Jack Semple came to the 2011 festival as the Thursday night main stage headliner. It was his first trip to PEI. The festival bio put it plainly: the audience would be "pleasantly astonished." That is a confident thing to write in a program, but by all accounts he lived up to it.
He also gave a free workshop that afternoon at St. Paul's Anglican Church, with his acoustic guitar in hand. The workshop was presented by Mark's Work Wearhouse, part of the Chris Driscoll Memorial series.
The farm and the flamenco
Semple grew up on a farm north of Regina, the youngest of six kids. His brothers taught him his first chords. He took to it immediately. By the time he was fifteen he was teaching guitar at the local music store that had hired him as a student just a few years earlier .
He studied classical and flamenco guitar early on, and that training never left him. You can see it in the long acrylic nails on his right hand. He does not use a pick. He uses his fingers, the way a flamenco player does, even when he is playing electric blues. The festival bio called it "like having a pick attached to each finger." He can play a bass line and a melody at the same time, or sing in unison with the lines his fingers are laying down on his Stratocaster.
The Lincolns and the road
In the late eighties he moved to Toronto to play lead guitar for The Lincolns, a funk and R&B band that was touring heavily at the time. He was a fan of the band before he joined. He left after two years and moved back to Regina to raise his family. The festival bio mentioned that he played with The Lincolns at Wayne Gretzky's wedding, and that he still had Gordie Howe's autograph on a napkin from the reception. That is the kind of detail that only shows up in a festival program.
He won a JUNO in 1991 for best roots recording. In 1992 he won MuchMusic's Guitar Wars contest. He has released more than ten albums, contributed to television and film scores, and been nominated for Gemini Awards for his soundtrack work .
That week
The Thursday night main stage slot at Murphy's Community Centre was the big one. A festival crowd, a full band, and a player who had been building toward this kind of night for decades. The workshop earlier in the day gave people a close-up look at his technique. The show that night gave them the full picture.
The festival bio closed with a line about his influences. B.B. King, Jose Feliciano, Gordon Lightfoot. Three very different players, all of them song-first musicians who happen to be virtuosos on their instruments. That is the thing about Semple. He can play anything, but he always plays the song.
Since then
Semple kept going. He released In the Blue Light in 2012, an album that took blues riffs beyond the standard three-chord structure. He has continued to tour across Canada and the US, playing solo shows, band shows, and the occasional family gig with his wife and kids. His daughter Zenaya sings, his son Keiran plays drums, and his wife Tara plays flute with the Regina Symphony Orchestra .
The 2011 festival was his first trip to the Island. He has been back a few times since, but that first one was the one where nobody here knew what to expect. The program promised astonishment. It delivered.
For the current festival, head to the schedule page or the main lineup page. This archive is kept for looking back.