Uptown Magazine - Old Seed
“I have a lot of respect for Mike Watt,” says Old Seed’s Craig Bjerring over Skype from his new place in Kassel, Germany, referring to The Minutemen founder. “He got it early on and he didn’t change.”
Bjerring, 41, also gets it. For the past 20 years he has done things on his own terms. He cut his teeth on endless tours across Canada, sleeping on floors, racking up kilometres in run-down vans, spending way too much money on gas and playing some weird and wonderful shows along the way. While touring may have gotten easier since he relocated to Germany, Bjerring, like Watt, stays true to his roots.
He’s taken that blue-collar, DIY approach with him to Europe, where he’s toured extensively over the past five years and built a name for himself with the type of hang-on-every-word live performance that makes people take notice. He’s released three vinyl records and, in the last three years alone, has played over 450 shows in every type of venue you can imagine.
“I had no fucking clue what was going to happen. I first came out here to be a social worker,” Bjerring says. “I worked there for about a year and a half and realized for the umpteenth time in my life that every job I have ever taken was because I was too tired or too poor to be on the road, and then as soon as I get out of either of those situations, I go back out on the road. It’s just what I do.”
Bjerring started Old Seed back in Winnipeg in 2003, in between playing guitar with The Vagiants (who imploded, despite some buzz) and The Hummers (who will be playing together for the first time in over five years on Nov. 3 at the Lo Pub). At the time, he was also playing bass in A Band Called Horse, along with playing guitar and touring with improv troupe The Crumbs.
Bjerring’s first official solo show as Old Seed was opening for Smog in 2003 at the West End Cultural Centre. Intrigued by the freedom playing solo would allow, he landed the gig after writing and recording a quick four-song demo for then-WECC artistic director Chris Frayer.
“It was a baptism by fire,” Bjerring recalls. “The Smog show was sold out and the fucking who’s who of Winnipeg’s songwriting elite were all there, and I walk up for my very first show ever as a solo singer and songwriter. I was shitting myself. I made it through and then I was hooked.”
Fast-forward to 2011, and Bjerring is a bona fide troubadour, relying on a grassroots approach to touring that involves him, some records, a backpack and Europe’s well-developed ride-share culture. While he’s scaling back his schedule after opening a pub in Kassel, he’s still drawn to the life of a touring musician.
“I need to be in front of people. I need that spontaneity. I need that energy, that exchange,” he says. “That’s what I get off on.”
OLD SEED
Nov. 3,
Winnipeg Folk Exchange
THE HUMMERS
Nov. 3, Lo Pub
