Every Thursday, we publish live music and performance events at pubs and clubs in Peterborough and The Kawarthas based on information that venues provide to us directly or post on their website or social media channels. Here are the listings for the week of Thursday, November 10 to Wednesday, November 16.

If you’re a pub or club owner and want to be included in our weekly listings, please email our Nightlife Editor at nightlife@kawarthanow.com.

For someone who has travelled and worked as long and hard as southern Ontario songwriter Fred Eaglesmith, it’s no small wonder that he still enjoys being on the road.

He knows this continent and beyond like the back of his hand, and yet this time it was a run in often passed-over northern Ontario that wowed Fred and his wife and bandmate Tif Ginn.

“It was great to play these towns in the North that don’t have too much going on,” Fred tells me from his Waterford home. “People were so happy to have music. They were all bringing us food and things.”

People from towns like Schreiber, Bruce Mines, and Gore Bay came out in droves to see Fred play. Stenciled signs lined remote parts of Highway 17 advertising his shows at small town legions and community halls. Fred likes playing these sorts of gigs a lot.

VIDEO: “Lucille” – Fred Eaglesmith and Tif Ginn in Bruce Mines

“There’s something special about a show where you set up the chairs yourself,” he says.

When Fred returns to Peterborough on Saturday, November 12th, he will be joined by his wife and bandmate Tif Ginn. The couple will play at Showplace Performance Centre (290 George St. N., Peterborough) for the first time.

Though he has not been here a lot recently, Fred’s musical history definitely runs through Peterborough.

“Me and Peterborough go way back,” he says. “I remember I first started coming down there when Reverend Ken and Washboard Hank were still playing together, and of course I used to play shows with your dad.”

My dad (Daniel Fewings) did indeed play shows with Fred. I recall being in The Only Cafe for breakfast with them once and having Fred hand me a two-dollar bill to get change for pinball.

Of course, another of Fred’s connection to the city is the late great songwriter Willie P. Bennett, who lived in Peterborough until he died in the city in 2008. He was a bandmate of Fred’s for over 20 years.

If you’ve seen Fred perform before, you can expect to hear something a little different at his November 12th performance in Peterborough. Fred’s show changed recently from a full-band lineup to a duo, with Tif singing harmonies and accompanying him on multiple instruments including mandolin, accordian, and more.

VIDEO: “49 Tons” – Fred Eaglesmith and Tif Ginn

“We’re finding a place where the two of us land,” Fred explains. “She’s from Texas, so of course she’s got country and roots in her. So we’re finding this place to go and it’s interesting. It’s still a great show.”

When he says “show”, he means something a little more than a concert. Strip away the instrumentation that accompanied Fred for years and you find that at the heart of it all are his really great tunes and a genuinely funny stage presence with a lifetime of great stories from the road.

It’s also a departure from his latest record, 2013’s Tambourine, which has a vintage rock and roll and RnB sound.

In some ways Fred has come full circle in his career.

“I’m digging into some old stuff,” he says. “Playing a little more bluegrass like I used to when I was younger.”

VIDEO: “Kansas” – Fred Eaglesmith & Tif Ginn

That return to his roots has been accompanied by a recent swell in brand new material.

“We’re playing brand new songs,” Fred explains. “We’re probably playing five new songs a night just by accident. Just because people like them and because I have a new record coming out in January. I don’t know how it happened, but all of a sudden these songs are part of the line-up.”

If you have seen Fred Eaglesmith before, then you know he’s a great songwriter and showman. Big acts like Alan Jackson, Miranda Lambert, and Toby Keith have covered his tunes, and according to Fred more and more singers are picking up his songs.

For those who have yet to see him perform, I suggest you get tickets. When you see him you’re not just seeing a concert — you’re seeing a show full of stories, laughs, and ultimately great songs spanning Fred’s 42-year career.

The Showplace concert on November 12th begins at 8 p.m. Tickets are $31 and are available at the Showplace Box Office, by calling 705-742-7469, or online at www.showplace.org.

Peterborough’s own Mayhemingways (Benj Rowland and yours truly) will be playing pre-show and intermission sets at the bar in the Nexicom Studio.

VIDEO: “Wilder Than Her” – Fred Eaglesmith and Tif Ginn

Each year I’m lucky to see a lot of shows in Peterborough and many deserve to be celebrated. But only once or twice a year do I see one that is so powerful that it crawls deep inside and keeps me up at night thinking about it. This year that show is Eclipsed, running from November 4th to 19th at the Peterborough Theatre Guild.

Directors Jennifer Gruer and Patricia Young presents Irish playwright Patricia Burke Brogan’s groundbreaking play, which raised both eyebrows and awareness when it made its debut in 1992 by exposing the long-concealed stories of Ireland’s Magdalene Laundries.

When Brogan began writing Eclipsed in the 1980s, the Magdalene Laundries were an Irish institution that still existed but that nobody spoke about. As a young woman, Brogan had first-hand exposure to the women who were chained to the laundries when she was a Catholic novitiate assigned to overlook the women who resided there. Her experiences and observations in the laundries changed her, and she left the Church behind. Instead, she brought the plight of the women of the Magdalene Laundries to the stage in her award-winning and moving play.

Originally produced at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 1992, Eclipsed won awards — but Brogan also suffered backlash from members of the public. However, the show would prove timely when, a year later in 1993, a mass grave of former Magdalene Laundry workers was uncovered in Dublin, which not only shocked Ireland but finally forced the nation to examine this dark reality of their society.

Before taking in a performance of Eclipsed, a little research on the history of Ireland’s Magdalene Laundries will help a lot. I encourage you to at least read the Wikipedia article before you go.

Established in 1765, the Magdalene Laundries were virtual prisons run by the Catholic Church of Ireland for “fallen women.”

First created as an attempt to control prostitution, these laundries were filled with women who the church deemed to be unfit for society, and who were forced into what has become deemed slave labour.

It wasn’t just prostitutes who kept the laundries running. Over time, orphans, women with mental disabilities, and, most importantly, unwed mothers were forced into manual labour which the church felt was for their spiritual good. Hidden away from the public and forgotten by society, it wasn’t until recently that the women of the Magdalene Laundries finally had their stories told. Eclipsed is one of the early, and most influential, platforms that brought their stories to the surface.

The play takes place in a laundry in the fictional Irish town of Killmacha, where a young novitiate Sister Virginia (Rachael Nicholls) is put in charge of five women chained to the laundry system. For the most part, all of the women are unwed mothers whose babies were taken away from them and taken to the nearby orphanage. While the women toil as prisoners in the laundries, the fathers of their children walk free and unashamed.

The majority of the play simply works as a snapshot of these women as they join together in their own sisterhood, maintaining their sanity in the laundries by finding small moments of joy. Often this comes in the form of letters from their children, moments of fantasy and song, or by finding simple luxuries such as cigarettes or lipstick still in the pockets of the clothes they wash.

Each of the women has a distinct personality, bringing her own story to the production.

Bethany Heemskerk plays Mandy, a loveable dreamer obsessed with Hollywood stars and especially her favorite, Elvis Presley. Sharon Gildea plays the dowdy Nellie Nora, who may be the sweetest of the women, but also the most defeated. Zoe Baker plays the new girl Juliet, who, as a daughter of a former Magdalene Laundries woman, has graduated from the orphanage to the laundries. Never knowing a life outside of the walls, Juliet both fantasizes and fears what lies on the other side.

Stephanie Kraus plays Cathy, who suffers physical illness as well as the memories of the twins she has not been allowed to mother. And finally there is Lauren Murphy as Brigit, who is the strongest willed of the women. Not satisfied with her fate, Brigit fights back, making attempts to escape and openly challenging the authorities around her.

Together these actresses create a strong grouping which the audience quickly falls in love with. Together they find small ways to break out of their sad existence and reveal their loves, their losses, and their tragic reality.

Eclipsed also features a stand-out performance by Shelia Charleton as Mother Victoria, the head nun in charge of the laundry. Charleton plays Mother Victoria like Nurse Ratched in a habit. Completely unsympathetic to the women she looks over, Mother Victoria truly believes she is saving the women in the laundry from themselves and sees her work as coming from God. She doesn’t see herself as the jailer she is.

But where Mother Victoria doesn’t appear to have a heart, Rachel Nicholls as Sister Virginia certainly does. Recognizing the imprisoned women’s plight, Virginia spends the play questioning her faith and her place within the church as she watches the suffering of the women in the laundries. The connection between Virginia’s role and the playwright is obvious; Rachel bring the heart, as well as the conscience, to the production.

There is little an audience can do to prepare itself for the emotional experience that is Eclipsed. Much of the promotion around the show seems to present it as a show with comedic moments. Don’t be confused by this: Eclipsed is not a comedy and the laughs are few and far between. In fact, the few moments of joy are also the saddest scenes of the night.

It is hard to watch these women with nothing who dream of a life they are denied, and who find small moments of happiness in the things everyone else takes for granted. Throughout the entire performance, I had a lump in my throat so large I forgot to breathe a few times. I cried real tears during Eclipsed, and then got into my car afterwards and cried again on my way home just thinking about the performance I just saw. Eclipsed is just that kind of show.

While Eclipsed is not a happy play, it is an important one. It reveals a brutal part of Ireland’s history that needs to be told.

I spent hours last night and again this morning researching the history of the Magdalene Laundries, and watching documentaries and reading confessionals on-line. And don’t think that these laundries were just in Ireland. They existed all over Europe, as well as in Canada and the United States. These are the stories of enslaved women lost in time. Eclipsed allows their suffering to be recognized and their stories to be told.

Well produced and performed, Jennifer Gruer and Patricia Young and their company have the talent and the tenderness to make this show come to life and hit all the right emotional notes. Eclipsed is amongst the best shows I have seen in 2016. Take the time to see this production — and bring along a box of tissues.

Eclipsed runs Thursdays to Saturdays until November 19th at the Peterborough Theatre Guild (364 Rogers St., Peterborough). Shows start at 8 p.m., with a 2 p.m. matinee show on Sunday, November 13th. Tickets are $20 for adults, $18 for seniors, and $11 for students, and can be ordered by visiting the box office from 5:30 to 8 p.m. on Thursdays and Fridays and one hour before curtain time on days of performances, or by calling the box office at 705-745-4211.