Stan Rogers

Stan Rogers, Canadian singer and songwriter, died in an airplane fire on this day in 1983, while returning to Canada from a performance in Texas. He was only 33 years old.

Stan’s music was classified as “folk”, and tended toward maritime style, stories of farmers, and times out of Canada’s past. “Northwest Passage”, “The Field Behind the Plow”, and “Lies” are among his best-known songs.

Since Stan joined the too-long list of musicians who left us before they should have, his younger brother Garnet has been reminding us of Stan’s music, as well as giving us his own style, more rock-and-blues oriented.

Listen to “Lies” here, and read it here:

At last the kids are gone now for the day
She reaches for the coffee as the school bus pulls away
Another day to tend the house and plan
For Friday at the Legion when she’s dancing with her man
Sure was a bitter winter but Friday will be fine
And maybe last year’s Easter dress will serve her one more time
She’d pass for twenty-nine but for her eyes
But winter lines are telling wicked lies

All lies, all those lines are telling wicked lies
Lies, all lies. Too many lines there in that face
Too many to erase or to disguise, they must be telling lies

Is this the face that won for her the man
Whose amazed and clumsy fingers put that ring upon her hand
No need to search that mirror for the years
The menace in their message shouts across the blur of tears
So this is beauty’s finish, like Rodin’s “Belle Heaulmière”
The pretty maiden trapped inside the ranch wife’s toil and care
Well, after seven kids, that’s no surprise
But why cannot her mirror tell her lies

All lies, all those lines are telling wicked lies
Lies, all lies. Too many lines there in that face
Too many to erase or to disguise, they must be telling lies

Then she shakes off the bitter web she wove
And turns to set the mirror, gently, face down by the stove
She gathers up her apron in her hand
Pours a cup of coffee, drips Carnation from the can
And thinks ahead to Friday, ’cause Friday will be fine
She’ll look up in that weathered face that loves hers, line for line
To see that maiden shining in his eyes
And laugh at how her mirror tells her lies

All lies, all those lines are telling wicked lies
Lies, all lies. Too many lines there in that face
Too many to erase or to disguise, they must be telling lies

— Stan Rogers, “Lies” (1980)