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Artiest/Band: The Fugitives
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“The world is just an accident, that’s why we’re not alone.”
So begins ‘Windows Open’, the last track on The Fugitives’ upcoming self-titled album. A fitting line, since, of all seven of their records - which have been nominated for a JUNO and 7 Canadian Folk Music Awards - this album was their most accidental, and probably their most reluctant.
“We really tried hard not to write it,” says The Fugitives founder and co-songwriter Brendan McLeod. “Especially when we realized so many of the songs were about travel. We were like, ‘Oh no. The last thing the world needs is more folk songs about dingy hotel rooms and gas station sandwiches.’”
So they made a list of things they weren’t allowed to write about, and put it on the studio wall: missing family, smelly vans, the flatness of Saskatchewan, being too tired/wired to sleep, the windshield as a metaphor for freedom.
“It was oddly useful,” says co-songwriter Adrian Glynn. “Because everything on that list happens quite a bit. It’s what your mind goes to first. So the songs ended up being about what’s on the other side of all that. Not just songs about space and music and friendship, but what those ideas contain.”
Canadian landscape is all over the record - from the Shield (‘Wolf Road’) to the Fraser River (‘River Hymn’) to East Vancouver (‘Cafe Deux’) to a Saskatoon parking lot (‘Under the Ice’). But the songs are less about the humbling scale of ancient land or the steady consistency of a river, than the uncertainty in how prone all of this is to change.
“A lot of people talk about the intimacy of touring,” says banjo player Christopher Suen. “And they’re usually referring to bandmates. But there’s also an intimacy you start to feel with the landscape. Especially one that changes as much as Canada’s. The wonder of watching it morph day by day, and what that does to yourself as a person, and to the group as a whole.”
Time is an obsession on the record. Not just its passage, but how that passage feels. How tours, as a whole, go by in a blur, while each day stretches out minute by minute - same as a passing landscape. “When you’re touring together, time stops being individual - it becomes shared,” says violinist Carly Frey. “We wanted the record to reflect that feeling, where space and duration are experienced collectively.”
As a result, they recorded between two Vancouver studios: Monarch, with their usual producer Tom Dobrzanski - along with the rhythm section of Erik Nielsen (City & Colour) and drummer Sally Zori - and the Warehouse, where they recorded live off the floor as a quartet.
“We were recording during the Blue Jays World Series run,” says Adrian. “At one point Ernie Clement said that team was special because it had the power of friendship. We feel that way about ourselves, in that we wouldn’t be a band if we weren’t also friends. Because singing with your friends hit different. Whatever one of you is going through, you’re all going through, so it becomes not just music, but a statement of collective belief.”
Brendan says the same thing a different way: “When we started, if someone had told us our jobs would entail creating content for an algorithm, we'd have just picked something else. We suck at Tik Tok. We’re just friends who work hard at singing harmonies and writing songs. We know there are a lot of ecosystems where that can still resonate, and this album is kind of doubling down on that.”
The Fugitives will be undertaking a run of UK-focused European dates from late June - see current itinerary below - where band leaders Brendan McLeod and Adrian Glynn will be joined by Marlene Ginader on violin and Britain’s own Dan Walsh on banjo.
For further information: G Promo PR UK/European
- Contact: Geraint or Deb Jones
- Email: gpromo@btinternet.com
- Web: www.gpromopr.com
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