Charlie A'Court came to the festival in 2011 riding a good stretch. He had won Pop Recording of the Year at the East Coast Music Awards a few years earlier, and the same year took Blues Recording of the Year at the Music Nova Scotia Awards, both for Bring On The Storm. By the time he got to Charlottetown he was already known as one of the region's best live performers, the kind of singer who does not hold back.
He played Murphy's Community Centre on Saturday, August 20, at 8pm. His band for the night was Dave Skinner on drums and vocals and Kev Corbett on bass and vocals. Both were in-demand sidemen around Halifax at the time, and the trio format suited A'Court. Enough room to stretch out on guitar, enough support to keep the songs tight.
Before the festival
A'Court grew up in rural Nova Scotia, outside Truro. He has said in interviews that he learned to sing by listening to Otis Redding and Sam Cooke, and that the way they sang, with that kind of conviction, stuck with him. Later he found B.B. King and Buddy Guy, then Eric Clapton, who showed him that blues and contemporary songwriting could sit side by side in the same song. You can hear all of that in his own records. The voice is big and soulful, the guitar playing is sharp, and the songs are built for a room full of people.
By 2011 he had toured across Canada and into the States, playing festivals like Stan Rogers, Harvest Jazz and Blues, Kerrville and Ottawa Blues Fest. He had shared stages with George Thorogood, Colin James, Harry Manx, The Fabulous Thunderbirds and Dan Aykroyd, among others. He was also named Nova Scotia's Entertainer of the Year in 2009. The man had been busy.
After the festival
A'Court kept going. He won more ECMAs, released more records, and eventually started spending time in Australia, where he recorded with Australian musicians and found a new audience. His 2024 album, San Palarino, moved him further into Americana territory, with co-writes from Matt Andersen and Terra Spencer. He also started a scholarship for Nova Scotia high school graduates going into music, which is the kind of thing you do when you have been doing this long enough to want to give something back.
That night at Murphy's
Murphy's Community Centre was one of the festival's regular venues back then. Not the biggest room in town, but a good one. Close enough that you could see the players' hands, loud enough that the band did not have to hold back. A Saturday night show with A'Court in that room would have been the right way to close out the week for anyone who was there.
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