Jon-Rae Fletcher
When I lived in Vancouver, I could always count of Jon-Rae Fletcher shows to be entertaining and epic drunken sing-alongs packed with a decent sized following of alt.country and indie-rock fans. I was happy to see that, after his relocation to Toronto, he's managed to build up a new fanbase and is getting ready to release another album in the very near future on Permafrost Records. For years, Jon-Rae put out beautiful self released albums with hand-made cover art on Deer and Bird Records, and you can listen to a few MP3s here. I particularly recommend the songs from Then Again, which was recorded by Popsheep's very own Jay. His last album, The Road, on Hive-Fi Records was fantastic and largely underappreciated by audiences outside of Vancouver. "It Shone", the song posted below, is my favourite track but the whole album is worth checking out. The live song is an amazing Townes Van Zandt cover that used to be a staple at Jon-Rae shows. This is a particularly good live solo-rendition played at Vancouver's Beautiful Music Festival in 2002.
Jon-Rae Fletcher and the River - It Shone
Jon-Rae Fletcher - Two Hands (live)
You can check out some of Jon-Rae's new songs, self described as "Gospel Hardcore", at New Music Canada.
4 Comments:
the live shows must be great, but i'm guessing that he won't be coming to denmark any time soon... hopefully a show in toronto in july.
I'm looking forward to picking up the new album, as the others are great. I was thinking that I'll have to get out to some live music when we come to Toronto this Fall - one of his shows would be cool, and somewhat nostalgic having seem a couple of times in Vancouver.
Sheeeit, Jon-Rae used to live at one point in Kelowna, where I, unfortunately, reside and I liked him when he was in a Grade 11 or 12 pop/punk kind of band. Then, a couple years later I got to hear his solo stuff and it was so great. So, so great. My fave Jon-Rae track is off his self-released "So Then" ep and it's the really, really good "Most Beautiful". The best Jon-Rae show I ever saw was when he played a show with his dad on fiddle.
I remember those days Caley. I'm from Kelowna myself (though I haven't lived there in 7 years). I've been meaning to do some posts on the bands I really liked when I grew up there, But I think it might end up being me reminiscing rather than something that everyone would enjoy. I may end up posting regarding a few that were doing some really interesting stuff.
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