RORY MACLEAN
Arts Editor

Audiences have grown up over the years. But for iconic Canadian children’s entertainer Fred Penner, the people remain the same.

“The vernacular changes a lot along the way,” he said. “The words you use to express something have changed, but that’s only minimal and surface. The elements of a person have never changed. The need that we have to communicate, the need that we have to relate to each other is fundamental.”

Penner will be playing Louis’ Pub March 12, as part of a national tour.

Penner knows that people come to reconnect with a figure from their childhood and now that they’ve grown up a bit he has a little more opportunity to explain himself.

“It’s a bit of nostalgia in a way, but at the same time it’s a bit of the philosophy.”

If you start getting heavy with the kids you can come off as a bit of a talking head,” he said. “College-age fans typically come motivated by curiosity, however, so there’s room for more of a dialogue.

For Penner, music is an extremely powerful force.

“I believe in the power of music to affect humanity, I don’t think there’s any question about that…. Art gives us an understanding about ourselves, about how we perceive things”.

Music begins with our bodies, said Penner.

“The fundamental beginning of it is the pulse of your heartbeat. The spectrum of sound begins to make patterns for you. You start hearing this cacophony of sound as music starts to take shape. It has an ability to make you feel a certain way. These patterns connect with us.

“As you can tell, I’m passionate about the whole thing. I understand how it works and I understand how I fit into the system. That’s part of my perspective on life and the whole ball of wax here.”

Penner said audiences can expect an assortment of classics as well as new material in his upcoming shows. He wrote a new song for campus crowds called “Face to Face,” but he says he won’t forget about the hits.

“The cat will come back,” he said. Fans of his song “Sandwiches” won’t be disappointed either.

Now that he is no longer on television, Penner says much of his younger audience doesn’t actually know who he is. They come because their parents, who grew up with him in the ’80s, bring them.

This provides him with an opportunity to develop new relationships, he said.

Occasionally grown up fans will share childhood memories with him.

“The interesting thing is when you watch something that you enjoy, you tend to emulate it. I got an email this morning from a young woman, she was in the UBC audience, she remembered building, like, a log, and when she watched Fred Penner’s Place, she would crawl through this log like I did.”

He seems flattered by all the positive feedback he has received, including daily letters and emails, not to mention becoming a member of the Order of Canada in 1991, but he says you never get used to it.

“It’s quite overwhelming and you can’t really anticipate it when you start a performing career. You start your journey as best you can and if it falls into place, then good on you.”

In recent years, Penner has experienced a resurgence in his popularity as fans of his CBC TV show, which ran from 1985 to 1997, have grown up and are now having kids of their own.

“At this point the foundation of my career is pretty solid. I’ve covered all corners of North America. So now it’s playing the different elements.”

Five years ago when he and a Toronto-based team began pitching new shows to different networks around North America, he said there was not much interest. But now Penner said there is “potential of doing a new TV series.”

The lack of live people in children’s programming is a concern to him.

“There are few human beings anymore. Everything is animated,” he said. Penner says he brings a depth that few other programs today can match.

“There’s a personal level that I think my stuff has. It’s interactive, sharing a thought. It prods at emotion along the way.”

Whether he’s on the road or in the TV studio in the future, Penner is assured that it’s worth it.

“I’ve never had a gig that I didn’t want to do,” he said. “What’s the phrase? ‘If you find a job you love you’ll never work a day in your life.’ I understand the value of it and I’m in it for life.”

- -