WATCH AND SHARE “FORTY LIGHT YEARS” HERE
TOUR DATES BEGIN MARCH 23
TOM WILSON DISCOVERS HIS TRUE IDENTITY ON LEE HARVEY OSMOND’S MOHAWK, OUT NOW VIA LATENT RECORDINGS
“Over the course of discovering my true identity, the intention of my writing, my music and my art is to reduce the gap between my indigenous culture and colonialists to make a more patient, loving community.” – Tom Wilson aka LeE HARVeY OsMOND
PHOTO CREDIT : Matt Barnes // DOWNLOAD HIGH-RES
Today, Lee Harvey Osmond (aka Tom Wilson) is sharing the new video for “Forty Light Years”, a song that’s been steadily moving its way up the CBC Music Top 20 for the past few weeks and has now hit #3. His fourth Lee Harvey Osmond album, Mohawk, centres around the discovery of Wilson’s true heritage and the culture, and has been holding the #1 spot on Earshot’s Folk & Roots chart for the past five weeks.
This week, Wilson begins a string of tour dates supporting his new record Mohawk and autobiography, Beautiful Scars. Full tour dates can be found below.
WATCH AND SHARE “FORTY LIGHT YEARS” HERE
When Wilson created the moniker Lee Harvey Osmond he wasn’t entirely certain if this was a new stage name or merely a provocative handle for the musician/artist collective assembled by producer Michael Timmins to record a collection of Tom Wilson songs that would become A Quiet Evil. This was the first of four albums bearing the featured artist Lee Harvey Osmond. The Folk Sinner was next, followed by the break through Beautiful Scars. It was during this time between releasing Beautiful Scars and recording Kings and Kings with Blackie and The Rodeo Kings that Wilson went public with his recent discovery. He was not exactly the person he thought he was.
In his 50s, Wilson learned that the parents who raised him were not his birth parents; that, in fact, he was adopted and that his biological mother and father were Mohawk from the Kahnawake reserve, just outside of Montreal. Grappling with this newfound sense of himself plunged Wilson into a quest for his heritage and his truth, and led to the writing of his bestselling autobiography, Beautiful Scars (Doubleday Canada). The book is a colourful and truthful tale of this quest, and his life’s tribulations and successes along the path.
“It is a story of finding your way home,” he says. “It’s a story of adoption, of growing up thinking you’re a big, sweaty, Irish guy, and finding out at the age of 53 that you’re a Mohawk.”
WATCH AND SHARE “MOHAWK” LYRIC VIDEO HERE
Under the steady hand of producer Michael Timmins, the musician collective Lee Harvey Osmond revives the origins of ‘Acid Folk’ with appearances from old friends Ray Farrugia (percussion), Aaron Goldstein (steel guitar), Jesse O’Brien (keyboards) and introduces Anna Reddick (bass). The expanded use of Darcy Hepner’s brass and baritone sax and brilliant harmonica flashes from blues veteran Paul Reddick and Wilson’s son, Thompson Wilson, sound as guideposts behind the moody grooves of Wilson’s literary recital. Suzie Ungerleider (Oh Susanna) provides the perfect backing vocal ingredient for Wilson’s baritone.
Wilson’s life has been an ongoing quest so it is perhaps inevitable that after decades immersed in poetry, literature and music he would turn attention to visual art, a language that transcends the verbal and the written. The packaging and visual elements of Mohawk incorporate Tom Wilson creations. In particular a painting of the same name from his collection Beautiful Scars: Mohawk Warriors, Hunter and Chiefs
He is still driven to ask questions, to seek meaning from the elusive mysteries hidden beneath the surface of everyday existence, to come to terms with his history, his identity; to aspire to higher truths and to understand his place in the world. “If I have 20 more years on this planet, I hope to keep becoming a Mohawk, because I can’t become a Mohawk the way my brothers and sisters and ancestors did.”
LEE HARVEY OSMOND TOUR DATES
April 10 Grand Prairie Live Theatre, Grande Prairie, AB
April 26 Mount Tabor Theatre, Milford,ON
April 27 1000 Islands Writers Festival 2019 (Thousand Islands Playhouse) Gananoque, ON
May 1 First Ontario PAC, St. Catherines, ON
May 2 First Ontario PAC, St. Catherines, ON
May 3 Koerner Hall, Toronto, ON
May 16 Hugh’s Room , Toronto, ON
May 25 Blacksheep Inn, Wakefield, QC
