Folk musician excited to be back in Alberta

By Al Beeber - Lethbridge Herald on April 4, 2025.

LETHBRIDGE HERALDabeeber@lethbridgeherald.com

He may be in his mid 70s but veteran Americana musician Ray Bonneville isn’t slowing down.
The Quebec-born, American-raised Bonneville maintains homes in northern Ontario and Texas has embarked on a three-province tour which brings him to Lethbridge on Saturday where he will perform for a Lethbridge Folk Club audience at the Army, Navy and Airforce Veterans club downtown on 5 Ave. S.
Joining him on the tour is Californian Ritchie Lawrence, an old friend and bandmate from Sacramento who played with Bonneville when they were in their 20s.
Bonneville in 2023 released his 10th album called “On the Blind Side” which has nine original songs. A three-time Juno Award nominee and one-time winner, Bonneville has worked with some of the biggest names in American music, performing at venues including the Newport Folk Festival and South by Southwest.
His latest album was made with friend Will Sexton who played bass and guitar on the record. It’s a collection of new songs, others that Bonneville found in his archives and tunes that he played in the 1990s which he hadn’t recorded.
The title track “is about looking into your own blind side. What I mean is that the baggage that we carry from childhood that we really can’t see in life until he shine a big old light in there and take a look at it and then we figure out why we’ve been behaving a certain way,” said Bonneville in a phone interview from Saskatoon where he played on Wednesday night.
At 76 years of age, Bonneville still plays about a 100 shows a year in Canada and the U.S. where he learned English after moving with his family to Boston at the age of 12.
Growing up in the states, he began playing guitar and piano, served two years in Vietnam, earned a pilot’s licence and lived in locations as diverse as Colorado, New Orleans and Paris. He spent two decades working as a studio musician and began writing his own music, releasing his debut album called “On the Main” in 1992.
After decades of performing and touring, Bonneville said if he wasn’t playing he’d be unhappy.
“I love to play. I love the hour-and-a-half or two hours I’m on stage,” he said.
Bonneville is a fan of playing in Alberta and says he loves the people and radio here.
“I just can’t get enough of Alberta,” he said.
With roots on both sides of the 49th parallel, Bonneville says his music isn’t influenced by geography, but rather by people.
“I’m a people observer and I tend toward the people that live on the edge of the society, more marginal folks, criminals and despondents and other characters. So whether I’m in the South or the North, there’s plenty of people so I wouldn’t say that geography has an influence on my shows but people do,” he said.
The folk club audience can expect to hear songs from his latest album as well as some others he knows people want to hear from previous albums.
“I do songs that I think are right for the night.”
Saturday’s performance starts at 7:30 p.m. Doors open at 6;30.
Opening for Bonneville will be southern Albertan Eric Braun.

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