Burton Cummings returning to Lethbridge this weekend

By Al Beeber - Lethbridge Herald on June 7, 2023.

Herald file photo Burton Cummings performs during a show in Lethbridge in 2017. Cummings will be back in Lethbridge on June 11 at the Enmax Centre with his band the Carpet Frogs.

LETHBRIDGE HERALDabeeber@lethbridgeherald.com

Break it to them gently but Burton Cummings has his own way to rock.

And the Canadian rock legend will be showing it to a Lethbridge audience once again on June 11 when he will stand tall at the Enmax Centre with his band the Carpet Frogs.

Cummings, who last appeared in Lethbridge to perform a solo show on piano a few years ago, has some surprises planned when he and the Carpet Frogs hit the stage here.

His long-time pal Ron Sakamoto who calls a Cummings a “living legend,” says he’s “so proud of him coming here.”

With pandemic restrictions in the rearview mirror, Cummings is looking forward to performing in your back yard in a show that should be a fine state of affairs.

The 75-year-old Cummings is a Canadian music institution who learned to play piano as a child and went on to success as a teenager with popular Winnipeg band The Deverons. In 1966, just after he turned 18, he joined a popular Winnipeg group called Chad Allan and The Expressions where he played keyboards and shared lead vocals.

Shortly after Cummings arrival, Allan left leaving the teenager as lead vocalist. Thanks to a record company publicity stunt in 1965 in which their single ‘Shakin All Over’ was released anonymously with the fans left to wonder ‘Guess Who?’ the band ended up changing its name to just that – the Guess Who. Main songwriting duties were held by Cummings and guitarist Randy Bachman, later of BTO fame, until the latter’s departure when Cummings and guitarist Kurt Winter developed into a formidable songwriting force.

Cummings left in 1975 to start a highly successful solo career and in an interview with the Herald on Thursday, he pointed out the 20 years he’s performed with the Toronto-based Carpet Frogs is a decade longer than he spent with The Guess Who which crafted such memorable tunes as “Laughing,” “No Sugar Tonight/New Mother Nature,” “Clap for The Wolfman,” “No Time,” “Undun”, and of course their most wellknown hits “American Woman” and “These Eyes.”

That last song, said Cummings, is always an audience favourite.

“It seems to have stuck with people,” said Cummings, who has his own theatre named after him in his hometown of Winnipeg.

“People are happiest when we do the biggest, most success records. Everybody wants to hear ‘These Eyes’ because ‘These Eyes’ was the first big record and it’s seems to have stuck with people. The reaction to ‘These Eyes’ every time we do it is tremendous. All they hear is that little piano intro…and they start cheering. So they know that that one immediately,” said Cummings, who has his own theatre named after him in his hometown of Winnipeg.

Another favourite especially in Canada is his solo hit “Break it To Them Gently,” a song that’s been played “on the radio more than any of the other songs in Canada. People react beautifully to that one,”, said the Moose Jaw-based Cummings.

And during the tour, fans will get to hear a Guess Who gem called “Sour Suite.”

“Sometimes I do it all by myself – it lends itself very well to piano and voice,” said Cummings, who has two stars on Canada’s Walk of Fame – one for his solo career and one for his work with the Guess Who.

He is also an officer of the Order of Canada.

Cummings and band started their tour on the West Coast and after four or five shows “we’re getting tighter and tighter,” he said.

He recalls performing in Lethbridge in 1966 or ’67 shortly after joining the Guess Who, his relationship with Sakamoto being a strong one. He even has an oil painting of himself that the promoter gave him as a gift many years ago.

“It was just great, it was quite a gift. He’s an old pal,” said Cummings.

Sakamoto said “at the end of the day you don’t know what to get these artists. It’s hard to make something special.”

Cummings said he’s getting things going again after two years off the road due to the COVID pandemic.

On the tour, Cummings is running into old friends and meeting new ones.

“I’ve been on the radio for so many years now, you know. I’m very lucky to have been on the radio for over 50 years. Not everybody gets that, not every performer gets that so I’m very happy to be touring again,” said Cummings.

The pandemic was “just terrible. In my life I’ve never seen anything like that. That’s the first thing I’ve seen anything like.”

After so many years performing, he’s still enjoying it.

“The two hours on stage or however long, 90 minutes, a hundred minutes, whatever it is, that’s the best. The time on stage will always be special to me, always,” said Cummings.

Cummings was the contemporary of so many music legends – he knew David Crosby so his death really shook him up and he was friends with Gordon Lightfoot for a long time.

But he doesn’t focus on that much in life.

“I focus more on the fact that I’m still alive and performing reasonably well and people are loving it. So that’s what I focus.”

During his show, he will play a wide mix of tunes from his Guess Who Days and his solo material.

“We do a lot of Guess Who records that were big that are still on the radio, we do a lot of my solo stuff and we throw in a couple of surprises which I won’t mention right now. But there are a couple of surprises that we worked on specifically for the unplugged tour. Some nights are electric, some nights are unplugged,” he said.

Cummings is a music collector with a wide range of interests in music.

“I’m a collector so I have a huge library of songs and I keep them all in my computer in my Apple tower. I don’t even know how many it is anymore but it’s a huge library. It goes back as far as the early 1900s so I’ve got everything covered, every kind of music covered and of course, there are always my favourites. One of my favourite things that I still play out of a monstrous library is the music from Peter Gunn – all that Peter Gunn music that Henry Mancini did for the TV show. It’s one of my favourite collections of music ever,” he said.

“I’m really a student of the history of pop music.”

Cummings and band hit the stage at the Enmax at 7:30 p.m. on June 11.

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