When Lucas Chaisson was in elementary school, he would spend a lot of time at MacKay’s Cochrane Ice Cream … but not to indulge in the famous flavours like many of his friends.
Instead, the enterprising young artist would busk outside the famous Cochrane landmark – the beginning of a musical journey that still continues today.
“I used to play some Bob Dylan and stuff … I used to play Like a Rolling Stone a lot, because it was one of the only songs I could sing loud enough to make it over the traffic,” remembered Chaisson this week. “(I busked) from the time I was in Grade 4 until recently …I’ve opened the case a couple of times if I’ve been back home visiting my parents.
“That’s the spot for sure.”
Now 23 years old, Chaisson has just been named one of 12 finalists in the celebrated Project WILD musician development program from Alberta Music and WILD 95.3 FM, with a top prize of more than $100,000 in grant money, and he has been chosen to open for famed Canadian band Blue Rodeo when they take the stage at the Banff Centre next month.
“Me and my dad used to play quite a few Blue Rodeo songs together growing up,” Chaisson said. “I’ve opened for Jim Cuddy … but never met all the guys in Blue Rodeo before, so it will be pretty cool.”
Chaisson said he got serious about music as a career after playing the Edmonton Folk Festival when he was 15 years old.
“I’d never really had an inside look at what it would be like to be a professional musician, but I got to meet all these people that had been doing it for years,” he said. “I really loved it. I loved ... meeting people that are kind of like-minded people that are doing the same sort of thing that I’m doing.”
Being chosen for Project WILD will give Chaisson more opportunity to work with like-minded musicians during months of intensive challenges, including attending business workshops, creating a charity project and making a merchandise item, on which he will be judged. An online voting component from fans will also help push him toward the prize money.
If he wins, Chaisson said he will use the funds for touring costs and to finish his new record, which he’s already written. No matter where he goes, the folk roots singer-songwriter said Cochrane will always be part of his heart – and his music.
“That’s where I got my prairie western sensibility,” he said. “It’s very western and without really realizing it, I fell in love with cowboy culture… that left me to discover all these artists like (lyrical poet) Townes Van Zandt and (Texas titan) Guy Clark.
“It got me looking in the right places.”
