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Calgary Sun: Penner Fueled By People Passion
Saturday, January 3, 2004
The only thing better than having your job supplement your passion is having a job that is your passion.
Cam Penner has both.
The local roots singer-songwriter spends his days as a councillor at the downtown drop-in centre, lending an open ear and support to the city's less fortunate.
"It's the basis of my life and my spirituality, the people around me," says Penner.
"It's a really great job and sometimes a really sad job, but there's always got to be goodness. There's goodness in everyone and that's how I see everyone that comes in here."
"It's helping them realize their own goodness, because we all have it."
What we also all have, Penner has come to realize through his work, is a story. Growing up in rural Manitoba he says helped give him an appreciation for everyday people and the tales they tell.
"I have the opportunity to hear 150 stories a day," he says.
"Whether half of them are true or not it doesn't matter - a story's a story."
Which brings us to Penner's other passion - his music, which he performs with his band The Gravel Road, featuring Jim Atkinson, Darren Bourne, Adam Esposito and Penner's wife Tabitha.
The group, which hosts the Ship & Anchor jam this afternoon, paint honest, earthy country landscapes peopled with honest, earthy folks - some of whom Penner admits have crossed over from his day job.
"My work has been a huge influence in my career and this next album that were going to be writing it's going to be based a lot on the work, on the life that I've had over the past 12 years meeting all of these people," he says.
"It will be darker, but that's the way heal and the way you get through things."
It's surprising Penner is already looking towards another album.
His latest CD, Get Up, is only a few months old and has garnered him a great deal of attention, earning him play in Alberta as well as on such diverse stations as the University of Toronto's station and a mainstream country station in his home province.
But still, Penner's planning for the future, hoping that the marriage of his two passions will yield a new disc in mid May.
"I figure why not just keep recording if you songs?" he says.
And thousands of stories and people to inhabit them.