PONDERCAST EPISODE 60 : THINKING TIME

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Pondercast Episode 60 is called Thinking Time, Laurie Brown’s first episode to address what is coming up as we all struggle to adapt to massive change.



Watch for more change from Pondercast: we are releasing short episodes three times a week that we call Grounding Thoughts on social media and on our website for you to reach for when you feel the ground beneath your feet disappear.
 

Make your world very small...and your heart very big...and stay well

LISTEN AND SHARE PONDERCAST EP 60 : THINKING TIME

Recently, the Pondercast team added a new item to their online store. The Night Journal is designed to go hand-in-hand(ear?) with our audio guide – you’ll need both for the magic to work. So get your journal, favourite pen and a speaker then let Laurie Brown reintroduce you to your senses as she guides you through seven nights of drawing, writing and designed activities set to the soundscapes of Joshua Van Tassel. 

FIND OUT MORE ABOUT THE NIGHT JOURNAL HERE

Pondercast is powered by listeners. If you’d like to share the musical love, you can start by sharing this episode. If you feel like that’s just not enough, please consider becoming a patron of the show via the Pondercast Patreon here. Patrons receive a behind the scenes look at Pondercast, first notice of new episodes, and access to monthly Ponder Playlists. 

Of course, the best way to learn about new episodes and stay in touch while you are up in the clouds is through the Pondercast Newsletter. Sign up here. 

 SUBSCRIBE TO PONDERCAST ON ITUNES / SPOTIFY / YOUTUBE

Recently, Killbeat Music partnered with the team at Pondercast to bring you Ponderbeat, a series of special episodes featuring selections curated by Brown from some of Killbeat’s latest releases. The fifth episode of Ponderbeat is live now, featuring music from Bombay Bicycle Club, Little Scream, Frazey Ford, Bodywash and more.

 LISTEN TO KILLBEAT’S COLLABORATION WITH PONDERCAST - PONDERBEAT EPISODE 05 HERE

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DANA GAVANSKI RELEASES NEW SINGLE, “SMALL FAVOURS”

LISTEN AND SHARE “SMALL FAVOURS” HERE

BUY / STREAM “SMALL FAVOURS” HERE

DEBUT LP YESTERDAY IS GONE OUT MARCH 27 VIA FLEMISH EYE

PRE-ORDER YESTERDAY IS GONE HERE

“Dana Gavanski casts a spell on listeners with her psych-washed folk songs.” - Exclaim! 

“Her honeyed vocals tiptoe around whimsical lyricism about the changing of the seasons and the slow burn of time” - Beatroute 

"Authoritative debut " (8/10)  - UNCUT

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Photo Credit : Tess Roby // DOWNLOAD HIGH-RES

Serbian-Canadian musician Dana Gavanski will release her debut album, Yesterday Is Gone, on March 27 via Flemish Eye Records. Today, she presents “Small Favours”, the final single before the album release later this month. 

Dana shared her state of mind when she wrote “Small Favours” and how it came to her in a song : “‘Small Favours’ expresses a cheekiness. A playful dismissal of heaviness and getting bogged down by emotions, acknowledging how things may seem small when they’re big and big when they’re small.”

LISTEN AND SHARE “SMALL FAVOURS” HERE

BUY / STREAM “SMALL FAVOURS” HERE

And if you missed it last month, watch Dana’s video for the album’s title track “Yesterday Is Gone” filmed in the colourful and retro underground of Montreal’s metro system.

WATCH AND SHARE “YESTERDAY IS GONE” HERE

By turns break-up album, project of curiosity, and, as Dana puts it, “a reckoning with myself,” Yesterday Is Gone is an album of longing and devotion to longing, and of the uncertainty that arises from learning about oneself, of pushing boundaries, falling hard, and getting back up.  Moments of beguilement splinter a backdrop of tenderly picked guitar, bass, synth, and poppier elements, which commune to produce her own kind of wall of sound. Each component is meticulously placed, yielding a deeply sincere response to the chaos of human emotion.

Yesterday Is Gone was co-produced between Dana, Toronto-based musician Sam Gleason, and Mike Lindsay (Tunng and LUMP w/ Laura Marling). While Sam helped Dana bring out the tunes, Mike’s input marked the beginning of developing Dana’s sound. The two kept stripped it down to the essentials, keeping things bare and letting the songs speak for themselves. The album shapeshifted as it passed through the hands of Dana, Sam, and Mike, taking on different tastes, feelings, and visions. When Dana performed the songs with a band, they found new form again. She was intrigued by performers like David Bowie and Aldous Harding, who inhabit different personalities on stage, physically tuning themselves to their music. 

WATCH AND SHARE “CATCH” HERE

WATCH AND SHARE “ONE BY ONE” HERE

“Often we have to go a little far in one direction to learn something about ourselves,” Dana says. The months of solitary writing and self-doubt testify to this, but they’ve led to Yesterday Is Gone: an optimistic, steely-eyed gaze into the future.

PRE-ORDER YESTERDAY IS GONE HERE

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YESTERDAY IS GONE TRACKLIST
1 One By One
2 Catch
3 What We Had
4 Good Instead of Bad
5 Trouble
6 Yesterday Is Gone
7 Small Favours
8 Everything That Bleeds
9 Other Than
10 Memories of Winter

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STREAMING PLATFORMS

PHARIS & JASON ROMERO TO RELEASE 5TH LP, SHARE TWO NEW TRACKS

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Photo Credit : Laureen Carruthers // DOWNLOAD HIGH-RES

Bet On Love, the fifth record from two-time JUNO Award winners, Pharis and Jason Romero, is a modern folk ode to the reciprocal relationships between place, people and time. Recorded in their banjo shop outside the small Northern town of Horsefly, British Columbia, with the help of producer Marc Jenkins (who produced their JUNO-winning 2018 record Sweet Old Religion), the album is quite literally home grown. The songs on Bet On Love, coming May 15, 2020, are inspired by the land the Romeros live on and the lifestyle they have chosen to lead, focused on balance, simplicity and intention. Add in a bustling boutique banjo business and the raising of two young children with the busy life of active musicians, and the balancing act itself becomes an art form. 

Today, Pharis & Jason are sharing two songs from the album, “New Day” and “We All Fall”. “Last December we converted our banjo workshop into a recording studio, and spent days dusting, misting and wiping down so engineer John Raham could bring in his incredible old gear,” says Pharis. “Playing live with the musicians, we all wanted to create something that felt like a curtain of sound, with the vocals lifting over the pulse of the songs.

The songs are all related and intertwined, so we’re releasing them in pairs. ‘New Day’ and ‘We All Fall’ are the first pair. 

‘New Day’ is a wish for real connection and love, with hopes for lonely societies. When someone puts their hand in yours in love, they’re giving you a future and hope. And a triumphant refrain when you find it: ‘I can hear my voice a-singing across the valley, I can hear my voice a-singing across the hills.’

‘We All Fall” is a story of rising and falling - with a young rise to pleasure, a middle-aged fall to loneliness, and the wisdom in later years to ‘love what I have, and don’t mind what is gone’. We all fall from time to time, but the song sings with a call that we aren’t alone.”

WATCH AND SHARE “NEW DAY” HERE

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Double A-Side Artwork // DOWNLOAD HIGH-RES

From the outside, this existence drips with romanticism. Two people in love, building banjos and rearing children by day while writing and performing intimate music by night. Yet on the inside this deceptively simple, elegant life is only made possible by applying an acute dedication to life and art, form and function, music and family. The same focus that has made Pharis & Jason Romero two of the best instrument builders in the world is brought to bear on mastering the acoustic tones of their recorded music. Their new album shines with life, reflecting a deep sense of love and community. Their unique world gently offers up tone and song, bound together in music of transcendent beauty. 

The title track from the album features the most personal song Pharis Romero has ever penned and this intimacy reverberates throughout the 11-track record. “New Day” and “Right in the Garden” sound like songs she might sing to her children–soft, warm and full of light–while “We All Fall” carries a gentle lesson. With exceptional control, range, and vocal clarity, Pharis’ voice soars above these tracks, joined in exquisite, lush harmony with Jason Romero. His calm and slightly weathered voice drifts over songs of journey and heartbreak, their vocals weaving and intertwining like branches on the willows that hang over the creek outside their door. Pharis’ songwriting draws from folk wellsprings as well as deep American and Canadian roots. A lifelong student and teacher of these roots, Pharis writes songs that seem old but echo with an ease and simplicity that belies their construction. Jason contributes the sublime instrumental composition “New Caledonia”, played (along with “Roll On My Friend”) on his handmade gourd banjo, and redolent of the Baroque complexity of early Norman Blake. In a salute to the sound of old-time country music they revere so much, many of the microphones used are as vintage as they are beautiful, with “A Bit Old School” being sung and played face-to-face through a ribbon RCA microphone from the 1940s. Also in line with this stripped-down, traditional approach, the songs, including those featuring guest musicians Patrick Metzger (bass) and John Reischman (mandolin), were all recorded live on acoustic instruments. The end result is rich vocal and instrumental soundscape of an album as deceptively simple and clear as the life that inspired it.

In the end, Pharis and Jason Romero choose the unconventional — touring selectively with two small kids, making banjos in the woods, recording at home in the winter — and they live and sing about those choices with vibrancy and an elite skill set honed through decades of dedication. Their songs are an expression of a hope found in the resilience of community, and of a love born from family, united in the melodies of life. 

PRE-ORDER BET ON LOVE HERE

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BET ON LOVE TRACKLIST
01 Hometown Blues
02 New Day
03 Roll On My Friend
04 Right In The Garden
05 Bet On Love
06 New Caledonia
07 We All Fall
08 Old Chatelaine
09 A Bit Old School
10 Kind Girl
11 World Stops Turning

PHARIS AND JASON ROMERO ONLINE
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