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Rogue Fest launches with singer-songwriter duo

Veteran Sunshine Coast-based musician Janet Panic will play the first notes at this year’s re-formatted Rogue Arts Festival.
A.Roguefest
Janet Panic and Will Mason, of Fer De Lance.

Veteran Sunshine Coast-based musician Janet Panic will play the first notes at this year’s re-formatted Rogue Arts Festival. Panic will be half of a duo called Fer De Lance, with her musical partner and husband, Nashville native Will Mason, on bass.

At the Saturday, July 24 concert at Roberts Creek Legion, Fer De Lance will play from their set of tunes called A Mighty Rip Through The Page Of My Life. “They are songs about relationships, and reflect a simpler time when friends were made and maintained face-to-face, and online life was the stuff of science fiction,” Panic wrote on the group’s website.

The album, among a dozen collections Panic has recorded since 1994, is also the first in which she has had writing collaborators on every song, and all are family. “There’s a couple of tunes that are by Will’s brother, a couple of things that are by Will and I, a couple of tunes that are with my dad (the late Barry Pruden) and a couple of tunes that are my brother (Alex Pruden) and I,” Panic said in an interview.

Like most musicians with 30-plus-year careers Panic, 51, Ontario-born and of Metis heritage, has touched a lot of musical bases. A check of YouTube shows her range through a series of bands and phases. Panic can bring to mind pop rockers like Pat Benatar and Sheryl Crow on the 2010 tune Out on a Limb. But she’s also shown an edgy folk-acoustic side in much of her earlier work and on the new album.

Whether it’s to a big backbeat or a tamer rhythm, Panic said that for her, the craft is driven by the words. “I really want to convey the lyrics. Poetry supported by music, as best I can. Yeah.”

Fer De Lance hits the legion’s outdoor stage at 7 p.m., to be followed by the new Coast musical funk-jazz-soul fusion, Tongue N’ Groove.

Rogue Fest continues on Saturday, July 31 at High Beam Dreams, on Aug. 7 at the 101 Brewhouse, and at other locations on the following two Saturday nights. See roguefest.ca for tickets and the full rundown.