GREAT LAKE SWIMMERS NEW ALBUM, CAUGHT LIGHT, OUT OCTOBER 10, 2025
LISTEN / SHARE “CAUGHT LIGHT” HERE
BUY / STREAM “CAUGHT LIGHT” HERE
PRE-SAVE CAUGHT LIGHT HERE
PRE-ORDER CAUGHT LIGHT LP HERE
CANADIAN TOUR DATES WITH ELLIOTT BROOD COMMENCE OCTOBER 15
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Photo Credit : Robert Georgeff // DOWNLOAD HIGH-RES
Capturing light is not easy: ask any outdoor photographer. In order to capture the perfect shot, one has to be ready for fragmentary shifts in illumination. In that spirit, Caught Light is Great Lake Swimmers’ ninth album, and perhaps their most nimble: be prepared, don’t overthink, act fast.
Founder Tony Dekker has always been akin to a wildlife photographer, often choosing to make records in unique surroundings with a connection to Ontario history. This time he holed up in the Ganaraska Forest, between Peterborough and Port Hope, with producer Darcy Yates (Bahamas) and engineer Jimmy Bowskill (Blue Rodeo). Their goal was to tap the warmth of early ’70s folk/pop/rock, whether it be the cozy sonic sweater of Gordon Lightfoot’s classic work, or the gentleness of underrated American songwriter Dory Previn. Dekker made everyone listen to John Martyn’s 1971 album Bless the Weather before the session.
Having already shared album tracks “One More Dance Around The Sun” and “Wrong, Wrong, Wrong”, today they share the LP’s title track, “Caught Light”. The song is “the story of a skydiver who strays off course while in the air, and then takes stock of his surroundings while on the ground in unfamiliar territory,” says Dekker. “The ‘caught light’ of the song has multiple meanings, in that it implies the metaphor of a mirror reflecting one’s life back to one’s self; the photographic aspect of light being ‘caught’ on paper and creating a physical document of the ephemeral; and also the discovery of a lack or a low reservoir, being ‘light’ on what is needed to make meaningful sense of the predicament of being lost.”
LISTEN / SHARE “CAUGHT LIGHT” HERE
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MORE ABOUT CAUGHT LIGHT
For the first time, Dekker ceded control to a producer, albeit one who had once been the bassist in Great Lake Swimmers (2007-08). Yates chose the studio and the backing band, which included veteran drummer Gary Craig (Bruce Cockburn, Jann Arden), who Dekker calls “the Jim Keltner of Canada.” Tracking was completed in three days, Nashville-style, with only two days of overdubs, including Colleen Brown’s backing vocals. Compare that with 2023’s Uncertain Country, which took three pandemic-stricken years to make.
Caught Light was captured in the shortest amount of time Dekker had ever spent making a record, and it’s likely to be the one with perhaps the longest impact. That’s because Caught Light is not just the most fully realized Great Lake Swimmers album in years, but it also leads off with two of Dekker’s strongest singles.
“One More Dance Around the Sun” is an open-window, summer-driving song to accompany a golden-hour trip through the backroads of your childhood hometown. Dekker himself moved back to the Niagara area during the pandemic, with his partner and two young children. “I spent the first half of my life trying to get out of the small town where I was born and raised, and I’m spending the second half getting back there,” says the songwriter who lived in Toronto his entire adult life until now. “It’s an ode to the familiarity and the joy in that and the repetition of seeing the same faces and places, knowing all of that very well. It’s also important to feel grounded in community, to feel the power of that in a specific place, keeping one’s moral compass fixed in the right direction.”
WATCH / SHARE “ONE MORE DANCE AROUND THE SUN” HERE
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“Wrong, Wrong, Wrong” is about seeking solace in a trusted friend, one who can listen to your worldsickness without judgment, the one person in the world who understands your anxiety and won’t get it wrong. Dekker’s voice, though voicing the character who needs reassurance, is itself therapeutic, an empathetic ear who mirrors the narrator’s concerns. For a song about fragile mental health, it’s not ready to wallow: it’s a jaunty country shuffle, likely the most uplifting minor-key pop song of 2025, with a stardust-laden pedal-steel solo by Bowskill.
WATCH / SHARE “WRONG, WRONG, WRONG” HERE
BUY / STREAM “WRONG, WRONG, WRONG” HERE
Bowskill is the secret weapon on Caught Light, a wizard with any stringed instrument while simultaneously engineering the record. “He’d hit the recording button,” recalls Dekker, “and then play pedal steel or mandolin or fiddle or bouzouki and would be playing electric guitar and other acoustic instruments—while also placing mics. I’d never seen anyone work at that high level before. It informed a lot of the character of the record, him and Darcy. It’s as much theirs as it is mine, though I brought in fully formed songs.”
The new players really come to life on “Running Out of Time”, one of the only explicitly political songs in the Great Lake Swimmers’ catalogue, which adds psychedelic overtones to a song about how “It’s time, not for profit / not for greed / without borders / out of love.”
The title track, and also “Endless Detours”, are about embracing twists of fate, inspired by a childhood image. “Where I grew up in a rural part of Niagara Region, on a farm, in the back 40 there was a very small airstrip with a skydiving club,” Dekker explains. “As kids, we’d see these guys jumping out of planes, five, six at a time. Once, one of them landed in the fields around our house. That was such a powerful image to me as a kid: What happens when you don’t land where you intended, when life blows you off course?” The phrase ‘caught light’ refers to an unexpected situation where you don't have as much as you thought you wanted or needed. Early on in the album process, it became apparent that would be the title track.
It’s also a metaphor for Great Lake Swimmers’ career in 2025: more than 20 years in, they’re a Canadian institution, with a large family of past collaborators who drift in and out of the band. “We were in a really great place leading up to the pandemic, then we lost a lot of steam, like a lot of people,” says Dekker, who took stock by unearthing a 2007 live show, releasing an acoustic retrospective, and a book collecting his lyrics. “Now, it feels like we are starting from scratch again.”
Dekker says he has “a newly found zeal for not being precious and being more direct." With Caught Light being one of his best albums, he’s done exactly that. Great Lake Swimmers are ready to swim to new shores. Or maybe just explore the infinite details of their native coastlines.
PRE-SAVE CAUGHT LIGHT HERE
PRE-ORDER CAUGHT LIGHT LP HERE
GREAT LAKE SWIMMERS ON TOUR
October 15 Regina, SK Darke Hall
October 17 Sherwood Park, AB Festival Place Theatre
October 18 St. Albert, AB Arden Theatre
October 20 Red Deer, AB Bo's Bar & Grill
October 21 Vernon, BC The Vernon Towne Theatre
October 23 Vancouver, BC Biltmore Cabaret
October 24 Victoria, BC Capital Ballroom
October 25 Nanaimo, BC The Queens
October 26 Campbell River, BC Tidemark Theatre
October 28 Golden, BC Golden Civic Centre
October 29 Revelstoke, BC Revelstoke Performing Arts Centre
October 30 Calgary, AB Commonwealth Bar & Stage
November 1 Saskatoon, SK The Capitol Music Club
November 2 Winnipeg, MB Park Theatre
All dates with Elliott BROOD
CAUGHT LIGHT TRACKLIST
01 One More Dance Around The Sun
02 Wrong, Wrong, Wrong
03 For You To Come Around
04 Youth Not Wasted
05 Endless Detours
06 Running Out Of Time
07 Caught Light
08 A Distant Star
09 The Fledgling Jay
10 All The Best
