Old Man Luedecke
- Folk, Singer-Songwriter, Storyteller
Old Man Luedecke is the recording name of two time JUNO award winning and Polaris prize nominated singer songwriter Chris Luedecke. A multiple East Coast Music Award winner known for his excellent solo live shows featuring high energy banjo driven stompers, touching guitar ballads and dry humorous stories, Luedecke has been making a soundtrack to an authentic life for twenty years.
Born in Toronto and long time resident of the countryside near Chester Nova Scotia, Luedecke began recording in the early 2000’s DIY folk scene of Halifax. His first full length, Hinterland 2006 was recorded Charles Austin’s Mullet Studio. He made his two JUNO winning albums (Proof of Love, My Hands are on Fire) for Black Hen Music in the late 00s with Steve Dawson as producer at Vancouver’s famed Factory studio. While on a tour of England in 2009, he met and supported folk roots legend Tim O’Brien who produced Luedecke’s next two albums.
Tender is the Night was recorded at John’s Prine’s Butcher Shoppe Studio in Nashville in 2012 and 2015’s Domestic Eccentric was recorded in a cabin Luedecke built himself at his home in Nova Scotia. 2019 saw Luedecke recording Easy Money at both the Banff Centre in Alberta and at Hotel2Tango in Montreal working with famed producer Howard Bilerman. She Told Me Where to Go recorded in Nova Scotia in 2024 brought a fresh if short lived all guitar sound to Luedecke’s compositions at the urging of producer Afie Jurvanen of Canadian powerhouse Bahamas. That album was released through Outside Music and had songs placed in the videos
game Pacific Drive to little fanfare.
Songs like I quit my Job, the Joy of Cooking from Hinterland at the beginning of his career and the Early Days at the beginning of his family and dozens of other fan favourites trace a warm line of effort, sadness and joy and provide a soundtrack to many peoples’ own progress through adulthood, touching a rare place of truth and charm in the holiness of the mundane. His performing style with his easy going humour and storytelling creates a rare space of hopeful and intimate magic while his banjo playing and guitar picking sparkle and delight.
Luedecke has kept up many worldwide concert appearances, recently playing in the Canadian Arctic, the Outer Hebrides and the UK, and broadly around Canada and anywhere that will have him including an amazing ten trips to Australia, on one of which with his whole young family travelled with him around rural Queensland for the Festival of Small Halls. He has supported Feist, Matt Andersen, Bahamas and Loudon Wainwright when not headlining his own shows.
In May 2022 Luedecke was awarded an honorary doctorate from King’s University in Halifax for his cultural contributions. He won the competitive songwriter of the year prize at the 2025 East Coast Music Awards.
He is currently working towards a new more stripped down all banjo album.
