Gerry Wall
Hometown: Ottawa, Canada
Gerry was born and raised in Saskatoon. His father and relatives played all manner of musical instruments (guitar, fiddle, banjo, mandolin, ukulele). All night hootenannies in Big River, a Northern Saskatchewan lumber town, got Gerry going musically at an early age.
At about 12, he started delivering a weekly paper in his neighbourhood, which included the “Anderson home” (i.e. Joni Mitchell’s house). Although Joni was already building a career elsewhere, she once answered the door on collection day . . . and broke Gerry’s heart. She couldn’t pay him.
After playing on the road for a year when he finished high school, he enrolled at the University of Saskatchewan and did a degree in English Lit, hoping to eventually become a writer. He soon realized that writers make about as much as musicians but don’t party nearly as well. So he moved east for graduate work in economics and eventually completed a Ph.D. at the University of Toronto.
He has been writing music for a long time and all the time, collaborating with Graham Knight, a fellow canoeist, poet, musician and more recently, ex brother-in-law. He has four albums: Tobermory (2000), Returning Fire (2004), Winter Grass (2006 and ex Patriots’ Day (2007). He has never been nominated for a Grammy, a Juno, a Polaris or Blackwell's list. He sleeps well.
