, ‘I didn’t understand how much I missed this and needed this; it got taken away from me and I didn’t get, until I got back here in its presence, what live music does for me.’ ”

Those reactions got him thinking about music’s role as an essential service. “Some people will roll their eyes to the back of their head to hear me say that, but to see what it did for people was really moving, you know? So I loved those backyard shows.”

Straker’s Very Prairie Christmas concert in North Battleford on Dec. 6 is to go ahead as scheduled (with a crowd limit of 30) while details around shows in Medicine Hat (Dec. 13), Estevan (Dec. 14) and Watrous (Dec. 16) are still being worked out. The Dec. 8 show in Leader has been cancelled as has the Dec. 17 show at The Bassment in Saskatoon. The Dec. 18 show at the Bassment, however, falls outside the latest guideline window and is still on the books.

For tickets to in-person shows or livestreams and more information about show changes, visit jeffstraker.com, where you can also find his new Christmas recordings.

amartin@postmedia.com