INUVIK - Yellowknife-based band The Gumboots played for an intimate crowd in Inuvik last week, sharing songs and stories of the North and the rest of Canada.

Bill Gilday, left, the founding member of Yellowknife band The Gumboots, performed at the Midnight Sun Complex on April 23. Fellow band members Ray Bethke, centre, and Steve Lacey add their vocals on stage. - Samantha Stokell/NNSL photo

Wearing jeans, plaid shirts and their namesake rubber boots, the band took the audience on a journey across Canada that visited the Mira River in Nova Scotia; Moose Jaw, Sask.; the Northwest Passage and even Hay River during the show at the Midnight Sun Complex on April 23.

Through original and covers of folk songs depicting tragedy, love and adventure The Gumboots told tales of sailors, explorers, down-home folk and Northerners, whether it was RCMP officers patrolling in 50 below weather, travelling the Northwest Passage or southerners explaining how they fell in love with the North to those back home.

"There seems to be a special brand of people who live here," said Bill Gilday, the last remaining original member of the band. "They are very, very adventurous and often turn legendary and have stories worth telling."

Gilday wrote the band's first original song, the Resurrection of Billy Adamache, based on a story he heard on the radio. It was about a man who got caught on the other side of an ice floe in spring, Billy returned two weeks later to find his wife had held his funeral, sold his trapline and clothes and that his job was advertised.

"We've looked for other stories to write about and now have 75 songs about events in the North," Gilday said. "I'm influenced by people and their stories; the style of music lends itself to it."

Gilday and the two other current members Steve Lacey and Ray Bethke all come from southern Canada. Gilday arrived in the NWT for a two-week holiday in 1971 and never left.

"I met a lady from Deline and her father said 'if you want her, you have to stay here,'" Gilday said. "It's been all good and I have no regrets."

Gilday studied music at the University of Calgary and while there took a course on the history of Canadian folk music. When he returned to Yellowknife, the songs he had learned about inspired the start of The Gumboots.

"That's where The Gumboots came from, from occupations of people wearing gumboots," Gilday said. "I'm trained classically and work hard at writing good songs. There's a craft to writing songs."

Though the members of the group have changed over its 26 years, the sound has remained the same. The band has won several Aurora Awards and has performed at the Festival by the Sea in Saint John, N.B., the Atlin Music

Festival in British Columbia and Folk on the Rocks.

The Gumboots have released four albums including Roads Less Travelled, which was released in February 2009.

We welcome your opinions. Click here to e-mail a letter to the editor.