DONOVAN WOODS ANNOUNCES HARD SETTLE, AIN’T TROUBLED

“Canada’s best kept secret,” songwriter Donovan Woods, is ready to take the wraps off his upcoming LP. Hard Settle, Ain’t Troubled is set for release onFebruary 26 via Woods’ own label, Meant Well. Continuing his simple mantra - ‘good songs win’ - Woods’ strong belief in the power of a good melody and the importance of everyday language rings through on Hard Settle, Ain’t Troubled.

The record follows up his previous JUNO Award nominated album, Don’t Get Too Grand, and features some familiar tracks - “Portland, Maine” which has been recorded by Tim McGraw and “On The Nights You Stay At Home” which recently spent four weeks in the top three on CBC Radio 2’s Top 20.

Produced by James Bunton (Evening Hymns, The Wooden Sky), Hard Settle, Ain’t Troubled is a record that is purposeful and honest. “For the first time I had a budget, and I was able to hire all the people I wanted,” says Woods. “The danger in that is that you might let people play on the songs only because they’re really good at playing. We tried to make sure every decision best served the song in question, and likely removed as many things as we added. My hope was that we’d make a record that pulsed with the stuff of real relationships and difficult decisions.”

Today listeners are treated to another glimpse of things to come on Hard Settle, Ain’t Troubled with album cut “The First Time”. “I was recently reminded that people's 'first times' are most often not that good, and I think that's definitely right,” explains Woods. “To me, it's about memories getting better with time, and coming to terms with the fact that you can never experience something the same way again because your memory of it is completely made-up. It's also about not being able to measure up to someone's idea of you.”

Pre-orders of Hard Settle, Ain’t Troubled will receive an instant download of “The First Time” and “On The Nights You Stay Home”.

LISTEN TO AND SHARE “THE FIRST TIME” HERE
PREORDER HARD SETTLE, AIN’T TROUBLED VIA ITUNES HERE
LISTEN TO “THE FIRST TIME” VIA SPOTIFY HERE
LISTEN TO “THE FIRST TIME” VIA GOOGLE PLAY HERE 

While amassing a catalogue of rousing and acclaimed music of his own, Woods’ has worked with some of the top songwriters in North America to craft cuts for performers ranging from Alan Doyle to Charles Kelley of Lady Antebellum. It’s not that Woods makes music that is a product of both country and folk; it’s that he makes music that shows how distracting the line separating the two can be. Like with so many songwriters of note, what matters isn’t what you call it, or where it comes from, but the stories you tell, and the voice you use. And whether it’s Tim McGraw singing from atop a full-throttle stadium-show stage or a line whispered by Woods himself in a more intimate environment, one thing remains clear: Woods’ is a voice that demands attention.

Woods’ recently finished up a string of tour dates with Hawksley Workman, Terra Lightfoot, and The Bros. Landreth. Tour dates supporting Hard Settle, Ain’t Troubled will be announced shortly.

HARD SETTLE, AIN’T TROUBLED TRACKLIST

01 What Kind Of Love Is That?
02 On The Nights You Stay Home
03 The First Time
04 My Good Friends
05 They Don't Make Anything In That Town
06 We Never Met
07 Do I Know Your Name
08 Between Cities
09 May 21, 2012
10 Leaving Nashville

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JORDAN KLASSEN ANNOUNCES JAVELIN

BC SONGWRITER JORDAN KLASSEN UNVEILS SECOND LP WITH NEVADO RECORDS, JAVELIN, OUT FEBRUARY 19

LISTEN TO AND SHARE FIRST SINGLE “BABY MOSES” HERE

Javelin is an album that rewrites history. Due out February 19 on Nevado Records, these ten songs, among the most confidently and imaginatively arranged Jordan Klassen has ever recorded, engage the past, reassess recollections and impressions, turn failures not into successes but lessons for the future.

Sonically, Javelin is a mixing of ambient and rhythmic elements, from the ebullient African percussion of “St. Fraser” to the heavily reverbed vocals of closer “Smoking Too Long.” Klassen found inspiration—a patron saint, of sorts—in an unlikely figure. “The record is a nod to the ‘90s New Age music that I grew up with,” he says with a slight chuckle. “My mom was really into Enya, and I wanted to explore some of those sounds in a very modern way. I wanted to really embrace ethereality.” It’s not hard to hear echoes of “Orinoco Flow” or “Caribbean Blue” in the soft-focus thrum of “Miles,” even the delicate overlay of instruments on “We Got Married,” even the whispered valedictory of “Smoking Too Long.” 

The song “Baby Moses” revisits the sometimes disappointing past. “It was a song I wrote looking back at my twenties and wishing that I'd known then what I know now. Truly Rod Stewart-esque. I wanted to be honest about my disappointment, but also humble enough to not just blame everyone else for my own shortcomings.

LISTEN TO AND SHARE “BABY MOSES” HERE

 Recorded just outside of El Paso, Texas at the recommendation of James Vincent McMorrow, Klassen booked sessions at Sonic Ranch, a fairly isolated studio where he could lose himself in music, working long days and nights to capture the sounds he heard in his head and to devise all new ones in the studio. Playing the role of producer Klassen played almost all the instruments on the record—a solitary recording experience, but one that kept things focused. “I wanted it to be scary. I have a lot of friends in Vancouver that I’ve worked with in the past, and I have my own little studio as well. But it felt too comfortable here. I needed to challenge myself, so I thought I would go down there and produce it myself in a place I’d never been before, with gear I didn’t know.”

These songs spring from hard experiences—namely, from Klassen’s struggle with depression and his mother’s diagnosis with breast cancer. “I’m kind of an open person,” he admits. “I don’t really hide many things. Writing these songs, I just felt like I was doing what I do. But I hope and I think I’m better at being vulnerable. Or, I’m vulnerable with more clarity.”

That clarity did not come easy. Around the time he was winding down his last tour for his 2013 album, Repentance, Klassen’s mother was diagnosed with an aggressive form of breast cancer. During her first round of chemotherapy, doctors discovered it had spread to her lymph nodes. Her son wrote about the experience on “Delilah”, one of the most affecting songs on the album. With its gently strummed guitar theme, cascades of prismatic piano notes, and curious glockenspiel solo, it sounds like the aching heart of Javelin. “It was me wanting to give her a gift and in the process to say, just keep going. It’s going to be okay. I’m here.” 

Fortunately, her cancer is in remission, and for now Klassen is hopeful. And that’s the key to this complex album. Despite the fears and despairs that motivated these songs, there is always a kernel of hope illuminating the music from the inside. It’s the spark in the emphatic performances, the motor that drives these intricate arrangements, which gives the impression of songs that reach out to embrace the world rather than retreating or recoiling.

Crafting this album was, Klassen says, therapeutic, yet he is hesitant to use more concrete terms like “healing” or “recovery,” which suggest an end to things. His journey continues, and the terrain isn’t quite as rocky as it had been. The experience, he concludes, “helped me to just own things. It makes things solid, makes them tangible. But I think life always takes a long time. I didn’t just write these songs and walk away feeling great. It’s good enough right now just to have a historical document of what I’ve been through the last couple of years.”

Klassen begins a two month European tour on January 14. Canadian tour dates will be announced shortly.

JAVELIN TRACKLIST 

01 Glory B
02 Gargoyles
03 No Salesman
04 Baby Moses
05 Miles
06 We Got Married
07 St Fraser
08 Delilah
09 Light In The Evening
10 Smoking Too Long

 

EUROPEAN TOUR DATES

Jan 14 - Galway, IRE @ Roisin Dubh
Jan 15 - Dublin, IRE @ The Grand Social
Jan 16 - Belfast, IRE @ Empire Music Hall
Jan 18 - Cambridge, UK @ Junction 2
Jan 19 - Norwich, UK @ Norwich Arts Centre
Jan 20 - York, UK @ The Duchess
Jan 22 - Glasgow, UK @ Oran Mor
Jan 23 - Edinburgh, UK @ Mash House
Jan 24 - Aberdeen, UK @ The Lemon Tree
Jan 26 - Leeds, UK @ Brudenell Social Club
Jan 27 - New Castle, UK @ The Cluny
Jan 29 - Liverpool, UK @ Arts Club
Jan 30 - Manchester, UK @ The Ruby Lounge
Jan 31 - Cardiff, UK @ The Globe
Feb 2 - Bristol, UK @ Thekla
Feb 3 - Brighton, UK @ Komedia
Feb 4 - London, UK @ Islington Assembly Hall
Feb 6 - Amsterdam, NE @ Paradiso (Upstairs)
Feb 8 - Berlin, DE @ Privatclub
Feb 9 - Copenhagen, DK @ Ideal Bar
Feb 10 - Gothenburg, SE @ Pustervik
Feb 12 - Stockholm, SE @ Debaser Ballroom
Feb 13 - Norrköping, SE @ Where’s The Music Festival
Feb 14 - Malmö, SE @ Malmö Live
Feb 16 - Madrid, ES @ El Sol
Feb 18 - Barcelona, ES @ Barts Club
Feb 19 - Zaragoza, ES @ Las Armas
Feb 20 - San Sebastian, ES @ Le Bukowski
Feb 29 - Munich, DE @ Milla
Mar 1 - Cologne, DE @ Studio 672
Mar 2 - Hamburg, DE @ Kukuun

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LEE HARVEY OSMOND SHARES SECOND VIDEO FROM 'WHERE THE DIRT ENDS THE LOVE BEGINS' TRILOGY

JUNO AWARD WINNING PARTNERSHIP OF LEE HARVEY OSMOND AND FILMMAKER JETH WEINRICH SHARE THE SECOND VIDEO FROM WHERE THE DIRT ENDS THE LOVE BEGINS... A SERIES OF SHORT FILMS SET TO BEAUTIFUL SCARS

FOUR TIME POLARIS MUSIC PRIZE LISTED ARTIST FROM HAMILTON RETURNS FROM EXTENSIVE CANADIAN TOUR ADDS NORTH AMERICAN DATES FOR 2016

WATCH & SHARE WHERE THE DIRT ENDS THE LOVE BEGINS PART 2: “HOW DOES IT FEEL” HERE

ACCLAIMED NEW ALBUM BEAUTIFUL SCARS OUT NOW VIA LATENT RECORDINGS

“a modern folk classic” NOW Magazine

“digs into spooky blues and the underbelly of the Canadian folk tradition, with jazzy horns and flutes, weeping pedal steel guitar, haunting vibraphones and beatnik hand percussion. …one of the greatest Canadian bands of the last 10 years” The Record

“rugged, dredged-from-the-bayou-depths vocals and oft-bleak songs that fuse psychedelia, folk, blues and soul” 9/10 Exclaim!

“like the musical love child of Dr. John, Tom Waits and Leonard Cohen. … Zen-biker musings …comforting layers of lumpy noir blues, flute-fluttered lounge jazz, rustic fingerpicked folk and noisy indie-roots twang-clang” Sun Media

“spellbinding” Postmedia Pop Forecast

 

In 1997 Tom Wilson (aka, Lee Harvey Osmond) and filmmaker Jeth Weinrich partnered together to produce the Juno Award winning video for “Burned Out Car”, tenderly illustrating the brutality of life on Vancouver's East Hastings Street. Now, after 19 years of following art on their own individual journeys, they are together again revealing their latest collaborative project, Where The Dirt Ends The Love Begins…, a trilogy of short films set to the music of Lee Harvey Osmond’s latest album,Beautiful Scars.

Set in Mexico, the trilogy chronicles a series of dreams about the day to day to dust journey of love. Weinrich settles into the city and brings together a collection of characters, including law students, gang members, housewives, and street hustlers to fill out a seductive and sometimes bleak picture of what love brings to us and what love takes away. The faces of the characters in these films are the faces of love. The music from Beautiful Scars supplies the inspiration and adds to the vibrant story Weinrich tells with the film. The director explains:

I so relate to this as the ebbs and flows of my life has had me be a millionaire more than one time and flat broke and destitute way more than one time. Sometimes I wonder if I live a more extravagant life style when I get a big check from a job just so I won't get too comfortable, and I'll spend a ton of money in no time. I made 18,000 a day for 220 days one year, grabbed my blue heeler, and flew to Paris where I rented a beautiful Mercedes and basically followed Michael Jackson and Bruce Springsteen both who were on tour, not to see them, but to rent whatever rooms they had just rented at whatever hotel they had just stayed at. 

I spent 90,000 dollars in six weeks and had the time of my life, and I didn't drink or anything. I was super into rock climbing so I camped in Leon France and spent 800 a night for my room and rock climbed with Marc Ivora one of the greatest climbers of all time. 

But this year I found myself in Mexico trying to shoot Chitoville. Somedays I pawned one lens to pay for my room and whatever and then when I got some money, from the grace of a friend (Like for instance:  Tom Wilson hired me to do three modestly budgeted music videos for him, and he was so so so patient it blows my mind) or I'd get a modest down payment on a job coming (that I am now just finishing), I'd buy the lens back. When the money ran out again I'd pawn the other lens because I wanted to shoot wide angle for awhile. I still have the head of a tripod and my zoom recorder down there. 

So whatever it takes to keep the fire burning, to not accept that circumstances define me. And now I am heading to another great place financially it feels like, I hope, with my company Food Truck, with a resurgence my relationship with the Canadians at Moxie's who continue to hire me, and with my movie 'The Invention of Beauty' finally coming out, maybe that might reward me a bit. So, I'm heading back to Mexico to keep shooting and continue writing on The Red Motel, and being me. Which this time includes a studio I'm setting up and I am going to start painting creating artful poetic pieces on wood and canvas, and I'm going to write a book too. 

And whatever else God lets happen before me.

WATCH & SHARE WHERE THE DIRT ENDS THE LOVE BEGINS PART 2: “HOW DOES IT FEEL” HERE

Having recently returned from an extensive and very successful Canadian tour Lee Harvey Osmond are looking forward to 2016 with the first of many performances now confirmed in February for Toronto, Nashville and Folk Alliance in Kansas City. In the meantime, Tom Wilson will continue to work on his book having signed a deal with Random House earlier this year. The songwriter and author recently visited CBC q to talk about the book and to debut a new Miriam Toews-inspired song live in front of the award winning author and an international radio audience. All tour dates are listed below

Produced by Michael Timmins (Cowboy Junkies) in the intimacy of his Toronto Roncesvalle studio, the humanity of Beautiful Scars is like the warmth of blood that rushes to the cut: a sudden alive jolt in the middle of peril and uncertainty; a suspension of possibility that anything can happen next. Redolent with swooning horns and guitars that bob and weave, Lee Harvey Osmond’s voice - forever the hallmark of his sound which spans over three decades of work - sounds, here, like a warm hand to the forehead, an arm on the arm of the stricken, a comforting growl at the heart of a screaming world.

At once evoking Howlin’ Wolf, Mike Scott and Roy Loney, Beautiful Scars bends and twists and stretches and squeezes Lee Harvey Osmond’s deep baritone - the producer treating it as if caged in a transistor radio, bathed in echo from above, or sunk in the muck of distortion. The strength of the songs notwithstanding, Beautiful Scarsis a fascinating vocal journey to rank among the great sonic Canadian records of our time.

All three Lee Harvey Osmond albums (A Quiet Evil, The Folk Sinner, Beautiful Scars) have been listed for the Polaris Music Prize as well as Blackie And The Rodeo Kings’ 2011 album Kings And Queens of which Wilson is a founding member and contributing songwriter.

WATCH PART 1 OF WHERE THE DIRT ENDS THE LOVE BEGINS… “LOSER WITHOUT MY LOVE” HERE
STREAM BEAUTIFUL SCARS HERE
WATCH THE VIDEO FOR “BLUE MOON DRIVE” HERE
WATCH TOM WILSON DEBUT THE SONG “BEAUTIFUL SCARS” ON CBC q HERE

LEE HARVEY OSMOND LIVE DATES

Dec 4-5 - Toronto, ON - Art Of Time Ensemble - Harbourfront Centre
Dec 12 - Sarnia, ON - Paddy Flaherty's
Feb 13 – Toronto, ON – The Horseshoe Tavern
Feb 17 – Nashville, TN – Music City Roots
Feb 19 – Kansas City, MO – Folk Alliance

***More North American Dates To Be Announced Soon***

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