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Show ‘em you were gold

Yet another Juno Award goes to Pharis Jason Romero
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Pharis & Jason Romero, the Cariboo’s premier music act, won another Juno Award but this was the first time they were able to accept in person. (Photo submitted)

For the fourth time in their history as a music duo, Pharis and Jason Romero had their name called out as winners of a Juno Award.

For the first time in their history, when they were announced as the winners of the 2023 trophy for Best Roots, they heard those words in real time. They made the trip from the snowy sideroads of Horsefly to the slick streets of Edmonton to attend the posh gala in person.

“We were trying to figure it out: why hadn’t we gone before?,” said Pharis. “The first time we won, we had a new baby. The second time, we had another baby. And the third time was COVID. So the fourth time was the charm to get to experience what the Juno Awards really mean. It’s a way bigger thing than either of us thought it was going to be. It was pretty special being there in the awards hall.”

Juno Week is a whole slate of performances, showcases, business meetings, seminars, workshops, and more. The awards themselves are separated into two nights: the televised categories the climactic final night in Rogers Place Arena, and the non-televised trophies the first night (March 9) at the Edmonton Convention Centre, which is where the Romeros’ category was slotted. Forty awards were bestowed that first night.

“We thought it would be the awards for best bagpipe solo and best jazz piano riff, and our traditional roots thing, but oh no, it was best rock group of the year, and best R&B single of the year, all these huge pop stars there walking the red carpet, and tonnes of people who are a big part of the music industry in Canada. It was a real eye-opening experience.”

The Romeros are far from naive, but they classify who they are as people much the same way their music is classified: traditional, rootsy, appreciative of smaller crowds and deeper relationships than the glamourized outer end of the Canadian music industry.

Rubbing shoulders and clinking glasses with the most famous of the nation’s entertainment sector did not bring them back to the rural Cariboo dreaming of their next album being an urban pop rocket to land them a gig at the Super Bowl Half-Time Show, or headlining the Glastonbury Festival.

“No,” said Jason. “At this point I am just shocked and humbled and very grateful that we can play pretty much the least commercial music in the world, the music that we love, and still do well.”

They can - and more to the point, do - go cross-country skiing out their back door almost every day after snowfall, because “that’s how you maintain a love relationship with winter,” said Pharis.

They tend their chickens, plow their road when the drifts get to high, look after their plants, and most importantly enjoy their children while they are still of an age to willingly hang around mom and dad. Winter is also prime banjo season. Of course that means playing it, it’s Jason’s principal musical passion alongside Pharis’s guitar, but it also means building them. The two are also accomplished makers of the artful instrument. Now that they have settled into a family-touring-composing-recording rhythm that suits them, they produce about 30 of the handmade masterpieces each year.

“It’s directly related to how many dates we have on the road,” said Jason. “Back when we were touring a lot harder, that number went down quite a bit. If I’m home and I’m not working too hard (on a personal music project) it’s around 30. It’s easy (to head into the workshop) and it’s right here. That seems to be a nice number for Pharis and I, both.”

Pharis said last year was a time of milestones, connected to the banjo.

“It was our 20th year of our banjo company being a thing, we were building our 500th banjo, and we put this record out on Smithsonian Folkways, and that is a venerable institution of a label when it comes to traditional and roots music. We didn’t mean all those things to come together, but it was pretty neat to realize that was happening.”

It was that craftsmanship of the hands that directly led to the craftsmanship of the intellect. The song that’s propelling the Romero’s latest album Tell ‘Em You Were Gold is the single Souvenirs from which comes the album title. That song is catching winds of popularity, and true to that form of music, popularity isn’t ephemeral like the stuff on the Top 40 charts. A popular roots song can span generations.

“I was listening to a radio show about people and experiences being a souvenir of time, this idea that a souvenir doesn’t have to be a tangible thing, it can be a memory, a person, and my brain kind of exploded,” Pharis said. “I was sitting doing inlay one day, so I scrawled quick lyrics down on a piece of paper beside my inlay desk and it sat there for about six months, gradually getting covered in thicker layers of dust, and then I found it one day, and thought ‘ohhh’ and started to work on all the things that made me feel like I was being grounded in a moment with a person. It was a conversation with everybody I like. I like people so much, I’m curious, I’d like to know more about just about everybody that I meet. People carry around so many interesting parts of themselves that they don’t necessarily carry it on their sleeve. I know some people don’t like small-talk, but I do, it’s a way for people to get into each other, to find each other, and finding little pieces of people to connect with, and that’s what it’s about.”

It didn’t end there, though. As is their wont, they brought her lyrics into contact with his melodies (it’s not a pure truth: Jason said Pharis often brings music into the composing process but he never brings lyrics) and rehearsed it in their music barn not far from the house. They even carried it into the recording process when their main sound engineering partner John Raham showed up with his usual tickle trunk full of wonderful gear. But something wasn’t quite right. They both sensed that.

The Souvenirs song was a faster tempo at that time, and the banjo personality was clawhammer, but finally a new shaft of light broke in on it.

“Jason slightly changed the tuning, he switched to a finger-style approach, we slowed the whole thing down, and I started riding heavy on those base notes on the guitar,” said Pharis. “I think we laid down two more versions of it and thought, ahhh, there’s the song, we found it, now.”

Jason said, “When you listen back to the first tries at it, it seemed like too much work, but after the changes, now it makes its own gravy, as I like to say.”

Pharis does confess one ultramodern musical wish. She would love to see an innovative deejay or mix-master take their old-style tracks and do some pulsing remixes. “I love to dance. I would love to dance all night to big drum-and-bass versions, with deep bass rides. Just imaging what it would sound like makes me really happy.”

Jason said he had absolutely no desire to leave the Romero sound barn for the powerhouse studios where the platinum albums are recorded, simply because he loves their ease of access to the needs of the kids and farm, the food in their own kitchen, the comfort of their own bed, and never having to watch the expense-clock ticking like a dark metronome throughout every song.

But his deeper hope for Pharis & Jason Romero music of the future is to utilize some of the great musicians they get to meet along the way. Patrick Metzger, John Reischman, Grace Forest, Trent Freeman and Marc Jenkins were appreciated guests on Tell ‘Em You Were Gold, and he wonders out loud about so many possibilities for blending sounds. “The East Pointers come to mind. What would that be like?,” he said like a child imagining a new ride at the fair.

They both enthused over what their music could sound like when blended with the Prince George Symphony Orchestra, should such a dream ever get to be actualized.

When you’re an acoustic folk music duo playing in the backwoods of the Cariboo for chicken scratch, that kind of dream is called a fantasy.

When you’re an acoustic folk music duo playing in the backwoods of the Cariboo for chicken scratch and you’ve won four Junos in the past eight years, that kind of dream is called something different: unmined gold.

READ MORE: VIDEO: Juno-award winning folk duo showcase B.C. history in new song

READ MORE: Casual Country: Jason and Pharis Romero enjoy life in Horsefly



Frank Peebles

About the Author: Frank Peebles

I started my career with Black Press Media fresh out of BCIT in 1994, as part of the startup of the Prince George Free Press, then editor of the Lakes District News.
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