Wendell Ferguson is as funny as he is busy.
“I’m a musical prostitute,” he said when asked what projects he’s been involved in. He spends a lot of time recording on other people’s albums including Lethbridge musician Karen Romanchuk and bigger names like Sylvia Tyson.
“I do a lot of session work. The phone rings and I say yes, unless it’s the tax department, then I say no,” Ferguson laughed.
“ I’ve got a little studio in my basement. It’s not Abbey Road, but it’s good. People e-mail me MP3s, I’ll record my part and send it back to them and I can make money in my pyjamas,” he continued adding working at home allows him to incorporate his vast guitar collection.
“When I go out to do a session, I’ll only five or six guitars. But when i work at home I can hear what it needs, so if it needs a baritone guitar, then I have one,” he said.
But a couple times a year he gets to break from the routine of “making money in my pyjamas,” and gets to hit the road with long tome collaborator Katherine Wheatley.
The duo will be playing the Lethbridge Folk Club Wolf’s Den, Nov. 10. Their show combines Ferguson’s hot guitar playing and weird sense of humour with Wheatley’s more serious, stories and songs. They will be touring around Alberta and Saskatchewan with a few dates in Manitoba.
Meanwhile Wheatley has been busy doing her own thing according to Ferguson noting she was busy touring and playing around the Arctic Circle with scientists and researchers, multi-tasking playing music and driving heavy machinery. She also did a similar thing in the Antarctic.
“So I joked with her, I guess you’re truly bipolar,” Ferguson laughed adding she is also busy running songwriting workshops in schools.
They alway enjoy getting back together for a tour.
“It’s fun because it’s so fresh. We haven’t seen each other for three months,” he said.
“It’s fun to have that balance.
“My agent didn’t think this would work, but it has,” he said.
Lethbridge classical guitarist Dale Ketcheson will be opening the show which Ferguson is looking forward to.
“I really love that stuff,” he said.
He is excited about returning to Lethbridge.
“I have a lot of old friends there and we meet new ones there too,” he said.
In between working on other people’s projects, he is also working on the follow-up to his last CD “Menage moi,” which was released a few years back and won the 2010 Canadian Folk Music Award for "Best Instrumental Album".
Ferguson has also won the CCMA Guitar Player of the Year 6 times (1995 to 2001),received a Juno nomination for his band Coda the West, plus his live CD "The $#!T Hits The Fans" was nominated for the Album of the Year (2006 CCMAs).
“It’s going to be pretty eclectic,” he said.
“I‘ve got to follow the music. So there might be bluegrass music and maybe even polkas,” he said.
The show begins a t 8 p.m. sharp with Dale Ketcheson. Tickets cost $20 for Lethbridge Folk Club members and $25 for non-members.
