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Youth Songwriters’ Circle

Presented in association with Marine Drive Talent Management, the 2nd annual Youth Songwriters’ Circle takes place at The Carleton on Sunday, October 1st. Hosted by Silas Bonnell, this year’s edition features performances by Myla Walker, Jahquoia Blake, Alexis Adlington, Sarah Bradford, Madeline Salter, Katelyn Ross, Sylvie Aulenback and Reese Bell.

Doors open for brunch at 11:00 AM, show time is 11:30 AM and tickets are only $10 + HST.

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Brett Matthews

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Aaron MacDonald

Out of the woods of Mabou, a little town that beats in the musical heart of western Cape Breton Island, comes the soulful, ever-captivating, Americana singer Aaron MacDonald.

This indie songwriter is quietly making his mark despite the pandemic. Releasing new material for the first time since 2009, it has proven the East Coast has been longing for MacDonald to return. His first single this year, “Gonna Get There” debuted at #1 on the East Coast with his outlaw country follow-up, “My Soul & Me”, making an East Coast Top 5 splash, Aaron MacDonald has undoubtedly stepped back into the East Coast Music scene. He has been named as one of CBC Music Searchlight’s Top 100 Artists of 2021.

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Tim Hatcher

Originally bearing roots in Cape Breton, now Halifax-based, Tim Hatcher fronts local band Good Dear Good, their name - “good dear good” is a simple response to “how are ya?” that emulates the kindness and lighthearted aura each member puts out into the world. Their vibrant and emotional lyrics on top of harmonious indie-pop/rock melodies take us to the dark depths of the Atlantic while the sun shines a beam straight to the ocean floor. Each player is a pillar to equally support a sound that is living, breathing and above all — good.

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Eric Stephen Martin

When Eric Stephen Martin returned home to Dartmouth, Nova Scotia from a song-writing trip in late February 2020, he was exhausted. The world was shutting its eyes in the wake of a pandemic, and an unsuccessful creative journey left him disheartened and alone in his apartment for the first months of spring. It was these isolated conditions in which he wrote the eight songs that make up his first full length album, Dreamlike.

Recorded in the dead of 2020, Dreamlike features fellow Dartmouth-area musicians Joel Plaskett, Mo Kenney, and Thomas Stajcer. Martin sings the entirety of the album without harmonies as the band creates warm folk and country inspired soundscapes. His meandering, stream-of-consciousness lyricism wades through the waters of heartbreak, redemption, and hope, being shamelessly self-reflective and heavily influenced by the beat poetry of Jack Kerouac and 90's Bob Dylan. Dreamlike trades the humour and irony of modern indie art for a more serious and heartfelt approach.

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Charm of Finches

Melbourne sister duo Charm of Finches deliver intricate folk-pop that is simultaneously graceful and darkly bewitching. Their seamless blood harmonies traverse melancholy and wonder in equal measure. 

The sisters, Mabel and Ivy Windred-Wornes, released their third full-length album Wonderful Oblivion in  2021 through New York-based label AntiFragile Music to critical acclaim. They have since toured the UK and Europe in Spring/Summer 2022 and returned to the UK in January 2023.

Winners of the Australian Folk Music Awards Best Folk Album (2022) and Music Victoria Best Folk Act (2021), their music has been nominated twice for the prestigious Australian Music Prize. 

Their 2019 sophomore album Your Company won the 2020 Independent Music Awards' Best Folk/Singer-Songwriter Album - the same award won by Martha Wainwright the previous year.  

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Elyse Aeryn

Singer-songwriter Elyse Aeryn is known for her fiery and rebellious rock and roll. Her bluesy melodies paired with her bold, warm voice make for an authentic and ageless sound.

For Elyse, a lifelong writer, the words and stories come first. She pens lyrics that tell the truth about her own life in the hope they will illuminate the truth in someone else’s. Hard knocks, dead ends, new beginnings - Elyse writes with heart about the stuff of life. You can practically taste the inner strength and resilience in her music. Its gritty and passionate and real. 

After a decade in the corporate world, music called for a bigger part in Elyse’s life and she’s answering that call with all she’s got. After recently sharing the stage with names like Blue Rodeo, The Crash Test Dummies, Matt Minglewood, and Robyn Ottolini, she released her debut album, Joy State of Mind, on March 31st, 2023. 

Elyse’s rich voice, soulful lyrics, and charismatic guitar riffs are blowing away listeners and audiences. Do yourself a favour and turn up the volume.

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Sean McCann

2023 marks the XXX anniversary of one of Canada’s favourite bands and founding member Séan McCann will be celebrating the legend & the legacy right across the country. Singalong with “The Shantyman” as he sails us back in time through hilarious stories and foot stomping traditional favourites to the brighter bays of his native Newfoundland. This is the only “tribute show” you need to see this decade and a nostalgic tip of the hat to the shared history of a truly iconic Canadian band.

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Leonard Sumner

Anishinaabe MC/Singer/Songwriter Leonard Sumner's storytelling flows directly from the shores of Little Saskatchewan First Nation, located in the heart of the Interlake of Manitoba.  

Sumner's self-determined sound is evidence of his ability to simultaneously occupy landscapes of multiple musical genres including; Hip-Hop, Spoken Word, Country, and Rhythm and Blues. 

With every vibration of the strings on his guitar, Leonard rattles the dust off truths that have been buried for far too long. On stage he poetically sings awake the consciousness of audiences may have been unaware of their slumber.

In this era of unsettling history and healing wounds of the past, Sumner's music is an expression of medicine that walks the line between fortitude and fragility. 

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Anyma

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Tara MacLean

Canadian singer/songwriter Tara MacLean has been an internationally renowned and award winning recording and touring artist for over 25 years. She released her first album with the Nettwerk Music Group in 1996 and Sony Music Publishing Canada. Since then has been signed with Capitol Records, and EMI Canada with her JUNO nominated band Shaye. She has written and recorded six solo albums and two with Shaye.

Tara has recently received the Senate of Canada Medal for her activist work in her community. She finished a run of three summer seasons with her hit theater show that she wrote, produced, and directed called, “Atlantic Blue-The Stories of Atlantic Canada’s Iconic Songwriters” in Charlottetown. The summer of 2019 saw Atlantic Blue produced and directed by the world famous Charlottetown Festival playing three nights a week to sold out crowds.

Tara received the SOCAN Songwriter of the Year award as well as Solo Recording of the Year for her latest album, Deeper at the PEI Music Awards. Deeper was nominated for Pop Album of the Year at ECMA 2020. Her duet with Catherine MacLellan, "This Storm", received the award for Song of the Year. She performed “Songs from Atlantic Blue” in Concert with the PEI Symphony Orchestra. Last year, Tara received the Stompin' Tom award by the East Coast Music Association, marking an outstanding contribution to music in the region.

Tara MacLean is an environmental and social justice activist, a zen student, a poet, author and a playwright. She resides primarily in her home province of Prince Edward Island, and also lives part time on Salt Spring Island, BC. She considers herself bi-coastal. Her greatest joy is being a mother to her three beautiful girls.

Her first book, Song of the Sparrow, hit the Best Seller List the week it was released and Tara quickly followed up with “Sparrow” - the soundtrack for the book.

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Bobby Bare Jr.

Bobby Bare Jr. was born in Nashville in 1966 and is the son of country musician legend Bobby Bare. He was only 8 years old when he and his father were nominated for a Grammy award for the song, Daddy What If but didn’t pursue a professional career in music until he was 30 and has said that he’s someone who avoided “working a real job at any cost.” Our kinda guy!

In the ‘90s, he led the roots rock outfit Bare Jr. and signed to Immortal records, at the time the home of Korn and Incubus, and released two albums and had a minor radio hit with You Blew Me Off, featured on the Cruel Intentions soundtrack.

His solo career has produced several great albums, including Storm – A Tree – My Mother’s Head, inspired by a Nashville storm that injured his mother. “Mom was sitting on the couch, the last day of January in 2008, and there was a big, windy storm outside. A big branch broke off halfway up the tree. It fell on the house and literally split it in half and landed exactly on top of her.” He released Undefeated in 2014 and Don’t Follow Me, I’m Lost the following year.

In 2016 he joined the new touring lineup of Guided By Voices and has played on 14 albums by the notoriously prolific band in the past 7 years.

As our friend Robbie Crowell, once in Matt Mays’ band and now a top session player in Nashville (as well as the drummer for country rock outfit Midland) says, “Bobby is one of God’s own creatures, and his own human entirely. He may not be a household name yet, but you will absolutely love him; an entertainer on the level of Steve Poltz.”

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Tommy Stinson

In plain words, Tommy Stinson is a great American musician.

You can needle-drop at any juncture of the Minneapolis native's four-decade-plus career and find a moment of great significance. Stinson was a founding and lifetime member of the Replacements. He was a key second-generation ingredient in Guns N' Roses and served a seven-year tenure with Soul Asylum. He also led two essential bands of his own -- the aptly named Bash & Pop and Perfect -- appeared on recordings by the Old 97's, MOTH and BT and played bass on the Rock Remix of Puff Daddy's "It's All About the Benjamins."

Stinson's latest venture is called Cowboys in the Campfire -- a duo with good pal Chip Roberts -- and its debut album, WRONGER, is perhaps the most American album the singer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and producer has ever made.

WRONGER's 10 tracks ride a giddy trail of twang and grit, melody and (mostly lyrical) mayhem. The very first song, "Here We Go Again," sets the tone; Stinson on ukulele, singing about the ardors of creativity, while horns swell and there's not a hint of percussion other than the perceptible tapping of feet by the musicians in the room. It's stark and immediate, like sitting right in the middle of the maelstrom.

From there we encounter a broad and passionate range of feels, from the rough 'n' tumble rockabilly of "That's It" to "We Ain't," a shuffle straight out of Johnny Cash at Folsom Prison. Stinson and Roberts take us from Nashville to Bakersfield on songs such as "Mr. Wrong" and "Fall Apart Together," while the "Schemes," "Souls" and "Dreams" are showcases of ace pop songwriter.

"I'm not one to be pigeonholed -- but I'm not putting a lot of thought into it that I DON'T want to be pigeonholed," Stinson, who now resides the out-of-the-way environs of Hudson, N.Y., says with a laugh. "For me it's always been that the songs pretty much tell you what they're going to do. I can sit there and work a song into the ground, forcing my will on it, or you can listen to the song and go, 'What does this want?' and do that. I've always done it that way.

"Ultimately it's more about, 'Let's try and get the best 10 and take what we've got and make them the best they can be.'"

Cowboys in the Campfire was "a joke at first," according to Stinson, dating back more than a decade. Roberts is the uncle of Stinson's second ex-wife; he hails from the Philadelphia rock scene, where he was a gun-for-hire guitar slinger for visiting musicians who needed accompaniment. "We've been really good friends and writing partners pretty much since we met each other," Stinson says. "We were writing rock

tunes to ballads or country or Americana, but we're both come from that sort of singer- songwriter thing." Neither man expected their association to become a going musical concern, especially as Stinson had plenty on his plate.

But the collaboration had legs, and about seven years ago, during a Guns N' Roses hiatus and before Stinson ventured into Replacements and Bash & Pop reunions, he and Roberts got a little more serious. "It was spring, and neither one of us had something to do that summer," Stinson recalls. "So we said, 'Let's go play some shows. Let's fuck around.' That's what we did. I took some songs he and I had written together, some of my solo stuff, some covers, some other stuff of mine he plays. We'd ad lib on stuff. We started playing shows in the South and stuff." One of the duo's songs, "Anything Could Happen," became the title track of Bash & Pop's 2017 release, which Roberts also played on. But they still felt that Cowboys in the Campfire -- which takes its name from a couple of Roberts' paintings -- might have its own trail.

"The running joke was, 'That's what our band would be called if we had one," Stinson recalls. "Finally we were like, 'We've got 10 songs here. Let's make a record.' It was almost as off the cuff as that. Almost."

WRONGER began life five or six years ago, when Stinson and Roberts were on tour in Texas. They went into a studio there with a friend, Christine Smith, producing and recorded five songs; X's John Doe was around, too, and played bass and sang backup on four of the tracks. The rest of the album was made at Stinson's home studio in Hudson, adding occasional contributions from friends where needed -- including a string quartet on the track "Hey Man." Drums, meanwhile, were considered optional and are only used on a few of WRONGER's tracks, hearkening back to Stinson's philosophy to give the tunes what they called for.

The songs themselves came from a variety of inspirations. "Karma's Bitch," for instance, is a real-life story from a Maryland beach community where a friend pointed out a man who divorced his alcoholic wife to start dating her equally addled daughter -- both of whom ultimately died. "It became the basis of that song, as grim as it is," Stinson acknowledges. A couple of WRONGER's songs, particularly "Hey Man," touch lightly on socio-political topics "without getting too far into it," Stinson says -- just enough to be provocative and open to interpretation. And he cheerfully fesses up to "somewhat channeling" an assortment of influences, including Conway Twitty and Tanya Tucker, whose music was favored by Stinson's mother.

"It's an experimental record in a lot of ways," says Stinson, who turned to Twin/Tone Records co-founder Peter Jesperon and his son Autry to help with the sequencing. "I don't know what Chip's ever made a record as experimental as this one. There's always been a country/folky element to what I've done, even early on, but this takes it into a

whole other direction. In the grand scheme of things it all kind of goes together in kind of a blur."

The goal now for Stinson and Roberts is to keep Cowboys in the Campfire on the road and playing as much as possible. Stinson still has other endeavors in mind, but the duo is undeniably an active concern and one he's confident we'll be hearing from on a regular basis.

"Chip and I are going to make a real run for it with this record," Stinson says. "And I'm feeling like I'm probably about to head back in the studio. I've got some ideas; they're just in my head at the moment and in my fingers. I don't know what they'll be yet, but I'm in a place now where I can do that and make music on my own terms. It's a nice place to be."

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Mary Gauthier

 “Writing helps me sort out confusion, untangle powerful emotions, and ward off desperation. It helps me navigate the powerful emotional weather systems of life.” - Mary Gauthier, Saved by a Song: The Art and Healing Power of Songwriting As she has so eloquently accomplished over the past 25 years, acclaimed singersongwriter Mary Gauthier has used her art once again to traverse the uncharted waters of the past few years. “I’m the kind of songwriter who writes what I see in the world right now,” she affirms. Thankfully, amid dark storms of pandemic loss, she found and followed the beacon of new love: Her gift to us, the powerful Dark Enough to See the Stars, collects ten sparkling jewels of Gauthier songcraft reflecting both love and loss. Her eleventh album, Dark Enough to See the Stars, follows the profound antidote to trauma, Rifles & Rosary Beads, her 2018 collaborative work with wounded Iraq war veterans. It garnered a Grammy nomination for Best Folk Album, as well as a nomination for Album of the Year by the Americana Music Association. Publication of her first book, the illuminating Saved by a Song: The Art and Healing Power of Songwriting, in 2021, brought her more praise. Brandi Carlile has said, “Mary’s songwriting speaks to the tender aspects of our humanness. We need her voice in times like these more than we ever have.” The Associated Press called Gauthier “one of the best songwriters of her generation.” 

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The Hello Darlins

Making a name as the biggest breakthrough artists on the international Americana scene in 2021 with their debut album Go By Feel, Canadian country/roots collective, The Hello Darlins are gearing up to return with an even more ambitious collection of material for 2023.

Led by Romani-Canadian musician, Candace Lacina and world-renowned Keyboardist Mike Little, The Hello Darlins are some of Canada’s most in-demand session musicians who came together to forge a distinct hybrid of country, gospel and blues. In keeping with their spirit of collaboration, The Hello Darlins will again feature many other friends and guests, a trait that has lead the band to earn the reputation as “a rootsy version of Broken Social Scene.”

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Joe H. Henry

The son of award-winning Canadian country musician Harvey Henry, Joe was born to sing; gifted with a one-of-a-kind voice and a love for story telling through song, drawing from his musical roots and Metis heritage of the Red River Valley.

Joe’s younger years were spent traveling from town to town on a freight train with nothing but a faithful dog and a guitar, collecting life lessons and harnessing the flame of inspiration that was often masked in struggle.

Eventually settling down on a homestead in the wilds of North Mountain, Nova Scotia with his wife and five children in 2020, Joe is now ready to wholeheartedly share his talent with the world with the release of his debut EP, Keep the Fire Burning in June 2023.

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Grace Petrie

Folk-rock firebrand Grace Petrie has long been celebrated for her polemic anthems, acerbic lyricism and engaging stagecraft. Exploding onto the folk scene in 2010 with an acoustic guitar, a fistful of razor-sharp protest songs and an irresistible stage presence, she quickly racked up support slots for the likes of Billy Bragg, Robin Ince and Josie Long. She spent the next decade relentlessly honing her stagecraft across the folk, punk and comedy scenes, gaining a reputation as an electrifying live performer, and in 2019 opened a UK arena tour for Frank Turner.

She is a regular guest on the hit podcast and tours by The Guilty Feminist, and has played live BBC sessions for Jo Whiley and The Radio 2 Folk Show. Her latest album Connectivity (2021) debuted at number 2 in both the Independent Albums Chart and the Official Folk Albums Chart, topped the UK download chart and made the UK Official Albums Chart top 40.

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Mick Davis

Mick Davis is a Canadian singer-songwriter and founder of The Novaks. A twenty-five year veteran of performing, record-making, & touring, Mick's music trek boasts of alliances with Steve Van Zandt and opening dates with KISS. Mick is the recipient of numerous Music NL and ECMA awards. He lives in St. John's, NL.

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Pretty Archie

Pretty Archie’s genuine, heartfelt writing connects listeners with a saltwater perspective on modern living. The fun-loving and at times heartbreaking music finds common ground in the blurred genres of Country, Folk, Bluegrass and Americana. Their unique sound and energetic shows leave listeners with a lasting memory.

With every record and tour Pretty Archie carries a little piece of home a bit farther afield. Since their 2013 debut album the band have built an ever-larger following on the east coast, across Canada and are now set to continue growing their International audience. 

Pretty Archie released their 6th studio album (produced by Mark Howard) on January 21, 2022.

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Izra Fitch

Izra Fitch introduces her alt-pop revolution. The front woman pulls from her reality and delusions to produce the high-emotion music and intense visuals she is known for. Influenced heavily by film, the queer pop artist takes personal moments and places focused, daring pop soundtracks to them. The sincere connection with her audience is then met with a drama-filled live show to bring the nostalgias further to life.
 
Equated to Catbear, Lorde and Florence Welch, Fitch is writing fresh alternative music. Her latest single ‘California’ sets a new stride for Izra Fitch - using her voice and production exactly how she needs to, to capture the moment, fiercely.

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Terra Spencer

Raised on the mud banks of the Avon River, award-winning Nova Scotian funeral director-turned-songwriter Terra Spencer has won over audiences in Canada, the UK, and Germany since her 2018 debut. She has already crafted a catalogue of startlingly intimate songs, marrying fingerstyle guitar, gospel piano, and her butterscotch voice with sly humour and '70s wood-paneled warmth. Terra's third album, Old News, was created with Ben Caplan, celebrated with cross-Canada and UK tours, and is nominated for Music NS Folk/Roots Recording of the Year. She will join David Francey in 2023  for his upcoming album release tour. In a room of 5 or 500, every show is a knee-to-knee conversation with a natural storyteller. "The real deal." - Ron Sexsmith