The Subject: Tony Dekker
How Do You Know Subject:
Lead in the band Great Lake Swimmers
Subject’s Reason for Speaking: Album “Lost Channels” being released March 31, 2009
Why Do We Care: Because it’s the Great Lake Swimmers new Album, damn it!

So Tony Dekker has been a good sport for a few blogs and offered up some interview time to bat around a bit of “Q & A”.  Well with the new album spinning on the proverbial playlists around Slowcoustic HQ for a few weeks, I have waited on posting this interview until a bit closer to the actual release date and launch of the tour.  Well, this is close enough, the tour has started, and the album will be out in a couple of weeks.

The “Lost Channels” album is still new to me, and while I do enjoy it immensely, I feel it is the start of a new chapter for GLS.  If anyone has been following Tony & Co. for the last few years – you will find that what I consider their signature sound, seems to be melding with a more modern full band approach.  This evolution of the band is often necessary to grow and this new album has shown much growth for these Canadian Icons.  Do not fret, there is still the signature hushed deliver of Dekker on many tracks (New Light, Concrete Heart) along with transitional songs (Palmistry and Everything Is Moving So Fast) to the full newer sound (She Comes To Me In Dreams and The Chorus in The Underground).

The album finds great folk roots at its heart, but it brings with it the flowering of blue grass and even countrified slide guitar.  In listening, you could place the songs on different sides of the same coin (if not a vinyl release) as you might almost feel it being two EPs, fused into a full solid release.  While I will always enjoy the lone acoustic GLS, there is something to be said for the ability to flex your sound to something that might possibly “rock the house” at any specific moment.  I am sure the live show is going to be spectacular, especially for this album.  Well enough, lets hit the recording backstory then follow it with interview below!

Backstory on the recording of the album:

“…their fourth album set for release on March 31st, finds them once again recording at historic locations. This time in the Thousand Islands region of Ontario and New York state, telling tales of hidden histories, still “mining for light in the dark wells,” still “tuned to an instrument of greater and unknown design….  Dekker chooses to record in old churches, community halls, abandoned grain silos and rural locations. It’s easy to hear why. His voice doesn’t need any studio embellishment, standing at its strongest when bathed in natural reverb and enriched by the historical context surrounding it.”

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