Arts & Culture

Canadian guitarist Don Alder is currently touring in Europe.

Photo courtesy Don Alder

World-class guitarist back on tour

By Jim Gordon and Leeta Liepins

Published 2:17 PDT, Fri October 21, 2022

Last Updated: 12:31 PST, Mon November 7, 2022

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Don Alder is an award-winning world class Canadian finger-style guitarist who has been playing since he was 11 years old. Alder is also a singer, songwriter, composer, and public speaker.

In 2022, as part of the celebrations in honour of Queen Elizabeth II’s Platinum Jubilee, Lt.-Gov. Janet Austin named Alder one of the recipients of the Lieutenant Governor’s Arts and Music Awards. Alder was previously a StarMeritus inductee into the BC Entertainment Hall of Fame. The Our City Tonight team recently sat down with Alder to discuss his career.

Our City Tonight: COVID-19 hit us all hard and presented so many challenges. What have you been doing during and after the pandemic?

Don Alder: During the pandemic there was lots of isolation and lots of eating. But it was a positive time for me because I was primarily doing only instrumentals on my CDs, and I have tons of old songs that I have never released that are singer-songwriter tunes. This time gave me the opportunity to dive in and look for band members, and by the time we were done we had 30 local and international musicians playing on the new CD (Won’t Be Home).

OCT: You are certainly no stranger to touring, and now that the world is opening up globally (we understand) you will be going back on tour, touring in Europe and primarily Germany.

DA: Mostly we will be touring in Germany, but we also have several dates in the Netherlands as well as a stop in France. Each year we try to spread out a little bit but obviously COVID-19 made it more difficult these last couple years. I was extremely fortunate in February to be able to go to Germany for a couple of months. That worked out well, although attendance was down a little bit, and we do hope that attendance will be up now. I’m really looking forward to getting back on the road.

OCT: For those who are not familiar with your style of guitar playing, can you describe it for us?

DA: It’s like a little kid that has been in a bedroom locked up with a guitar for a long time. Actually, it is called “finger style” but that’s a generic term because you’ve got classical, you’ve got flamenco, to just name a few. Like anything on this planet, it keeps evolving and so does acoustic guitar. The finger style has taken whole new leaps and bounds. In the old days a player would just work their left hand with the right hand. Nowadays, most guitar players doing instrumentals are acting like piano players and even adding percussion where there’s multiple parts going on. I find it a lot of fun.

OCT: You (won) Guitar Idol in London, England, even with a damaged guitar—it’s a very cool story.

DA: That was fun. This contest was worldwide, and I had (sent) a submission. Oddly with this one it started off with popular votes and I went back and looked after a couple of weeks as I had submitted late. I had a lower popular vote posted but I thought I was doing okay. When I looked at the other guys that had submitted, they had a significant amount more of the popular votes. I figured there was no way I was getting in. The interesting part is the judges of the contest had reserved one or two spots in the contest for who they thought should be in. And that was my entry into the contest, they chose me, and I got to go live. I had a terrible sounding stage but I told the sound guy to crank it up and then they handed me the top prize at the end of it all.

OCT: Your skills have been recognized throughout the music industry—in fact, you’ve had several guitars manufactured and dedicated to you as signature models. Can you describe these guitars?

DA: I had one back in 2005, a Luthier Michael Greenfield guitar which is Canadian made. Recently, one was made by a company called Mayson Guitar Company out of China. They made a special signature guitar where the frets are not normal, they’re actually angled. This shape gives you a completely different pallet of colours to work with. It is called the Signature Don Alder “Duke” Model. They also put my initials on the guitar, so that was nice.

To watch the full video interview, visit richmondsentinel.ca/videos

Jim Gordon and Leeta Liepins are contributing writers to the Richmond Sentinel.