Retired teacher’s songs bring people together

Wanda Sparkes is not famous, not really. She will tell you that herself, probably twice. But in Arborg, Manitoba, where news travels fast, she is something of a sensation. A retired schoolteacher who decided to point an iPhone at her backyard, press record, and not care if she looked ridiculous.

The results are songs like Redneck Leisure-Loving Water Paradise and Whiskey Train to Gimli that have made her a minor folk hero in her town, where neighbours stop her in the grocery aisle and ask, “What’s next?” The videos are silly, unpolished, sometimes slightly out of tune. They are also, in their own way, perfect.

“I mean, maybe some people think we’re too silly,” she said. “But I think, with everything that’s going on in the world, people just need a laugh.”

Sparkes has always had music in her blood — she sang with her sisters as a child, and still ropes them into her videos. There’s usually a nephew or a friend behind the banjo, a sister on backup vocals, someone’s cousin holding the phone. The cast rotates, but the vibe is constant: a family reunion where someone spiked the lemonade.

The technology, she admits, came late. Retirement left her with time to tinker. iMovie on her phone, a demo app that let her record chords, friends with recording equipment, it all added up to a backyard production company that makes no money and has no plan, other than fun.

“We laugh like crazy making these,” she said. “We always make a day of it. I think that’s half the point.”

Her advice for others is simple: Don’t overthink it. Shoot in landscape, not portrait (she learned that the hard way). Don’t worry if people don’t “like” your video; most are too busy worrying about their own problems to dwell on yours. And, above all, don’t take yourself too seriously.

“Probably twenty years ago you wouldn’t have caught us dead doing that pool video,” she said. “But you get to a certain age and you go, ‘I don’t really care.’”

Sparkes insists she has no ambition to “make it big.” She has a couple of songs waiting for mixing in her nephew’s studio, but she’s quick to insist this is all just a hobby. Other people golf, she makes goofy songs about whiskey trains and backyard pools.

And in a time when much of Facebook is a firehose of political screeds and family feuds, her corner of the internet feels refreshingly light. “Every once in a while, Facebook just makes me depressed,” she said. “So I think, if we can give people a little joy, that’s enough.”

» Winnipeg Sun