Pages tagged “great lake swimmers”

Canadian folkies Great Lake Swimmers had a busy summer. They've been touring since May, mostly north of the border, including one date when they opened for Robert Plant and Alison Krauss in GLS's hometown of Toronto. They performed at charity concerts and focused on building community. But when Tony Dekker wasn't busy scoring a documentary, paying homeage to Canadian concrete, or playing drill sergeant in folk boot camp, Great Lake Swimmers began creating new material. Nettwerk just announced the anticipated release of the band’s fourth album, set for early Spring 2009.

Tony Dekker of the Toronto folk band Great Lake Swimmers has just finished his first movie score. His compositions will appear in the Greg Kohs documentary Song Sung Blue, which follows the love story and career of Mike and Claire Sardina, the Milwaukee husband and wife comprising Neil Diamond tribute singing act Lightning & Thunder. Song Sung Blue premiers Jan. 20 at the Slamdance Film Festival in Park City, Utah. Not only does Dekker get to write the score, he also covers the chart-topping 1972 Diamond track "Song Sung Blue" for the closing credits.

Greg Kohs, the film's director and producer, is a 10-time Emmy Award-winner. It's the full-length feature film debut for Kohs, who currently produces TV commercials internationally. Song Sung Blue draws from over eight years of material and will compete with nine other documentaries at the festival. "The honesty and emotional warmth of Tony's music provides an intimate texture to the film's 'captured not contrived' style of storytelling," Kohs said about Dekker's score in a statement.

To celebrate the film's premiere, Dekker will give a free acoustic performance at Cicero's in Park City on Jan. 23. He'll be joined on stage by one of the film's stars, Claire Sardina (Thunder), in the first live show she's done in over a year.

Dekker, the principal songwriter for Great Lake Swimmers, is no stranger to creating ambient soundscapes with drama or location as inspiration. It's just this experience that he used to provide a backdrop for the struggles and triumphs portrayed in Song Sung Blue.

Great Lake Swimmers released their third full-length album, Ongiara, in 2007 on Netwerk Records. It was the follow-up to 2005's Bodies and Minds and their self-titled debut in 2003. The band also released a free live EP in 2007. After spending much of the past year touring, the Swimmers most recently supported Feist on some of her Canadian tour stops in December.

Stream two of Dekker's tracks from Song Sung Blue:

Related links:
SongSungBlue.com
Song Sung Blue on the Slamdance website
GreatLakeSwimmers.com

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There are two types of bands. One type treats you as a consumer, eagerly manipulating you with clever marketing and inflated prices while recycling its antiquated music and charging you hundreds of dollars to see it performed. The other type treats you like a fan and rewards you for your support. The first type includes the Rolling Stones. The second type includes all other bands.

All kidding aside (love ya, Mick!), Great Lake Swimmers are in the second group. The band is currently giving away a free, exclusive, informatively titled live EP called Great Lake Swimmers: Live From the Church of the Redeemer EP, which features five live songs recorded at Toronto’s Church of the Redeemer. Yes, five live songs for free. After you absorb that information, you can download the EP right here.

But that’s not all. The altruistic band is letting you — YOU — shape its new music video for “Passenger Song.” Visit the band’s website to find out how you can submit footage from your travels. Who knows, the hours of home video documenting lots of cornfields may suddenly be set to the sweet sounds of Great Lake Swimmers.

What? You want more? Fine, you demanding, demanding reader. The band is touring the United States and Canada as you read this, and you can go see them and express your gratitude.

Great Lake Swimmers: Live From the Church of the Redeemer EP tracklisting:

1. Moving Pictures Silent Films (Live)
2. Various Stages (Live)
3. I Am Part Of A Large Family (Live)
4. Put There By The Land (Live)
5. There Is A Light (Live)

And the great tour of generosity:

September
17 - Peggy's Cove, Nova Scotia @ Old Red Schoolhouse ^
18 - Halifax, Nova Scotia @ St. Mathew's United Church ^
19 - Sackville, Nova Scotia @ Brunton Auditoriom ^
21 - Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island @ The Guild ^
28 - Guelph, Ontario @ River Run Centre **
29 - Toronto, Ontario @ Phoenix Concert Hall ºº

October
2 - New York City, N.Y. @ Highline Ballroom º ^^
3 - Cambridge, Mass. @ Middle East Cafe ^^
4 - Philadelphia, Pa. @ World Cafe ^^
6 - Atlanta, Ga. @ The Earl ^^
9 - Dallas, Texas @ The Cavern ^^
10 - Austin, Texas @ Stubb’s ^^
12 - Phoenix, Ariz. @ Modified ^^
13 - Los Angeles, Calif. @ Spaceland ^^
14 - San Francisco, Calif. @ Cafe Du Nord ^^
16 - Portland, Ore. @ Holocene ^^
17 - Seattle, Wash. @ Tractor Tavern ^^
19 - Victoria, British Columbia @ Lucky Bar +
20 - Vancouver, British Columbia @ Richards on Richards *
22 - Calgary, Alberta @ Quincy's on 7th +
23 - Edmonton, Alberta @ McDougall United Church +
24 - Saskatoon, Saskatchewan @ Lydia's +
25 - Winnipeg, Manitoba @ West End Cultural Centre +
28 - Chicago, Ill. @ Schubas

** w/ Final Fantasy & Ohbijou
* w/ Final Fantasy & Basia Bulat
ºº w/ Chad VanGaalen
º w/ Richard Buckner
^^ w/ Arthur & Yu
+ w/ Justin Rutledge
^ w/ Jenn Grant

Related links:
GreatLakeSwimmers.com
Great Lake Swimmers on MySpace
Free EP download

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Swimmers’ third album has its roots deep in Canadian soil

Named for the boat that carried them across Toronto Harbour to their studio, the Great Lake Swimmers’ third—and best—album, Ongiara, is anchored musically and lyrically to the land around the band’s hometown. Tony Dekker, Erik Arnesen and Colin Huebert create folksy compositions that will likely prompt the label “Americana,” but it seems more accurate to call this starkly evocative and melodically melancholic album “Canadiana.” “Your Rocky Spine” describes the northern reaches as an eroticized landscape, while “Changing Colours” connects singer and wilderness spiritually: “When you change colours, I change mine, too,” Dekker sings, his empathy spiked with desperation. Especially on the percussively orchestrated “Put There by the Land” and “Where in the World Are You” (featuring string arrangements courtesy of final Fantasy’s Owen Pallett), the Swimmers’ swirl of acoustic guitar, banjo and brushed snare complements Dekker’s musings and reinforces the album’s simple, yet stirring, evocation of place.

(Above [L-R]: Almog Ben-David, Tony Dekker, Erik Arnesen and Colin Huebert. Photo by Jeff Fasano)

From an abandoned silo to a high-vaulted church come the Great Lake Swimmers in all their bittersweet glory. Their first two albums are the perfect accompaniment to firefly waltzes or brooding November dawns. Swept from the nooks and crannies of songwriter/vocalist Tony Dekker’s grey matter, the Great Lake Swimmers herald a hushed but powerful one-two combination of rural Canadian might and resiliency.

The Toronto band’s self-titled debut, a DIY record—now being reissued by their new label, Misra—was recorded almost entirely in a left-for-the-weeds grain silo in southern Ontario.

“I just wanted to record in an atmosphere and really document a place and time,” says the 28-year-old Dekker. “The silo was what I was looking for because I wanted to come back to the area where I grew up to find the space and feel of these songs. So we basically set up in the middle of nowhere, and just started recording for a few days because it just seemed like there was no one else around. But with small towns … even when you feel like no one’s watching, there are always eyes on you. Sure enough, right before we finished, the owner came in, fuming, asking who the hell we thought we were. Then he took a second look at me. It turns out he was the father of one of my old childhood friends. That’s when he gave me a good shake and said ‘You’re lucky you’re you, because I was getting ready to kick your ass.’”

Capturing the ominous flutter of trespassing, the constant hum of crickets and the slow banging of steel against galvanized walls, the record’s sonic effect is ghostly, soothing and mesmerizing, like eavesdropping on a spectral sing-along in a pitch-black meadow.

In fact, Dekker described making the first album as being “lost in the dark, trying to feel my way around.” Luckily he found a way to make their follow-up, Bodies and Minds, with the same sense of place and immediacy. Where Great Lake Swimmers found the music in the land, Bodies and Minds brings the land indoors; fittingly in a lakeside church. Once again Dekker and Co. harness the pantheistic beauty of their environment with understated instrumentation and achingly exquisite lyrics, filling the hollows between notes with a hopeful atmosphere. It’s easy to feel the warmth amidst the starkness because of Dekker’s ability to tap into the heart of simplicity. When asked what he thought people should know about his records, he pauses for a long time and slowly answers, “These are albums made by people.”