GEORDIE GORDON’S NEW ALBUM, RIVER ROUND, OUT TODAY VIA VICTORY POOL RECORDS
WATCH / SHARE “RIVER HOUSE” HERE
BUY / STREAM RIVER ROUND HERE
BUY / STREAM RIVER ROUND VINYL HERE
PERFORMANCE DATES BEGIN MAY 22
Photo Credit : Colin Medley // DOWNLOAD HIGH-RES
Today, Geordie Gordon releases his third solo album River Round, a collection of love songs as intimate anthems of resilience. Friendship and romance stand off with life’s losses as Gordon weaves into his home-recorded folk music the irrepressible joys of pop—memorable verses and soulful, hard-hitting hooks—honed in his career as sideman and collaborator in acts including Islands, US Girls, Andy Shauf, and The Weather Station.
Celebrating the album’s release, Gordon is sharing the new video for “River House”, “an ode to the house that I lived in for most of my 20’s and to all the roommates who came and went around me,” explains Gordon. “It was a two-story building built in the 1860’s on the banks of Guelph’s Speed River. Covered in peeling aquamarine paint, with slanting floors and thin hand-blown window panes, the house faced the river and was hidden from the street down a long driveway behind another home, a remnant of a time before the surrounding streets and houses were built.
“Whenever I am in an old building, I try to picture all of the previous lives that have moved through its rooms before me. My second floor apartment had been passed down to me from a handyman who I worked with at the Family Thrift Store and I soon discovered that many people I knew around town had previously lived there. My Dad’s first band press photos had even been taken on its porch in the 70’s!
“After I moved out, the place continued to be occupied by many of my friends and my old room was taken over by the amazing musical force Richard Laviolette just before his passing. When he died I started to reflect on how the space we hold is always temporary.
“We make our apartments home just as we make this earth home for this brief blip in history, but we are just one part of a long line of other experiences stretching from the past and into the future. The river flows on; past the old stone foundations, past the ringing carillon bells in the church tower and under the Heffernan St foot bridge. As it rushes away into the confluence of the Eramosa, only our memories are left in its wake. The water washes our time clean as the next group of tenants move into the River House.”
WATCH / SHARE “RIVER HOUSE” HERE
MORE ABOUT GEORDIE GORDON + RIVER ROUND
On River Round Gordon plays a small orchestra of instruments, including acoustic and electric six-string and tenor guitars, bass, mandolin, electric mandola, octave mandolin, fiddle, organ, Wurlitzer, Moog, and glockenspiel.
The title River Round cites the “round” as a form of singing in unison, a blending of voices, hinting at how this solo project is in fact a revival, a revelry of coming together. Even in the apocalyptic “All the Fires,” a song that looks frankly at the world, Gordon’s lyrics insist there’s a way through, and that way is by coming together: “I just need to see you safe by morning. Because there’s no morning without you.”
WATCH / SHARE “ENDLESS LINE” HERE
On the album’s second track, “River House” Gordon brings back to life the old, crumbling rooms of a home he moved into at 18, where so many musicians would be roommates and gather to imagine and build the artist’s hometown punk and folk scene in Guelph, Ontario. That community mourns through “Richard’s Song,” an ode to the late musician and indomitable “front man” Richard Laviolette (1982–2023), whose Sunday band practices Gordon recalls with radical tenderness. He sings to Richard, ‘We can’t rehearse for what life brings / You know you can tell me anything,’ and the lines resound as a call to nurture, through song, friendship and queer life at every beginning, end, and transition. This nurturing might be what Gordon calls “the good hurt in the music.”
WATCH / SHARE “ALL THE FIRES” HERE
Geordie Gordon is a singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist based in Toronto and raised in Guelph, Ontario, where at the age of 13 he began playing in touring bands. For twenty years, he has toured with acts including Islands, US Girls, Andy Shauf, and The Weather Station. His solo project combines folk, soul, and pop in classic songs with lyrical verses and melodic, explosive hooks. His songs tell stories of coming of age, music community, and queer love. River Round is his third solo album on Victory Pool Records.
PERFORMANCE DATES
May 22nd - Guelph @ Silence w/ Bird City
May 27th - Toronto @ Burdock Music Hall w/ José Contreras
BUY / STREAM RIVER ROUND HERE
BUY / STREAM RIVER ROUND VINYL HERE
RIVER ROUND TRACKLIST
01 Held Me Up
02 River House
03 Richard’s Song
04 Endless Line
05 The Deal
06 On My Way
07 Ocean Of Time
08 All The Fires
09 Never Goes Away
10 Feel Our Way Through