tag:jonbrooks.ca,2005:/blogs/canadian-press?p=2Canadian press2020-01-12T15:26:59-05:00Jon Brooksfalsetag:jonbrooks.ca,2005:Post/60928142020-01-12T15:26:59-05:002020-01-12T15:26:59-05:00"The songs weave together into an emerging image of a collective social order that has somehow failed to recognize or grasp, the source and substantive gift of human possibilities." - Douglas McLean, Great Dark Wonder, January 2020<p><em>Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal: 20.But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal: 21 For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.” </em></p>
<p><em>(Matthew 6:19-21) </em></p>
<p>Fans of Jon Brooks will immediately recognize that the songs on <em>Moth Nor Rust II</em>, come from the much loved, 2009 release <em>Moth Nor Rust.</em> Having performed these songs throughout many years in live shows, Brooks felt that he owed the songs, and his fans, a more realized production in keeping with their revered emotional complexity and insight. With courageous, carefully designed artistry, <em>Moth Nor Rust II </em>presents an updated musical interpretation of songs that explore the nature of our shared planetary existence. </p>
<p>Joining Jon, with exquisite musical accompaniment, is a group of players known as the <em>Outskirts of Approval,</em> comprised of Neil Cruickshank, Christina Hutt, Jason LaPrade, Rosemary Phelan, John Showman, Ed Hanley and Vivienne Wilder. Many of these musicians joined Brooks in 2018, for the masterful “No One Travels Alone”, which featured songs built on a “corona” cycle, wherein the first line of the next song is the last line of the previous, forming a series of songs that finally end where they began. </p>
<p>It is not surprising that Brooks would choose to reinvigorate and reimagine the powerful songs from <em>Moth Nor Rust.</em> They specifically reflect and investigate the turbulent times we are living through – bombarded by misshaped information and outpaced by a technological revolution that often leaves us bewildered and alone. </p>
<p>How then to find hope, purpose and destiny, is a theme worthy of an artist of Brooks’ brilliance. </p>
<p><em>Fallen Tree Records,</em> his new album distributor, explains: “Brooks sees a world distracted by its unknowable future: environmental collapse, humanity’s forced retirement by AI and potentially the fall of democracy. His earlier question, “What makes us human?” is ever more compelling.” </p>
<p>The songs weave together into an emerging image of a collective social order that has somehow failed to recognize or grasp, the source and substantive gift of human possibilities. Within the mystery of these songs, are some notable creative choices. With the exception of only one song, all of the songs are written from the perspective of “we” and “he/she,” which removes, on some level the subjective, and creates a kind of empathic compassion. The songs prompt us, in our listening, to see our common connectivity and move us, perhaps, to become what we are truly meant to be. </p>
<p>Introduced by Jon’s alluring finger styled guitar playing, the opening song, “<em>When We Go,” </em>sets the pace and mood of what follows. In a clear unambiguous statement, we are counselled that only “love” will survive our dissolution into that “Some Great Other,” “to that place where moth nor rust, cannot touch us past this dust- if it’s not love, we can’t take it, when we go”. Brooks is not just proposing that our pursuit of accumulation (things, ideas, opinions) cannot survive our death but cannot even inform our living. For without love, wherever we go, we are ensnared by that which is other than our true path. In this song alone, we are summoned to let go, before we go, if we dare journey forward and see into our situation. The songs that follow will provide the framework for such “seeing.” </p>
<p><em>“What’s Within Us” </em>elaborates the condition that we all find ourselves in. This vast roaming seven-minute opus presents an elaborate cast of characters caught working, living, breathing, interacting, merely as shadows of their possessed, unrealized possibilities. They live compromised and in contradiction to their real nature. We are the artists, and the peacemakers, the meek and mourning, the reviled and the persecuted but we are not “doing” what we are intended to do! How has this become possible? How has this become our reality? Jon Brooks provides a clue to his inspired commentary, by quoting from the <em>Gospel of Thomas 70</em> – “ If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you.” Is this a warning or signpost? Of the ten songs on <em>Moth Nor Rust II,</em> this song is of the utmost philosophical importance, for it indicates a precious truth. “If it’s not love”, as Brooks has earlier sung, that resides within us, then our work, our worry, our frantic gathering, will lead to nothing. As Brooks writes, “if we keep what’s within us, what’s within us will kill us, but if we give what’s within us, what’s within us, will save us”. </p>
<p><em>The Gospel of Thomas,</em> discovered in 1945 along with other writings in Egypt, is a work of profound inspiration, for it imparts a great truth – that to know one’s self, truly, is the goal and aspiration of human life. In knowing ourselves, we cannot help but know love and compassion, for all. Of course, in these cynical times, such a message would clearly be heard with derision. The third song on <em>Moth Nor Rust II, The Crying of the Times #3,</em> speaks to and articulates that deafness. A song filled with such sadness and question, this song completes an opening trilogy that establishes the premise upon which this album is based – where we lay our treasure, then that is where our destiny resides. </p>
<p>At this point in the album, the songs become personal stories. <em>“In the Alleys,” </em>an unnamed waitress meets a fate that only imagination might detail -“where the secret and the sacred still collide.” In <em>“Small”, </em>a character named Jamie, longs for purpose and understanding, as his life corrodes from unfulfilled dreams. This song is achingly poignant and heartfelt. Sketching the landscape of Jamie’s world, as he falls under its weight, in despair, longing to be something larger, more defined but realizing only how small, we really are. “O, and if I was an astronaut- me and the problems that I got – I could see how small we really are.” Listening, the heart cannot help but be filled with empathy for this man’s dilemma, for who among us, has not felt so disorientated, so hopeless, so powerless. Yet even in such despair, wisdom may be found. </p>
<p><em>“War Resister”</em> is the third of these personal stories with a tale of man whose conscience is opened to the reality of war and its cost, “what’s freedom, if it’s bought with gun?” </p>
<p>In between these stories, Jon Brooks writes and sings, one his most enduring songs – a favourite and beloved at most of his concerts. <em>“There Is Only Love” </em>defines the dimension of the human gift and the essence of what is within us that must be given, for us to be saved. “We are the air that sings through the trees. We are each other and we are on our knees. We are the mystery and the wind in all beauty and suffering – that is to say, there is only love.” Coming after Small, this song has a deep forceful impact because we realize intuitively that this is a truth that somehow gets overlooked and yet it is the grail cup that holds the portent to all possible salvation.</p>
<p><em>“Safer Days”,</em> another character based song, suggests the disappearance of it’s narrator but who still hopes that we will meet again in better days. There is menace implied in this song that harkens back to Brooks’ work, <em>“The Smiling And Beautiful Countryside,”</em> 2014 – a collection of haunting and disturbing murder ballads which contrasts, yet magnifies, the brave hope of <em>“Moth Nor Rust.” </em></p>
<p><em>“High Five” i</em>s the last song sung on the album and is the only song in the first person from the perspective of the singer himself. Although, like the other character songs, it may in fact be another third person story. This song is new, in that it has not appeared on record. Also, it is quite different than the other songs on the album and might indicate the future direction both musically and thematically that Jon Brooks intends to pursue. (Rumour has it that during these sessions, many other songs were recorded but no released date has been proposed.) <em>“High Five” </em>is uplifting and mysterious, for is conveys or suggests that the journey through to “seeing” leaves a subtle change in the interrelations between ordinary folk. As if one, who has seen into themselves, is perhaps free to interact in silent yet acknowledged communication. “I’ve not yet heard the tone of his voice or the accent of his speech, nor have I ever come up with a better justification of God.” Beautiful played and produced, the song is an intoxicating addition to the songs of <em>Moth Nor Rust. </em></p>
<p>The final song is an instrumental of “<em>When We Go”, </em>bringing us around again to the beginning and perhaps we shall know it for the first time. It may even indicate a departure – a salutation – a resolution. Moth Nor Rust II is an eloquent, superbly performed and realized recording, which celebrates Jon Brooks’ extraordinary talent as a writer and visionary. Brooks writes songs that tease the intellect and open the heart but above all, encourage continued search for and interest in developing a meaningful life, lived and shared with each other.</p>
<p><em>- Douglas McLean, Great Dark Wonder, January 2020.</em></p>Jon Brookstag:jonbrooks.ca,2005:Post/58540542019-08-10T18:30:05-04:002019-08-10T18:30:05-04:00Merton, Donne, Digital Despair, and Jon Brooks' No One Travels Alone - Paul Pynkoski<p><span class="font_regular">Poets may have more to say to us today than theologians and economists. The poet can offer an <br>imaginative way of engaging the issues of our time, a way that speaks to the whole person. <br>“There is no revolution without poets who are seers. There is no revolution without prophetic <br>songs,” offered Thomas Merton. We might ask, then, what contemporary voices can assist <br>people of faith who pursue a vision that transcends the economic and technological mythologies <br>of our culture? </span></p>
<p><br><span class="font_regular">Jon Brooks is one of those voices. Brooks is one of Canada’s most literate and insightful <br>songwriters. His 2018 album, <em>No One Travels Alone,</em> delves into our current cultural conflicts. <br>Brooks weaves the theme of pilgrimage throughout the album and uses a poetic structure that <br>takes inspiration from John Donne’s <em>La Corona </em>sonnets, where the last line of one poem <br>becomes the first line of the next. The gravel in Jon’s voice, his percussive guitar work, and Alec <br>Fraser’s bass and backing vocals anchor the musical landscape and drive lyrics that stick in your <br>head, refusing to let go. </span></p>
<p><br><span class="font_regular">He examines the impact of digital culture in <em>0 1</em>, lamenting We’re done with wonder – in a <br>click,/We can Wikipedia it. <em>All Life’s Meaning </em>suggests that that simple, imperfect love/Is all <br>life’s meaning…and could it be on such a weightless thing/Together we are leaning? He asks, in <br><em>Proxima B</em>, were we to leave this dying earth behind for another planet, what would we take <br>with us? Baby, pack light, is the admonition, but his list grows to include the music of Leonard <br>Cohen, Michelangelo’s <em>Pieta,</em> lashings of Australian wine, and the smell of orange peels. He <br>insists We’re done with all that’s failed before. Jon asks if we have eyes to see, or ears to hear <br>the beauty hidden in plain sight – the wind off the lake, the touch of a lover’s hand, and the seeds <br>of flowers that teach us to love. </span></p>
<p><br><span class="font_regular"><em>Todos Caminamos Por Este Caminito</em> has all of nature crying out in song, drawing us into its <br>chorus of joy. The ending words, we all walk over this little trail, bring us to a specifically <br>human pilgrimage in <em>Standing at the Gates</em>. Here a Christian, a Muslim, a Jew and a Buddhist <br>end their pilgrimage at the (pearly) gates, and find themselves looking in. They ask, Will we be <br>saved or will we be lost, but Brooks redirects, insisting, Wrong question, dear./Will we take care <br>of each other? And in the response of the whispering wind we hear, All is hunger, all is <br>Love./Brothers! Sisters! Sing! The final song offers the monastic wisdom of St. Silouan, Keep <br>your mind in hell and despair not.</span></p>
<p><br><span class="font_regular">This commentary on culture, relationships, and planet never deviates from the deeply personal. <br>There is a consistent hint of a “you” close to Jon’s side. Digital despair is contrasted with my <br>love for you; he is standing at the gates with you, my love; in the midst of cultural confusion and <br>global warming, if we can go for a walk/If we can tell a friend/We can come back from most <br>things. </span></p>
<p><br><span class="font_regular">Jon offers us a vision that can look straight into the darkness and brokenness of our times. But it <br>is a vision that can see still see beauty and love, tapping into our deepest longings to find hope: </span></p>
<p><span class="font_regular">Let us pause of ourselves and count another’s tears,/Let us share the cup of suffering more <br>evenly this year/Sing us something we can’t say, sing us the unspeakable!/Like, “it feels like <br>we’re a seed dying for a new fruit to grow…” </span></p>
<p><br><span class="font_regular">Highly recommended for tired activists. jonbrooks.ca</span></p>Jon Brookstag:jonbrooks.ca,2005:Post/58540532019-08-10T18:20:52-04:002019-08-10T18:20:52-04:00Penguin Eggs Q&A 2018<p><strong><em>1. What was your musical vision going into No One Travels Alone, and how did that influence who you worked with on it? </em></strong></p>
<p>I’m always looking write songs that make others feel the pulse of the soul of the age. I begin a new album with the question: what is the current central tension of our times? I answered this twice. 1. The refugee crisis. Migrants. The fact that we are all migrants. The fact that there are currently 65 million people living in a barbaric state of homelessness, depravity, and crisis. Ours is the age of crisis. 2. The second central tension of the age is the environment. When will we admit that our anthropocentric worldview is out of date and out of sync with all that the poets and scientists tell us. This album takes a decidedly ecocentric view of ourselves within the universe. We are all connected. Hence the very excellent album cover by Christine Peters and Martin Tielli (The Rheostatics) of the whale on the field of stars. </p>
<p>Musically, I wanted the album to be sonically different than my 5 previous albums. I wanted electric guitars; I wanted to revisit the days when I was a Hammond organ player back in the early 90s; I wanted to play piano on half the songs; I also wanted a decidedly diverse sounding album. I wanted an east meets west sound to reflect the migratory themes of the album. I wanted near eastern modal sounds and sufi inspired drone and harmonium - and yet I also wanted that to collide with some aggressive blue note electric guitar. To achieve the former, I hired my friend and Toronto neighbour, Ed Hanley (Autorickshaw); for the latter, I was blessed to be able to enlist my long time friend and musical collaborator, Vancouver based, Neil Cruickshank (Brickhouse). Neil and I went to high school in King City, ON together and played our first gig as a duo way back in 1986. Neil knows my phrasing and my musical instincts before I do so it was a gift to finally record with him after all these years. I also wanted electric bass and treated violin. Alec Fraser produced the album and performed bass and vocals throughout; John Showman provided lots of colour and imagination with his inimitable fiddle performances. </p>
<p>All that said, I don’t move in a world wherein I’m free to work with whomever I choose. I don’t believe in crowdfunding albums in a socialist democracy; as well, I’m always working with very low budgets. It cannot be understated: the generosity of people like Alec Fraser, John Showman, Neil Cruickshank, Ed Hanley, and Peter J. Moore who mastered the recording. Not only does No One Travel Alone - no one succeeds in music alone. I am very grateful and lucky to have such massive musical souls willing to help me in my humble endeavours. </p>
<p><strong><em>2. How do you describe the writing process for this album? </em></strong></p>
<p>The form of the No One Travels Alone is called ‘corona’ form - it’s a form wherein the last lines of the first song become the first lines of the second song, etc, etc, until you reach the end, and the final line of the album is also the first line - the circle is completed, thus, the ‘corona’ or ‘crown.’ The poet, John Donne, borrowed and popularized this form from his Elizabethan contemporaries. That is to say, the writing process for this album was arduous and mathematical. It took 3 years to complete. I thought I was done and ready to record it in early 2017, however, an epileptic seizure while on tour in the American midwest in late February of that year dislocated both my shoulders and did severe nerve damage to my right leg. I had to cancel almost a year’s worth of gigs and was relegated to the couch and percocets for about 4 months. But, as with all calamitous life experience, the down time yielded much new inspiration and I ended up rewriting about 70% of the album on the couch during winter/spring 2017. </p>
<p>I chose the corona form because I wanted the form to reflect the theme: thus the interconnecting songs quietly reinforce the album’s message: our essential interconnectedness - no one travels alone - not the animals, not the stars, not the various Gods, and least of all, the beautiful and long suffering human beast. </p>
<p><strong><em>3. Which songs do you feel particularly stand out, or have interesting stories behind them? </em></strong></p>
<p>If pushed against a wall, my favourite would have to be the song that’ll probably yield the least amount of folk/roots airplay: Song of the Mournful World. This song provides the album’s centrepiece and essential question: “To whom may we appeal for the re-establishment of the truth?” I love the urgency, simplicity, and shock of that question. I love how many of these songs on this album play with - and challenge - traditional formal song structures. Part of our job in the digital age of songwriting is to constantly surprise our audiences - we’re seldom surprised by a Wiki-world that offers immediate and downloadable answers to every question. </p>
<p>I started this career at 37 years back in 2005. Because of this relative late start in solo performance, I was able to approach every song on every album with purpose and decisiveness. Throughout 6 full albums, I’ve avoided recording anything that causes me great shame - or uncomely pride. That is to say, I’m equally devastated and satisfied with the whole of No One Travels Alone. </p>
<p>I can probably fairly tell you the live attractions to this latest collection are the songs, Proxima B, Todos Caminamos Por Este Caminito, Standing at the Gates, and Gulfport, MS. </p>
<p><em><strong>4. How would you describe your overall artistic evolution to date? </strong></em></p>
<p>I began as a songwriter many years ago. I was influenced by the same people any Gen X, white guy growing up in King City, ON would be influenced by. It was in 2005 when I saw Springsteen solo at Massey Hall that I first found the irresponsible idea to purse the elusive Song. That is to say, I was drawn to first person linear narrative balladry. But we are no longer living in the 20th century. Tastes migrate, cells migrate, we all migrate - as does the artistic process. Today’s songwriter is no longer a collector of data - say, in the manner of Woody or Bob or the troubadours that led us out of the Dark Ages for that matter. Today’s songwriter has been recently liberated from the dreary collection and redistribution of informational data - that’s what the internet and the 24/7 news cycle now does best. Like painters during the period of the camera, songwriters today are now at liberty to explore less linear and more urgently emotional stories. Unlike back in 2005, I now see myself, songs and purpose as collectors and redistributors of emotional data. I’m not interested in writing about myself and my feelings. I’m interested in finding the pulse of the soul of the times; and, in order to accomplish that, I have to read, read, read, and interview people whom have lived on the ‘pulse of the soul of the times…’ The Song is ever more relevant now than it ever has. The Song does something the internet can never do: arrest the emotional data of the people and the times. </p>
<p><strong><em>5. Who are some artists (musical or non-musical) who may have inspired this latest project, and why? </em></strong></p>
<p>Cave, Cohen, Cash, and The Clash - that covers the letter ‘C.’ The rest of the musical influences are listed within the song, Proxima B. </p>
<p>Non-musical influences would bore the most generous readership out of renewal so I’ll limit it to a few. Nikos Kazantzakis’ beautiful idea that perhaps we’ve entered into a ‘post religious’ - or, arguably, anti-religious - time wherein it’s no longer ‘God that will save us...’ but perhaps, it’s now up to us to save God - this is a multi-faith idea at the centre of the album. I’m obsessed with Russian writing. Everything I sing has in some way come down to me from the words of Chekhov, Dos, Tolstoy, Solzhenitsyn, Turgenev, Grossman, and Platonov. Such thinkers have shaped my artistic and moral purpose in Song. Such thinkers have rendered me a political gradualist - that is to say I believe change for the better happens slowly, individually, and from within. I’m suspicious of all extreme and revolutionary ideas. W.E.B. DuBois, Simone Weil, and Czeslaw Milosz are also giants of inspiration...okay, I’m even boring myself here...</p>Jon Brookstag:jonbrooks.ca,2005:Post/54631262018-10-10T11:29:40-04:002018-10-10T11:41:51-04:00Arts Feature: The King Weekly Sentinel by Mark Pavilons<p>Singer-Songwriter Jon Brooks : An Interview</p>
<p>October 3, 2018 </p>
<p>By Mark Pavilons </p>
<p>What most of us miss, Jon Brooks exposes. </p>
<p><br>The accomplished singer-songwriter is more like a modern day standup philosopher, documenting the times. He’s a combination of George Carlin and Leonard Cohen. That combination is perfect when it comes to creating contemporary music. The King City native will return to his roots, with an upcoming performance Friday, Oct. 19 at Rockford’s in King City. Show time is 8 p.m. Brooks is a deep thinker and likes to totally immerse himself in his art. He recently spent northern Adirondacks learning songs by Van Morrison, Blind Willie Johnson, and Leonard Cohen in a 100-year-old country church he rented for rehearsing/writing new things. Brooks is the only person nominated four times for <em>“English Songwriter of the Year” </em>at the Canadian Folk Music Awards. </p>
<p><br>His sixth album, <em>“No One Travels Alone,”</em> is a journey into life’s deep, deep questions. It’s as meditative as it is playful. He borrowed from Elizabethan sonneteers to connect songs in No One Travels Alone in corona form, where the last line of the first song becomes the first line of the second song, and so on, until the last line of the album completes the circle and begins the album anew. “This album takes an ecocentric view of ourselves within the universe. We are all connected, as reflected by the connected songs in the corona form.” </p>
<p><br>In 2010 he won the <em>New Folk Award</em> at The Kerrville (Texas) Folk Festival, one of the largest and most prestigious folk festivals in the U.S. He has toured in every province and most states this side of California. Brooks’s talent emerged early and he said he found he a talent for humour and language in his teens. But, he didn’t think he was “wired” for musical talent and the confidence that comes with performing. Music kept calling and it’s been part of who he is. It has nagged him and taunted him at times, forever challenging his preconceptions. “It’s a rare and good day when I feel like I’m in command of my musical ‘gifts,’” he said. <br>Brooks doesn’t want to single out particular musical influences, but he’s quite fond of artists like Cave, Cohen, Cash, and The Clash. In his case, though, one of his early influences was his dad Jack, who played drums in the 1970s. It seems early childhood memories embed themselves in our hearts. He recalls fondly hearing “Kris Kristofferson and Willie Nelson in the back seat of a Mercury Monarch on our way to hockey games in Nobleton and Schomberg and Beeton and Oro.” </p>
<p><br>Brooks also doesn’t want to be pigeon-holed, fitting neatly into one particular genre. Literary influences abound in his music, which meanders through British pop, California hip hop, Texas blues, near Eastern Sufi, or Americana alt-country. He writes “topical ballads” and plays the acoustic guitar, often performing solo. <br>“I’ve always been drawn to songs that are subversive – songs that might challenge people’s views, songs that make us think. I’ve always been drawn into any art form that makes me think.” Brooks observed that most of us want to feel transformed by a song, a play, a novel, a movie. Admittedly “anti-genre,” Brooks said he likens himself your “punk rock uncle” living on the fringes. He’s “sonically dynamic, lyrically provocative, and musically iconoclastic. <br>“My songs are morally ambiguous, never black and white. I write songs in the effort to calm those who’ve looked into their hearts; I also write songs to terrify those who’ve not. Mine is a hope unmolested by delusion and childish idealism.” <br>Yes, he goes where few venture, into the dark recesses of the human beast. And yet, he’s engaging, encouraging his audiences to laugh, be inspired and remain hopeful. Unlike traditional “protest artists,” Brooks doesn’t preach, take sides, or tell anyone how to think or vote. “I prefer to sing the song of the individual – the person sitting next to us.” And like his newest album, Brooks wants people to feel less alone. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>Brooks’s repertoire is as varied as people on the planet. In 2007 he released an album of Canadian war stories, “<em>Ours and the Shepherds.” </em>In 2009, he released, <em>“Moth Nor Rust,”</em> an album of songs about all the positive things that make us human, that neither moth nor rust can touch. <em>“Delicate Cages” i</em>n 2012 was a collection of songs all about the paradoxes of freedom and imprisonment. He followed that in 2014 when he took a provocative turn down the “dirt roads of rural Canadian murder ballads in <em>"The Smiling & Beautiful Countryside.</em>” This may have actually been his most folk-like album, but it contains as much humour as it does carnage. “I’m always looking write songs that make others feel the pulse of the soul of the age.” When performing live, Brooks enjoys the power to unite people, to be able to “participate in something so positive in a world stuffed with negatives. Unlike any other art form, song has the capacity to move us with the greatest shock, and gentlest consolation. Live music is ancient and magical.” Society is currently dealing with alienation, dislocation social media and “fake news,” further segregating one another. “Aside from deleting our Facebook and Instagram accounts, the next best thing we can do for each other and our children’s children’s children is to continue to support local community and live music,” he said. Despite its shortcomings, the digital and global age has given us more great music than we could possibly absorb. And that’s a good thing for those looking for a bit more from their contemporary music. </p>
<p>Brooks isn’t quite sure what the universe has in store for him in the future. Whatever that is, you can bet he’ll have something to say about it! <br>For some food for thought, visit his website, jonbrooks.ca</p>Jon Brookstag:jonbrooks.ca,2005:Post/53720412018-08-02T12:03:19-04:002018-08-02T12:06:06-04:00Jon Brooks' No One Travels Alone - A Pre-Release Review by Kerry Doole<p> </p>
<p>A songwriter with a rare gift for the poetic, Jon Brooks also possesses a ruggedly virile voice that is the perfect delivery vehicle for these well-crafted songs. They are connected by the corona (circular) form, in which the last line of each song is the first line of the following song, and Brooks pulls off this feat with impressive ease. On "Proxima B," he namechecks such inspirations as Leonard Cohen, Neil Young, Al Tuck, and Mary Margaret O'Hara, and this compelling album does them justice - Kerry Doole</p>6:21Jon Brookstag:jonbrooks.ca,2005:Post/52311282018-05-12T19:26:32-04:002018-05-12T19:26:32-04:00Roots Music Canada: No One Travels Alone Preview<p>EXCLUSIVE PREVIEW! </p>
<p>Jon Brooks – “Todos Caminamos Por Este Caminito” </p>
<p> Heather Kitching </p>
<p> May 4, 2018 </p>
<p>“No One Travels Alone is a contrite apology to my 138 super fans the world over for 2014’s murder ballads album, The Smiling & Beautiful Countryside,” Jon Brooks told me in an email this week. </p>
<p>I had to smile. </p>
<p>Countryside hardly requires an apology, but I got the humour in what he was saying. </p>
<p>If great art is defined as work that makes people think and makes them uncomfortable, then Jon’s last album was a masterpiece worthy of the Met, its centrepiece, a 12-minute account of a mass shooting told through the eyes of the killer. </p>
<p>For those accustomed to hearing Jon’s weathered voice singing kinder gentler protest songs like “Jim Loney’s Prayer” from his 2007 album Ours and the Shepherds, an album about the Canadian war experience, or “War Resister,” about Jeremy Hintzman, from 2009’s Moth Nor Rust, Countryside was as disconcerting as it was compelling. </p>
<p>Jon is cryptic about what we can expect from No One Travels Alone, which comes out on Sept. 22, but one thing’s certain: nobody dies in this new song, which he’s sharing with us exclusively on Roots Music Canada. </p>
<p>In fact, “Todos Caminamos Por Este Caminito” sounds pretty upbeat even by the standards of a non-murder-ballad Jon Brooks record. </p>
<p>Here’s what he has to say about the track: </p>
<p>“We are all migrants. This song is the happiest celebration of our inherent migratory nature. It’s also a quiet protest against recent anti-refugee sentiment and nativism throughout Europe and the US. Upbeat to the point of vomiting in your mouth, “Todos” is definitely radio friendly.” </p>
<p>I don’t know if it’s that upbeat, but have a listen for yourself. </p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>3:45Jon Brookstag:jonbrooks.ca,2005:Post/44444132016-10-30T16:35:20-04:002016-10-30T16:35:20-04:00Folk Roots Radio – Best Albums of 2015 <p>1. Jon Brooks – The Smiling & Beautiful Countryside (2015, Borealis Records) </p>
<p>jonbrooks200Jon Brook’s 2012 album ”Delicate Cages” focused on themes of love and fear; and freedom and imprisonment. For the follow up, “The Smiling and Beautiful Countryside”, Jon turned his cynical eye on contemporary North American society in a world gone mad to produce an album of murder ballads the like of which you may never hear again – and one that gives up more and more with each listen. It was easy to make this my favourite album of the year. I should add that Jon is absolutely fabulous live – I saw him three times this year, playing solo – just songs and anecdotes accompanied by his beatbox looping acoustic guitar, and he’s brilliant! It should be on everyone’s wish list to attend a Jon Brooks show. And yes, all the songs on this album are even better live. <br><br>http://folkrootsradio.com/news/the-best-albums-of-2015 </p>
<p>January, 2016</p>Jon Brookstag:jonbrooks.ca,2005:Post/44444122016-10-30T16:34:37-04:002016-10-30T16:34:37-04:00The Ottawa Citizen<p>Making the bodies count: Jon Brooks explores the dark traveller in new album</p>
<p>Singer-songwriter Jon Brooks set out to write a collection of Canadian murder ballads for his fifth and latest album, the Smiling and Beautiful Countryside, figuring he’d give a modern twist to a classic folk-song tradition. </p>
<p>It’s twisted alright, hearing him sing in the voice of a killer, but the songs are brilliant, adding up to one of the most provocative albums of the past year. You’ll be fascinated by characters like Trevor, the homicidal maniac who goes on a workplace shooting rampage in The Only Good Thing is an Old Dog, the murderous siblings in The Twa Sisters, and the helpful fellow in Gun Dealer who’s got what you need “whatever you are, a psychopath or a hunter.” </p>
<p>Then there’s the long-haul trucker who picks up hitchhikers in Highway 16. That song will send a chill down your spine, as it’s clearly inspired by the 800-kilometre Highway of Tears where scores of young women, mostly aboriginal, disappeared or were murdered while hitchhiking along it. </p>
<p>Written from the perspective of a serial killer, Highway 16 may be the most convincing tune Brooks has written on any issue, largely because the character rings true. Brooks not only devoted hours of research to the well-documented theory that serial killers are attracted to the trucking industry but also visited the area to get a sense of it, arranging a series of house concerts to play between Prince George and Prince Rupert, B.C. </p>
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<p>“The idea of basing an entire CD on murder, you have to go at it with either understatement or overstatement. I can’t imagine sitting down to write a song about the Highway of Tears in an earnest way,” Brooks said in a phone interview. “I think that would be useless and cloying and sentimental. It would be hard to listen to. </p>
<p>“On the other side of it, Highway 16 was one instance on the CD that I really did want to provoke in a violent manner. I really wanted to make some people go, ‘Did he just sing that?’ I wanted this song to conjure up a violent response, not necessarily a happy one either.” </p>
<p>Ultimately his mission with the song is to raise awareness, and hopefully encourage people to pressure their elected representatives to support an official inquiry into the hundreds of cases of missing or murdered aboriginal women in Canada. </p>
<p>“Personally I’m blown away by the fact that we live in an allegedly first-world country and we’re not looking into this formally,” Brooks says. “(The song) is the most overt attempt at trying to raise awareness but let’s be serious: I’m not Bryan Adams writing a song and doing this. It would be arrogant of me to think that the fourth or fifth song on my CD is going to do anything but that’s my interest as a songwriter anyway.” </p>
<p>A keyboard player by training, Brooks didn’t get serious about writing his own songs until a decade ago. In the late 1990s, dismayed by the proliferation of boy bands, he had given up on music, returned to university and worked at a variety of jobs for several years. But by 2005, the musical landscape had changed, and folk-roots music was making a comeback, at least on a grassroots level. </p>
<p>“It took a long time to realize this but I came to understand that if there’s such a thing as a sin in this world, it’s turning your back on the thing you do the best,” says the 46-year-old. “It took one of my literary heroes to tell me that if you can write a melody and somehow arrest the essence of some life, and do it within four minutes, that’s a kind of artistic magic that you would go to hell if you don’t pursue. If you can do this, you have to do it, in other words.” </p>
<p>So he did, crafting a string of albums that have established him as a masterful singer-songwriter with a strong sense of social justice. Brooks been nominated for three Canadian Folk Music Awards, and was named a winner in the prestigious Kerrville New Folk competition in 2010. </p>
<p>Despite the accolades and his reputation as a riveting live performer, Brooks is having a hard time finding his audience, especially in Canada. He’s had more airplay in the U.S., and frequently performs south of the border, but his upcoming tour schedule is strangely empty at a time when it should be filling up with Canadian festival dates. Although some bookers have told him they already have their quota of solo, male singer-songwriters, one wonders if they’re shying away, nervous about exposing audiences to someone who’s created an album with a body count of 75. </p>
<p>If that’s the case, it would be disappointing but not a complete surprise. “I’ve already done four albums that inspire: it’s now time to offend,” Brooks says. </p>
<p>Lynn Saxberg, Ottawa Citizen </p>
<p>April, 2015</p>Jon Brookstag:jonbrooks.ca,2005:Post/44444112016-10-30T16:33:53-04:002016-10-30T16:33:53-04:00Jon Brooks at Oakville’s Moonshine Café - InsideHalton <p>Toronto indie artist Jon Brooks is bringing his new collection of original, rural Canadian “murder ballads” to The Moonsine Café Wednesday (March 4). </p>
<p>Brooks’ music circles around the Highway of Tears, Christine Jessop murder, domestic violence, mass shootings in the workplace, and the forced relocation of the Sayisi Dene near Churchill, Man., to name some of the subject matter of his songs on his ironically-titled The Smiling & Beautiful Countryside album. </p>
<p>“With some eerie-sounding, back-water banjitar and the distressed vocals of a post-heroine Steve Earle, Brooks humanizes the serial killers and challenges the listeners to contemplate their own inner darkness,” stated a press release. “His writing also overflows with gallows humour, eviscerating any threat of earnestness.” </p>
<p>The album was recorded by Toronto producer David Travers-Smith. </p>
<p>Brooks is the winner of the Kerrville New Folk award (2010) and launched his solo career in 2006, nearly a decade after a trip through eastern Europe, the former Soviet Union and war-ravaged Bosnia-Herzegovina. </p>
<p>His four previous albums have explored themes from architecture and homelessness to the Canadian war experience, and the concepts of freedom and imprisonment — both physical and psychological. </p>
<p>Brooks is also a three-time English Songwriter of the Year nominee at the Canadian Folk Music Awards. </p>
<p>The concert at the 137 Kerr St. café starts at 8 p.m. and tickets cost $10. </p>
<p>To make a reservation, call 905-844-2655 or email moonshinecafe@cogeco.net. </p>
<p>http://www.insidehalton.com/whatson-story/5451927-jon-brooks-at-oakville-s-moonshine-caf-/ </p>
<p>March, 2015</p>Jon Brookstag:jonbrooks.ca,2005:Post/44444102016-10-30T16:33:12-04:002016-10-30T16:33:12-04:00The Chronicle Herald - Jon Brooks to offer Halifax listeners taste of new album at The Company House<p>Jon Brooks brings songs from his new album The Smiling & Beautiful Countryside to Halifax’s Company House on Saturday night. </p>
<p>The Toronto-based musician revisits the folk/blues tradition of the murder ballad, with a collection of several new and original rural tales of death and grieving, filtered through today’s headlines and Brooks’ own dark, literate sense of humour. </p>
<p>Brooks’ shifting viewpoints range from the laissez-faire attitude of a Gun Dealer to the perpetrator of a workplace mass shooting, in the 12-minute epic, The Only Good Thing Is an Old Dog. </p>
<p>Winner of Kerrville Folk Festival’s 2010 New Folk Award, Brooks is also a three-time English songwriter of the year nominee at the Canadian Folk Music Awards, and has earned praise for his work from publications on both sides of the Atlantic. </p>
<p>Show time for Brooks at the Company House is 9 p.m. Tickets are $20 at the door. For more information, visit jonbrooks.ca </p>
<p>March, 2015</p>Jon Brookstag:jonbrooks.ca,2005:Post/44444052016-10-30T16:32:14-04:002016-10-30T16:32:14-04:00The Canadian murder ballads of singer-songwriter Jon Brooks By Justin Skinner <p>With past albums delving into such heady topics as poverty in the inner city and war stories, it may not seem surprising that downtown-based singer-songwriter Jon Brooks’ newest work contains more humour than his past endeavours. What is surprising is that the humour is wrapped in another dark genre – Canadian murder ballads. </p>
<p>Brooks’s latest album, The Smiling & Beautiful Countryside, offers social commentary while avoiding heavy-handedness or moralizing. </p>
<p>“I wanted to basically do an album of songs that interested me thematically and sonically instead of going on the fool’s errand of writing songs that I think will get me airplay on CBC radio,” he said. </p>
<p>Despite its often-dark subject matter, Brooks said he aims to write songs that are “spiritually uplifting and politically relevant.” </p>
<p>The Smiling & Beautiful Countryside ranges from comic hyperbole to the stark and horrifying acknowledgment of missing First Nations women in Canada. Still, Brooks acknowledges there are certain challenges faced by some he himself has never had to deal with. </p>
<p>“It doesn’t help that I’m a fat, white guy in my 40s,” he said. </p>
<p>The Smiling & Beautiful Countryside focuses on two types of killers – the human and the corporate. As with Brooks’ other works, the theme provides an undercurrent throughout the album. While the singer/songwriter said he does not set out to create concept albums, his works naturally tend toward having overarching themes. </p>
<p>“It starts naturally, but then I wind up approaching it almost like a collection of short stories,” he said. “I always think a song’s more impotent on its own than it is when it’s part of looking at the full spectrum of an idea.” </p>
<p>Brooks’ music career was interrupted when he stepped away to work on more lucrative endeavours and returned to university to get a degree. During that time, he worked as an usher at the Princess of Wales Theatre, a bike courier and a beer brewer for Steam Whistle among other gigs. </p>
<p>“It wasn’t until I married a woman with money who encouraged me to get back into it that I decided I could pursue this as a career,” he said. </p>
<p>While many artists love playing to a hometown crowd, Brooks has mixed feelings about his upcoming album release show at Hugh’s Room, where he hopes to see more than just familiar faces in the crowd when he performs early next month. </p>
<p>While he appreciates the support, he wants to feel his music is appreciated and not that people are coming out to catch his show simply because they know him and want to show support. </p>
<p>“There’s nothing more dreary than doing this for 10 years, looking out and seeing your cousin in the crowd,” he said. </p>
<p>Brooks will play Hugh’s Room, 2261 Dundas St. West, on Wednesday, April 8. </p>
<p>For tickets, or for listen to Brooks’ work, visit www.jonbrooks.ca </p>
<p>March, 2015</p>Jon Brookstag:jonbrooks.ca,2005:Post/44444042016-10-30T16:31:14-04:002016-10-30T16:31:14-04:00Exclaim! <p> by Kerry Doole </p>For those of us lamenting the decline of the protest song in contemporary folk, Toronto troubadour Jon Brooks is a refreshing tonic. He’s an acerbic commentator on social and political issues, as he shows with great eloquence on The Smiling & Beautiful Countryside, his fifth album.
<p>Don’t let the title fool you; the landscape here is populated by serial killers, gunrunners and wife beaters, and the catalogue of horrors is rather unrelenting (his label’s bio jokingly notes the murder ballad death count in each song, totalling 75!) Opening cut and album highlight “Gun Dealer” is a song Steve Earle would be proud to claim. In a staccato delivery, Brooks spits out a rhymed shopping list of armaments: “Whatever you are/ A psychopath or a hunter/ I got what you need/ No serial numbers.” His lyrics are as poetic as they are powerful, with influences and inspirations ranging from Shakespeare and Milton to Marx and Baudelaire. He often mines real-life events for material, with “Queensville” probing the Christine Jessop murder and “Worse Than Indians” being based on the neo-genocidal relocation of the Sayisi Dene. </p>
<p>Songs range from the short and pointed (the minute-and-a-half “These Are Not Economic Hard Times”) to the epic (the 12-minute ballad of a mass murderer “The Only Good Thing Is An Old Dog”). Brooks’ gruff and convincing voice is always front and centre here, as he is the only instrumentalist (guitar and banjitar) featured. Producer David Travers-Smith (Oh Susanna, Wailin’ Jennys) keeps things clean and uncluttered. This is uneasy listening at its best. </p>
<p>December, 2014</p>Jon Brookstag:jonbrooks.ca,2005:Post/44444032016-10-30T16:30:22-04:002016-10-30T16:30:22-04:00Sooke Voice News – Concert Review – by Mary P. Brooke <p>http://www.sookevoicenews.com/ </p>
<p>On Saturday night of Easter weekend about 25 people in Sooke ~ mostly members of the Sooke </p>
<p>Folk Music Society ~ experienced an intimate concert with Canadian singer-songwriter Jon Brooks. An essayist and master of his ‘pet’ guitar, Brooks profiles himself as a thinker, writer, traveller and ‘armchair theologian’ turned full-time songwriter (in 2010). He is already touring all over North America to small audiences of 20, mid-size of 200 (though he calls that big), and “5,000 might be the biggest crowd I’ll play to on any regular basis and that’s a festival stage,” he said following the show that was held at Sooke Baptist Church. “I never thought I’d be playing in a Baptist church,” he quipped during this part-talk, much-sung performance that with a short intermission lasted about two hours, and then expounded on the irony and hypocrisy of a myriad Christian denominations and the ‘scarring’ of people raised Catholic to which at least one gasp was elicited from someone in the back. Brooks believes in telling ‘the rude truth’ (a phrase coined by Ralph Waldo Emerson). For him, songwriting is an art form that – if it tells the harshest truths with melodic accompaniment – will hit home some important realizations about today’s modern world. He quotes Gloria Steinem: “The truth will set you free but it’ll piss you off first.” Brooks is a sharp observer of what he calls the “alleys” of life. Hear his lyric “…and in the alleys and in love there is the truth” a few times and it will sear deep. And so: “I’d like to start with your newspaper – the underground press is the last bastion of journalism today and also, in and of itself, a kind of ‘alley’. Like used bookstores, cemeteries, independent coffee shops and art galleries – the soul of a place may be found faster in such shadowy corners,” he pontificated later on. “Something about ‘youngest average age’ on Vancouver Island and yet no evidence of economic growth in Sooke (Sooke VoiceNews, Mar.29). That’s a bad marriage – at the very least, it’s a daunting first impression and a song could easily grow out of that fertile little statistic.” So Sooke Voice News asks: “What is society’s sliding edge nowadays?” and the singer-songwriter replies: “There is a blindness to others that is more pronounced.” Sooke has a “mythic quality” that is “crucial for a song setting”, says the Ontario-born idea weaver. Thinking runs deep: “That there is truth in love is impossible to prove and therefore (is) self-evident.” And his commitment to his craft is strong: “The greater the obviousness of the truth, the more it needs to be sung! I can feel people’s cathartic reaction pulsing along with me during certain songs. A songwriter is only afforded so many opportunities to sing ‘the rude truth’. An audience that laughs with you will follow you anywhere … but not until you’ve ingratiated yourself to them through humour.” Son of a one-time professional drummer , Jon Brooks is his own ‘one man band’. There’s a warm, melodic, full sound right from the opening beat. It’s amazing to watch and hear melody, harmony and self styled percussion emerge from one guitar (he usually plays his 1995 Taylor 615 Jumbo made of spruce and maple, now obedient to his every variant touch). Occasionally he pops the harmonica around his neck to add that tonality by which to repeat a melodic line while the audience absorbs the impact of his searing lyrics. There’s the song about a war resister who dismays that he was trained to kill, or the single mother shopping in WalMart who “cannot not afford to do what’s right”, or a song in which he laments how people may discover too late how small their problems were in the big scheme of things. An observer of personal strife and a social critic, the 44-year-old seasoned performer tosses out zingers between his songs that sit with you a while longer: “The lies, they hurt us. They lie by omitting the real truth.” or ”Our heart has a dark side; there is no darker place to hide than the beautiful countryside.” And there is sweetness and surrender: “Now that I’m older it’s mercy that I admire most,” he concludes in one line. In conversation he will tell you something that is best taken in the context of aiming for a healthy psyche and more balanced society: “Kids are too muchthe centre of everyone’s limited attention – the world </p>
<p>is too fascinated in an unhealthy way toward kids.” Many of the song titles are terse and fierce: Cage Fighter,Safer Days, and The Crying of the Times but his CD’s wrap up with positive tunes: There is Only Love and Because We’re Free. All of them performed at much the same hypnotic pace. CD sales after the show were brisk but autographs in CD covers were written after pause to comeup with a thoughtful annotation, to each new fan. The tatooed artist is optimistic about a world </p>
<p>that could be better than it is. His lyrics are intended to inspire calmness and hope in those who’ve seen evil and to terrify those who have not.” The www.jonbrooks.ca website which is heavily laden with reviews, commentaries and lists of </p>
<p>awards (at the Canadian Folk Music Awards in October 2012 Brooks received his third nomination in fiveyears for Songwriter of the Year), is headed up with one of Jon’s most signature lyrics: “How can we hear the stories of the people and yet we can’t hear the crying of the times?” </p>
<p>Kudos to the Sooke Folk Music Society for organizing this concert. </p>
<p>April, 2013</p>Jon Brookstag:jonbrooks.ca,2005:Post/44444022016-10-30T16:29:27-04:002016-10-30T16:29:27-04:00Take an introspective music journey <p>SOUTH RIVER – Singer-songwriter Jon Brooks says he doesn’t write “happy music.” </p>
<p>The decision is for good reason. </p>
<p>“It’s sort of an illiterate request,” said Brooks. “My aim is to inspire. I’m not in the business of taking people away from themselves. That’s the role of pop music.” </p>
<p>Brooks said he writes music that takes people on the type of introspective journey so-called happy music could never conquer. </p>
<p>“An hour of pop music could take you away from your life and make you happy for a bit, but when the show is over, everyone goes home alone,” said Brooks. “I write music that takes people on a journey and asks them to look at themselves, so when everyone goes home, they have the feeling they are not alone in the world.” </p>
<p>Brooks is set to perform a house concert at the Blue Babes Guest House and Studio on Friday, Aug. 17, bringing his unique brand of music to the intimate venue, which holds about 20 people. </p>
<p>A folk singer-songwriter with four albums under his belt, Brooks says the industry is embarking on a dangerous course. </p>
<p>“The music business as it is, is run by 15-year-olds,” said Brooks. “These are the dark ages. The world for some reason doesn’t want us to be thoughtful. It pays people to shut up, so if it seems the folk singer has less of an audience, that’s why.” </p>
<p>Brooks said his South River house concert is one of only a handful of Northern Ontario performances he has ever played. </p>
<p>“You’re never a prophet at home, and Canada, whether she wants to admit it or not, is sort of culturally insecure,” said Brooks. “One thing that you can’t take away from Americans is their pride in their culture. Canadians like to wait for New York to say thumbs up, or London to say thumbs up first before they will get behind their artists. But that’s not always a bad thing. There’s a virtue to our cultural humility. It’s part of our charm.” </p>
<p>Toronto-based Brooks said that cultural humility is likely why he has a larger fan base in the state of Texas than on his home turf. </p>
<p>“The irony is, I write about Canada. But I think that is part of my success in the U.S. We’re always drawn to the exotic,” said Brooks. </p>
<p>To further support Brooks’ thoughts on the allure of the exotic, his opening act is a very talented Australian singer-songwriter. </p>
<p>Gina Horswood opened for Suzie Vinnick during the Blues Babes’ grand opening last month. The young singer gave a heartfelt performance of original music combined with her endearing humour on her trials and triumphs as a quasi-Canadian. Horswood is a fan favourite and is set to come back to Blues Babes for a full-length performance in the near future. </p>
<p>August, 2012</p>Jon Brookstag:jonbrooks.ca,2005:Post/44444012016-10-30T16:28:35-04:002016-10-30T16:36:22-04:00The Toronto Star - Jon Brooks is the fighting sort of folk <p>By Kenyon Wallace</p>
<p>Unlike most contemporary acoustic artists, Jon Brooks doesn’t mind being referred to as a folksinger. In fact, he embraces the label. </p>
<p>“I do feel very much a part of the (folk) tradition, which is inherently subversive and always has been,” says the Toronto-based singer-songwriter. “I would not be justified in standing behind a microphone and adding to the glut of noise and vapid distraction if I didn’t believe I had some kind of moral purpose.” </p>
<p>Brooks’ new album, Delicate Cages, is unabashed folk, with each song on the 11-track disc offering social commentary about issues that catch the artist’s attention — and, in many cases, scorn. The album is a rumination on what Brooks says are his three favourite topics: hope, love and death. </p>
<p>There are songs about the proliferation of prisons across the United States, child soldiers, suicide bombers and, closer to home a lament for Aqsa Parvez, the 16-year-old Brampton schoolgirl murdered by her father and brother for embracing western culture. </p>
<p>“I want people to understand that they’ve been lied to about what it means to be hopeful — that it’s not some easy, cheesy, self-help feel-good message,” explains Brooks, 43. “It’s in fact brutal. It’s a bloody affair to be hopeful. It’s an action word.” </p>
<p>Followers of Brooks’ music have come to expect nothing less. </p>
<p>His breakthrough CD, Ours and the Shepherds, released in 2007, is a collection of war stories that challenged Canadians’ traditional view of themselves as peacekeepers rather than fighting soldiers. That album, inspired by the experiences of Romeo Dallaire, peace activist James Loney and John MacRae garnered Brooks a Songwriter of the Year nomination at the Canadian Folk Music Awards. </p>
<p>Two years later, he earned another songwriter nomination for 2009’s more contemplative Moth Nor Rust. Brooks’ brand of in-your-face folk continued to make waves, especially in the southern U.S., where he won the prestigious Kerrville Festival New Folk award in 2010. Not bad for a guy who didn’t seriously consider a songwriting career until his mid-30s. </p>
<p>A trained keyboard player, Brooks spent his formative years in a blues and rock band, even playing Hammond organ on the Headstones’ first album in the early ’90s. After becoming disenfranchised with the state of modern music, he gave it up. It wasn’t until one of his literary heroes, Austin Clarke, suggested several years later that Brooks embrace songwriting seriously that he decided to give it another go. </p>
<p>As with any developing career in music, an increasing profile necessitates more touring — a never-ending endeavour that sees Brooks performing at the Gladstone Melody Bar Tuesday night to promote the new album. </p>
<p>“The only measure of success in music anymore is how many gigs you have. Touring is everything.” </p>
<p>But it’s not a bed of roses. You have to want it, you have to have purpose, Brooks says. </p>
<p>“It’s not fun and it’s not easy, and it’s lonely. It can be brutal sometimes. It can be brilliant because of that too,” he says. “That’s where the songs come from.” </p>
<p>http://www.toronto.com/article/725228–jon-brooks-is-the-fighting-sort-of-folk </p>
<p>April, 2012</p>Jon Brookstag:jonbrooks.ca,2005:Post/44444002016-10-30T16:27:47-04:002016-10-30T16:27:47-04:00Review: Fear is the Cage;Love is the Key <p>Jon Brooks has an incredible ability to tell intensely personal stories with huge lessons: parables, in other words. His latest CD, Delicate Cages, demonstrates this with full force and a bold but simple theory: life is a series of cages largely built by fear, and love is the only tool we have to live with it. Lyrically this theme is obvious from the title of the record, Delicate Cages, taken from a Robert Bly poem: “Taking the hands of someone you love, You see they are delicate cages”. Bly’s sentiment not only lends a title but rings throughout all these songs. Along with Brooks’ trademark gravelly voice, Delicate Cages features his awesome guitar playing including a slapping technique, which coaxes a syncopated beat from the guitar while also holding chords. In a live setting, Brooks stomps his big boots on the floor, making for a mesmerizing performance. </p>
<p>Some of the songs refer expressly to cages. “Cage Fighter” is about a pay-for-blood pugilist and the seedy world of that business. Brooks recounts in detail the hopes and fears of the dark world of a cage fighter. The song perhaps best illustrates the record’s theme: the cage fighter finds a love for his opponent in the cage, born out of mutual respect and tension. The cage of course is both </p>
<p>a physical enclosure and a metaphor. But the genius of this song, and the record as a whole, is the recognition that cages are inevitable and sometimes necessary: for the cage fighter, “I wish I was still in the cage where I loved more than I feared.” In fact, when the cage fighter returns to a “normal” life, he finds himself in a factory cage. </p>
<p>The explicit cage theme resurfaces in “There Are Only Cages”, which also features the guitar beat and a light banjitar. The last songbefore a lovely piano only reprise of “Because We’re Free”, this track lays out the theme expressly: “There’s a cage of freedom we have, dear, and this cage of freedom is love”. Contradictory? Maybe, but Brooks revels in thoughtful lyrics which challenge the listener. Philisophically he is simply recognizing that we are always enclosed by something, which we often choose. Brooks uses a nice technique on this and other tracks, with the insertion of the word “dear” throughout the song, clearly indicating that its wisdom is being passed to a loved one. This is, of course, reminiscent of Springsteen’s use of “sir” when speaking to the establishment, and it’s use is just as effective. Carrie Elkin’s background vocals adds a special touch to the song. </p>
<p>The question of which cage to choose is taken up expressly in the opening track, “Because We’re Free”. Here Brooks confronts the age old question of why evil exists in the world: set to a mellow guitar melody, with a crying violin and Brooks’ most gentle version of his voice, the song conjures up images of horror: </p>
<p>“I saw the earth open up under a satisfied sky. </p>
<p>I saw the homes not flooded shrivel up in fire. </p>
<p>I saw them loot all the corpses and rape all the wives. </p>
<p>I saw the cops shoot themselves; the law fall on its knives.” </p>
<p>Brooks has never been a “we have to do x” type of songwriter. His message lies in exploring the human condition, and he leaves us to choose our own path. In this song, Brooks makes the point that we have choices, and the biggest choice is between love and fear. In the midst of recounting so many horrors, many caused by human kind, Brooks adds “I saw the people choosing fear ’cause they wouldn’t choose love.” This is one of the horrors too. But there is a glimpse of hope: “Yes, there is hope for this world, for this world there is hope….because, my dear, because we’re free”. Again, Brooks doesn’t tell you what to do with your freedom, but the implication is clear: we cause horror, and we can change that. </p>
<p>There’s a handful of more personal or localized songs on this record as well. “Fort McMurray” features the wonderful background vocals of Lynn Miles, and describes the difficulties in the regular exodus from the East Coast (Harbour Grace) to oil rich Fort McMurray (and back), where people and money flow like water. No cages here? Oh yes – the economies of east and west, as Brooks describes it, and of course the cage of a small community in the east and an oil town in the west. </p>
<p>“Hudson Girl” is a lovely tune presumably about Jon’s wife, who is compelled to leave Quebec with her family as a girl due to the language politics of that province and Bill 101 specifically. Set to rural Quebec fiddle style, the song offers touching accounts of Brooks’ courtship (Hudson Girl has “Red hair, green eyes, shyer than a first sung song…”), but also illustrates in many ways the cage that Quebec had become. But even escaping that cage leaves you in another in the suburbs of Toronto. Brooks also sweetly illustrates breaking out of his own cage of loneliness, when he meets his Hudson Girl. Love works. </p>
<p>The Cage Fighter returns in “Madeline”, a tender song for the fighter’s daughter about family, love and life. Filled with a lilting beat and light picking, the song opens with key advice for “dear Maddie”: “If we have loved we have lived long”. It continues with wisdom for the young one, especially concerning the cage of loss and sadness when a loved one leaves. </p>
<p>Another real cage finds its place in “Visiting Day”, about a prisoner longing for a loved one. The cage is more than physical, as the prisoner laments the loss of his sweetheart’s loving touch, and resents how a “‘good memory’ goes bad on visiting day”. The prisoner here made a choice, as the lyrics suggest he took the fall for a botched robbery, letting his girl stay free. Here love takes on a different role in the cage. </p>
<p>Perhaps the most compelling songs on the record are based on true stories. “Son of Hamas” tackles the Israeli occupation of Palestine – a physical, spiritual and psychological cage for the Palestinians. This cage will not work in the end, however persistent. More seriously, the cage also spawns other cages of fear as violence begets violence: </p>
<p>“Now, we can cage a people; We can cage a man. </p>
<p>But we cannot cage all that he understands. </p>
<p>There’s a martyr waiting list. </p>
<p>Shahid: we are witness.” </p>
<p>Brooks repeats throughout the song, in a question that is not rhetorical: “How can we hear amid deafening times, love whisper the truth?” I interpret this not as doubt but as surprise: in spite of what happens in the Middle East, this hope is still being held out. In fact the song features an upbeat guitar melody with lovely bass support. It also underscores what many people do to achieve positive change: dance, win Nobel prizes, love your enemy. </p>
<p>Chilling in its narrative, “The Lonesome Death of Aqsa Parvez” tells the tragic, true story of an honour killing in Mississauga. Brooks unapologetically admits the Dylan influence here: from title, track listing, and first and second verse first lines. A good comparison too, for Brooks is one of Canada’s finest songwriters and observers of the human condition. The song is really just a recitation of facts relating to the murder: </p>
<p>“Muhammad Parvez kills poor Aqsa his daughter. </p>
<p>They strangled her in their home on Longhorn Trail. </p>
<p>He had his son, Waqas, go down to the bus stop </p>
<p>to pick up his sister where she waited for a friend. </p>
<p>By 9:00 a.m. the cops had taken Muhammad Parvez.” </p>
<p>Parvez came to Canada to find freedom for him and his family. He was devout and worked hard. And yet the cages from his past came with him, which included honour killing to avenge his daughter’s desire to show her beauty, to feel the freedom of a teenager. As always, Brooks does not criticize or cajol. Facts are laid out and we are left to our own judgment. Is Parvez solely to blame? Is it religion? Is it culture? Is it inevitable? It’s devastating, to be sure: and this is demonstrated in the music: mostly a slow strumming guitar, puntuated but Brooks’ trademark guitar percussion. But as the song builds and leads to the fact of Aqsa’s “higher freedom”, a chilling, off kilter violin sneaks in – eerie and compelling, a drive to our conscience. </p>
<p>The closest Brooks gets to telling us what to do is on “Mercy”. As he puts it in the liner notes, “the key to all the cages”. Here Brooks puts aside all the daring and guts of youth, starting with a list of what he used to admire the most: a melody, poetry, all he thought was profound – the prophets and the saints, and rock concerts. Not that Brooks has given up: he still admires those who speak the truth, who stand up, “all the reckless voices for the voiceless and the man standing in the path of tanks”. But one thing is now clear: </p>
<p>“Ah but now, now that I’m older, it’s mercy that I admire most.” </p>
<p>Brooks leaves the listener in a bit of a quandary: does the recognition of the importance of mercy only come with age? Maybe just for him? Again, listening to these lyrics delivered in Brooks’ weathered voice compels us to think about the import of his message, and decide for ourselves. </p>
<p>John Brooks is an insightful observer of the human condition. Lucky for us, he is also one of Canada’s finest singer/songwriters. His greatest strength is his ability to capture images of the human condition – flashpoints of pain or joy, life or death, banal or profound – in simple, compelling stories. It would be easy to call Jon Brooks a ‘protest singer’ as many of his songs have a political or social component. But I think writing ‘protest’ songs is too easy, certainly for Brooks. Instead, he builds a moral or political puzzle for each of us – and then lets the listener to solve it. Sure, the ‘right’ answer is usually obvious, but Brooks is too faithful to the individual conscience to tell you. </p>
<p>Brooks is also an excellent musician – the guitar is used in many capacities, including the wonderful percussion present in some of these songs which is awe-inspiring when seen live. If you want some of the best songwriting we have in this country get yourself acopy of Delicate Cages. Jon Brooks also tours a lot – you can find dates and plenty of other information on his website. </p>
<p>by David Yazbeck </p>
<p>April, 2012</p>Jon Brookstag:jonbrooks.ca,2005:Post/44443992016-10-30T16:26:59-04:002016-10-30T16:26:59-04:00Folk Roots/Folk Branches Delicate Cages, the fourth album in six years by Toronto-based singer-songwriter Jon Brooks, is an ambitious examination of some of the various “cages” of the human condition – some of them literal, some metaphorical, some of them based on real people, others drawn from the artists’ imagination, all of them, in one way or another, insisting that we look at the world, or, at least a small slice of it, through someone else’s eyes. <p>The ethos of the album is established in “Because We’re Free,” the opening song in which the narrator reflects on a series of natural disasters and human-caused catastrophes and questions why God didn’t prevent or alleviate such occurrences. The answer comes in the songs title which is repeated at the end of each chorus. </p>
<p>Among the most powerful songs are two that are based on real people. </p>
<p>“Son of Hamas,” was inspired by the book, Son of Hamas: A Gripping Account of Terror, Betrayal, Political Intrigue, and Unthinkable Choices, the autobiography of Mosab Hassan Yousef, the eldest son of a founder of the Islamic terrorist organization who worked clandestinely over a period of years to prevent terrorism. The song is a glimpse into the life of a heroic young man viewed as a traitor by his own family. </p>
<p>“The Lonesome Death of Aqsa Parvez,” is the story of a teenaged victim of a so-called honour killing, at the hands of her father and brother, which took place in a Toronto suburb in 2007. </p>
<p>The most infectious song is “Hudson Girl,” essentially a love song for Jon’s wife. But, it’s a love song with political overtones when the second verse explains that Jon’s Hudson girl, as a child moving with her family, was among those driven out of Quebec by Bill 101, the repressive language law – Jon gives thanks to Bill 101 in the song for delivering his wife to him. </p>
<p>Although many of these songs deal with difficult subject matter – and kudos to Jon’s fearlessness in tackling such material with the right mix of honesty and sensitivity – the album’s ultimate message is one of hope when Jon explains in “There Are Only Cages,” the penultimate track, that there is a good cage, “the cage of freedom” and “this cage of freedom is love.” </p>
<p>The album ends, with Jon by himself at the piano, playing a contemplative instrumental reprise of “Because We’re Free.” </p>
<p>Pictured: Jon Brooks and Mike Regenstreif at the 2010 Ottawa Folk Festival. </p>
<p>–Mike Regenstreif </p>
<p>March, 2012</p>Jon Brookstag:jonbrooks.ca,2005:Post/44443982016-10-30T16:26:12-04:002016-10-30T16:26:12-04:00Penguin Eggs, Canada's Folk, Roots & World Music Magazine CD Review<p> </p>
<p>Since his first solo CD in 2006 Jon Brooks has delivered beautifully crafted and intricately literate songs based in his view of the world. A world which is a seemingly depressing and cruel place, but through his eyes, a world littered with shards of grace in amongst the glowing promise of hope that we humans have to cling to. </p>
<p>With aptly sparse arrangements and help for his gritty down to earth voice from the likes of Lynn miles and Carrie Elkin, Delicate Cages delivers that and more as we follow his journeys across the country, meeting an assortment of characters from cab drivers in Fort McMurray to cage fighters in Toronto, whose career choices were born in child soldiers in Sarajevo. “The Lonesome Death of Aqsa Parvez” mirrors the daily newspaper stories of honour killings with particular poignancy. </p>
<p>But as I said there is hope and beauty and a tender side as well in pretty tunes like “Madeleine” and particularly the lovely and spritely “Hudson Girl”. </p>
<p>I like a man not afraid to deal with the big questions in life and especially one who can come to this conclusion after going trough a list of things, both shallow and profound he has admired throughout his life. </p>
<p>“Ah but now that I am older </p>
<p>it’s mercy that I admire most” </p>
<p>Jon Brooks’ Delicate Cages – it’s a good ‘un. </p>
<p>les siemieniuk </p>
<p>November, 2011</p>Jon Brookstag:jonbrooks.ca,2005:Post/44443962016-10-30T16:18:00-04:002016-10-30T16:18:00-04:00Exclaim! CD REVIEW <p>By Kerry Doole </p>
<p>Those who like their folk sparse and laced with pointed social and political commentary should definitely check out this undervalued Toronto, ON singer-songwriter. Earlier albums, like his 2006 debut, No Mean City, and 2009’s Moth Nor Rust, hinted at a potential that’s fully realized on this fine release, Brooks’s fourth. His trademark powerful and often dark narratives are on vivid display, whether based on fact (the heartbreaking story of “The Lonesome Death of Aqsa Parvez”) or springing from his fertile imagination. The theme of cages pervades these songs, most strikingly in “Cage Fighter,” the tale of a child soldier turned Toronto gladiator. Offering respite from the intensity are such tender and pretty tunes as “Madeline” and the jaunty “Hudson Girl,” a number a bit reminiscent of Steve Earle. Effectively framing Brooks’s songs and gritty voice (which is sometimes evocative of John Prine) is a small cast of ace players: Joe Phillips, John Showman (New Country Rehab) and guitarist/co-producer Scott Dibble. Adding sweet vocals to “Fort McMurray” and “There Are Only Cages” are, respectively, Lynn Miles and Austinite Carrie Elkin, illustrating the peer respect Brooks deservedly enjoys. This is an excellent effort. </p>
<p>http://exclaim.ca/Reviews/FolkAndCountry/jon_brooks-delicate_cages </p>
<p>November, 2011</p>Jon Brookstag:jonbrooks.ca,2005:Post/44443952016-10-30T16:17:12-04:002016-10-30T16:37:33-04:00London Free Press - Brooks shares his talent<p>Scores of London region students will learn Wednesday how to fire up their songwriting from one of Canada’s top folksingers. </p>
<p>Award-winning folkie Jon Brooks works with students at a Thames Valley District board conference at UWO affiliate King’s University College. Brooks’s session at the board’s SPARK! conference is about power of song as a form of social media. </p>
<p>“The idea of singing about wherever there is violence and social inequity in the world, that to me is the essence of folk songwriting, and yet, it’s not that common. There’s a lot of people uneasy about it,” Brooks has said of his commitment to creativity and activism. </p>
<p>The conference offers seminars to “spark” interest in the students. </p>
<p>His appearance is part of the Home County Folk Festival artists in schools project. </p>
<p>Wednesday’s collaboration brings Brooks back to London. He spent a week in February on songwriting workshops. </p>
<p>Home County received support from TD Bank Group and the Ontario Ministry of Culture and Tourism’s cultural strategic investment fund to present Brooks. </p>
<p>“Arts education can thrive when a school board, a non-profit arts organization, the provincial government and a financial corporation such as TD Bank Group share the same arts education mandate,” Home County artistic director Catherine McInnes said Tuesday. </p>
<p>May 30-June 2, the Ontario Arts Council and Canada Council funded Metis Fiddler Quartet will work with aboriginal students as the Home County project continues. </p>
<p>E-mail james.reaney@sunmedia.ca, read James’s blog or follow Jamesatlfpress on Twitter. </p>
<p>http://www.lfpress.com/entertainment/music/2011/05/03/18099086.html </p>
<p>May, 2011</p>Jon Brookstag:jonbrooks.ca,2005:Post/44443882016-10-30T16:16:32-04:002016-10-30T16:38:32-04:00The Londoner - Professional Musician Visits High Schools <p>If folk music is meant to inspire change, Jon Brooks felt like he was in the right place recently when he was strumming his guitar in front of a class of Grade 11 and 12 music students at Sir Wilfrid Laurier secondary school. </p>
<p>“We’re performing a brand of the folk song to, finally, the right audience,” said Brooks, a singer/songwriter based out of Toronto. “This is the audience I should be playing in front of all the time.” </p>
<p>He is one of three acts taking part in the Home County Folk Festival Artists in the Schools Project. </p>
<p>With funding from the Ontario Ministry of Tourism and Culture, Catherine McInnes, artistic director of the festival, is bringing professional musicians to share their knowledge and techniques with students. </p>
<p>For Brooks, it was a chance to chat about the importance of good song writing, a skill that’s garnered him a few awards and nominations since his return to folk music in 2005. </p>
<p>“I’m preaching to the converted at the folk clubs and at the festivals,” he said. “But if you really want to make a change for the better in this world, this is the audience to inspire.” </p>
<p>Getting encouragement to write songs during his own high school career in the ’80s was “foreign,” said Brooks, who also visited Medway high school, Central secondary school and Sir Frederick Banting secondary school. </p>
<p>Josh Ellison, a Laurier student preparing to enter Western’s popular music program, was appreciative that he didn’t have the same experience. </p>
<p>“(Brooks) brought a different perspective,” said Ellison, 18. “Folk music takes a more political stand to try and better the world. It’s definitely opened up my eyes to song writing, to improve. </p>
<p>“It’s refreshing to have a different point of view. Normally the other musicians I talk to are my own age.” </p>
<p>He also said Brooks’s advice should inspire more students to take up song writing themselves. </p>
<p>“(Brooks) would play a song then explain the process of writing (it),” Ellison explained. “You don’t want to be a dictator. You don’t want to tell people what to think, you want them to discover it on their own but with your help.” </p>
<p>That should be music to the ears of McInnes, a former elementary school teacher who still teaches music privately. </p>
<p>“As a teacher what I always missed was having that intense experience to be able to work with an artist over a number of days,” she said. “I wanted to create an educational experience where the kids felt they were artists with the artists.” <br> </p>
<p>By Chris Montanini <br>chris.montanini@sunmedia.ca</p>
<p>March, 2011</p>Jon Brookstag:jonbrooks.ca,2005:Post/44443862016-10-30T16:15:36-04:002016-10-30T16:38:47-04:00The Toronto Star - Where Have All The Protest Songs Gone? <p>By Greg Quill Entertainment Reporter </p>
<p>Entertainment Columnist </p>
<p>Sometime in the late 1960s, Pete Seeger — in his prime with just a banjo and a 12-string guitar — stepped up to a single microphone on the concert stage of the Sydney Town Hall in Australia, and started singing. </p>
<p>One after another, the simple yet profoundly affecting songs that moved a generation — a couple of generations, actually — poured forth like some kind of healing sacrament. </p>
<p>“Where Have All The Flowers Gone?” “Turn, Turn, Turn.” “We Shall Not Be Moved.” “Amazing Grace.” “We Shall Overcome.” “Little Boxes.” “Guantanamera.” “If I Had a Hammer.” “Joe Hill.” “Waist Deep In The Big Muddy.” “Bring ‘Em Home.” “Irene Goodnight.” The hymns filled the 3,000-seat auditorium. </p>
<p>Audience voices raised in unison, in harmony, in joyful dissonance, accompanied every one, with Seeger’s energetic encouragement. This was the soundtrack of an era, accompanied with his musical contemporaries Joan Baez, Bob Dylan. </p>
<p>Two hours later, the exhausted but jubilant folk singer made his final exit, waving his instruments above his head. The crowd dispersed into the warm night, still roaring out the songs we were convinced could and would make the world a better place. Maybe they did. For a while. </p>
<p>The protests accompanying this weekend’s G20 summit in Toronto might be remembered for their noise and fury, but probably not for songs. </p>
<p>Protest songs — at least the kind that galvanized thousands at a time during the labour struggles of the 1920s and ’30s, anti-nuclear and civil rights marches in the 1950s, the anti-Vietnam war rallies in the 1960s and the economic upheavals in Britain during the Thatcher years — seem to have disappeared from the landscape. </p>
<p>At least they have from the commercial airwaves. But their spirit drives much of the best contemporary music, Bruce Cockburn says. </p>
<p>“They haven’t disappeared, we just have to hunt them down,” argues Cockburn, who has never wavered in a 40-year career from an almost obsessive devotion to taking on war-mongers, empire builders and environment polluters with narrative-based songs of often brutal outspokenness. </p>
<p>Protest songs are alive and well, he says. They are just hiding in plain sight. “We just don’t hear them. We don’t hear anything worthwhile these days unless we go looking for it.” </p>
<p>The erosion in the Internet age of conventional mass media may have given everyone and everything a chance to shine, adds Cockburn. “But there are so many kinds of exposure, so many formats, and so many different ways to find an audience, so many places you have to look.” </p>
<p>He isn’t keen on reviving protest songs as a niche genre. </p>
<p>“The words ‘protest songs’ give me the willies,” Cockburn says. “They conjure up the worst music of the 1960s – songs like ‘Eve of Destruction,’ which I hated when I first heard it. It’s pretentious posturing, manufactured nonsense, bad songwriting and just plain ignorant, compared to Dylan’s work in the same period. ‘A Hard Rain’ and ‘Masters of War’ are beautifully constructed and artfully created. They hit the right emotional buttons and they nail their targets. </p>
<p>“To have value, a song has to impact its topic. It can’t be propaganda or exploitative pop music.” </p>
<p>Cockburn singles out American songwriter and activist Ani DiFranco for special praise. </p>
<p>“She’s a beautiful singer, a great guitarist and a brilliant lyricist. She doesn’t close her eyes to what’s going on around her, and she’s not afraid to speak up. And I don’t discount punk and reggae as breeding grounds for some of the best politically intense songs ever recorded — from the Clash and Bob Marley right up to the present. </p>
<p>“Some people say songs and politics don’t mix. I don’t agree. It’s an artist’s job to talk about his or her life, unless you live in a place where your neck is on the line. War and politics are part of life. Nothing is taboo.” </p>
<p>Even so, the absence in the public arena of songs of conscience may well be an effect of the wired age, along with so many previously cherished forms of social interaction, suggests guitarist Brian Gladstone, the proudly unreconstructed hippie founder and artistic director of Toronto’s annual Winterfolk Festival and its non-profit offshoot, the Association of Artists for a Better World. The association encourages, compiles and distributes collections of contemporary protest songs to radio stations and activist organizations around the world. </p>
<p>“People concerned about the issues that have always troubled us are more likely to turn to Facebook to find a like-minded community than to sing songs in the streets, the way we did in the 1960s,” he says. </p>
<p>“There are plenty of protest songs out there, but they just aren’t part of the cultural mainstream any more. Radio doesn’t play them, and people don’t seem to do things together, as a community. We’re all connected individually to some kind of device, working alone, amusing ourselves alone, enlightening ourselves alone.” </p>
<p>Gladstone started the association 10 years ago — the effort has since been replicated in half a dozen North American cities — because “not enough young songwriters were using their voices for the common good. </p>
<p>“We’ve issued eight or nine compilations since we began, and the response has been intense and gratifying.” </p>
<p>Neil Young came to the same conclusion after the release of his 2006 album, Living with War, a toxic indictment of George W. Bush’s foreign policy, when he complained publicly about the lack of contemporary songwriters willing to step up to the protest plate. At 64 then, he felt forced to do their work for them. </p>
<p>He was subsequently inundated with recorded proof to the contrary and now runs a page on his web site, Living with War Today, that has links to some 3,280 songs and 630 videos answering his original challenge. </p>
<p>It has been said that Bruce Springsteen’s 2007 album Magic, with its hallucinatory vision of an America gone mad with war lust, consumerism and revenge, was the New Jersey rocker’s response to Young’s challenge. </p>
<p>Three years earlier, American punk rocker’s Green Day’s American Idiot album, now also a hit Broadway musical, was praised by many for its brave, satirical take on modern America and its powerful endorsement of love and humanist ethics. </p>
<p>Long before that, roots rocker Steve Earle forsook his chance at country music’s brass ring by writing songs that skewered America’s version of history, many of its icons and values. </p>
<p>“It’s not that the issues needing attention are more numerous or complex than they were a couple of generations ago,” says Canadian folk music veteran Ken Whiteley. He cut his teeth on the anti-war and union songs of Seeger and Woody Guthrie, and on the plaintive blues of American field workers and gospel singers. </p>
<p>“You can look at 150 different issues and reduce them to just two things: greed and the abuse of power.” </p>
<p>Protest songs still have meaning and cachet, Whiteley adds. Many contemporary songwriters — among his favourites are Welsh composer/activist Martyn Joseph, Kingston’s Sarah Harmer and Vancouver-based James Keelaghan — have the ability to create provocative social commentary from simple narratives “and solid, memorable melodies, the key to the survival of any great song.” </p>
<p>The worst protest songs are “simplistic reductions” of complex ideas,” Whiteley believes. </p>
<p>“The best are personalized stories in which you can see the larger picture unfold. Or sometimes they can be nothing more than a simple, resonant phrase. My friend Pat Humphries (an Ohio social activist, singer and songwriter) composed a classic rally song from three words and an elegant little tune – ‘Peace, Salaam, Shalom’.” </p>
<p>Some rap music contains elements of social consciousness, he points out, part of a continuum of commentary and protest that goes back to the earliest blues forms, “but there’s a disconnect between rap and what went on before. </p>
<p>“If you’re my age, you can probably trace a line between (1950s folk group) the Freedom Singers, (American gospel group) Sweet Honey in the Rock, (American R&B/gospel band) the Blind Boys of Alabama and (Canadian rapper) K’Naan. But I don’t think the young people who are rallying around his song ‘Waving Flag’ are conscious of these connections.” </p>
<p>Toronto songwriter Jon Brooks, a winner in this year’s New Folk competition at the prestigious Kerrville Folk Festival in Texas, has earned a devoted following among his peers for soulful, topical narrative songs that invoke powerful feelings about the horrors of war, human greed and the absence of the guiding principles — what we called, in another age, peace, love and understanding. </p>
<p>“The closest thing I heard to protest songs in my adolescence were Roger Waters and Pink Floyd,” says Brooks, who gave up his budding musical career in the 1990s after visiting Bosnia, Poland, Ukraine and Russia. </p>
<p>“I saw real politics in action after the wall came down and I felt ashamed to be seeking people’s attention behind a microphone in the middle of all that suffering. So I quit for eight years.” </p>
<p>In those days, folk and protest music of the 1960s “seemed laughable, a cliché, something in the back of the record store to be avoided,” Brooks says. “After I came back from Europe, I was convinced songs would work no better now to benefit humanity than they did back then. </p>
<p>“Now I’ve come full circle. In complicated, distracted times, I’ve learned that timely songs performed in the right manner, accompanied by humour and common language, can really get inside people.” </p>
<p>Brooks has studied the work of his predecessors — Bob Dylan, Phil Ochs, and Canada’s Buffy Sainte-Marie, whose bitter indictment of the patriot warrior, “Universal Soldier,” is a standout feature of his performances — and found many of them wanting. </p>
<p>“I think Ochs represented the best and the worst of that era, and Dylan was just too young to have a fully formed world view, but they were capable of writing powerful social and political commentary,” he says, citing Dylan’s “The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll” and “A Hard Rain” and Ochs’ “Days of Decision” as favourites. </p>
<p>“The purpose of songwriting, for me, anyway, is to unite people through stories, through empathy. Direct, shouted protest has never worked for me as well as indirect story telling.” </p>
<p>Now, that would put a smile on Pete Seeger’s face. </p>
<p>Ten great protest songs </p>
<p>• “Universal Soldier,” Buffy Sainte Marie: For its bravery in laying the blame for the pain of war at the feet of those who make themselves available as weapons and cannon fodder. </p>
<p>• “Fortunate Son,” Creedence Clearwater Revival: For smacking privileged Americans in the face for avoiding the draft and forcing those less fortunate to be conscripted during the Vietnam war. </p>
<p>• “Blowin’ In The Wind,” Bob Dylan: The mother of 1960s peace anthems. </p>
<p>• “Shipbuilding,” Elvis Costello: For drawing a line between the economic benefits of war and the end result. </p>
<p>• “Beds Are Burning,” Midnight Oil: For pricking the conscience of imperialist interlopers, not just in Australia, over their abuse of the rights of indigenous people. </p>
<p>• “Brothers In Arms,” Dire Straits: For illuminating the folly of the Faulklands war and inflated patriotic urges. </p>
<p>• “Clampdown,” The Clash: For its empathetic portrayal of the poor as a criminal class on Thatcher’s watch. </p>
<p>• “If A Tree Falls,” Bruce Cockburn: For its powerful indictment of the logging industry’s stripping of virgin rainforests. </p>
<p>• “Lives In The Balance,” Jackson Browne: An acidic account of American meddling in the politics of Central America. </p>
<p>• “If I Had A Hammer,” Pete Seeger: For its inclusive, joyful humanity. </p>
<p>http://www.thestar.com/entertainment/music/article/828049–where-have-all-the-protest-songs-gone </p>
<p>June, 2010</p>Jon Brookstag:jonbrooks.ca,2005:Post/44443852016-10-30T16:14:49-04:002016-10-30T16:39:12-04:00The Chronicle Herald - Brooks’s tuneful stories resonate<p>Writer skilled at mixing emotional music with everyday, extraordinary tales </p>
<p>By STEPHEN COOKE Entertainment Reporter </p>
<p>Jon Brooks heads east this week for a series of Maritime dates. A conversation with authors and personal mentors Barry Callaghan and Austin Clarke after a night of off-track betting on horse races made him rethink his decision to trade music for prose. </p>
<p>Jon Brooks is in love with words and the power they possess. For the past five years the Ontario singer-songwriter has been using melody as a verbal amplifier over the course of three albums, telling vivid tales of people caught up in situations both everyday and extraordinary, from the midst of love gone wrong to the heat of battle and its aftermath. </p>
<p>Heading east this week for a series of Maritime dates, Brooks’s musical history goes back further than 2005, but it was a conversation with authors and personal mentors Barry Callaghan and Austin Clarke after a night of off-track betting on horse races made him rethink his decision to trade music for prose eight years before. </p>
<p>“Austin said, ‘You’re going to be a writer, a novelist, yet you know how to play guitar and put a four-minute song together? You’d rather write a 400-page novel?’ And totally guileless, I said, ‘That’s the plan, I suppose. And you guys are inspiring that,’ ” recalls Brooks. </p>
<p>“I’m paraphrasing here, but Austin looked at me and said, ‘You know, I envy you in a way, and you also frustrate me to no end. If I could mix emotional music and rational word in four minutes, do you think I’d waste my time writing novels?’ ” </p>
<p>With his guitar and warm, slightly gruff voice, Brooks’s literary skills still shine through on songs that are also stories, from a portrait of New Waterford war widows in Auction Days to Jeremy Hinzman’s moral struggle on War Resister. </p>
<p>Their strong points of view and his desire to inspire social and personal change have led some to label him a “protest singer,” a term he personally dislikes, due to the simplicity and onesidedness it represents. </p>
<p>“My feeling is, personally, protest only works in the form of story and empathy,” he explains, “whether it’s a painting, a poem, a story or a song. If you really want to protest the way the world is right now, you have to make people feel empathy for people they otherwise wouldn’t feel it for. </p>
<p>“In other words, you have to unite people in a positive direction.” </p>
<p>The song War Resister, from his latest CD Moth Nor Rust, is a case in point, where Brooks wanted to make sure that Hinzman wasn’t presented as a victim or a martyr for the anti-Iraq War cause, and to portray him as a fully rounded person “with a few skeletons in his closet.” </p>
<p>“He actually asked me, ‘Don’t take this the wrong way, but would you be into hanging out a bit? Because everywhere I go in Toronto, people want to use me as a poster boy for the war resister movement,’ ” recalls Brooks, who spent time getting to know the South Dakota conscientious objector while writing the song. </p>
<p>“The point I’m trying to make is that for any character to come to life, there has to be some moral ambiguity there; you can’t just paint him as a poor, hard-done-by American. He’s made mistakes, he’ll be the first to admit it, so the challenge is to not tell people how to vote, but to try to elicit from them an opinion or a thought, and empathy, that’s key.” </p>
<p>In Brooks’s songs, the human element supersedes ideology, whether it’s a snapshot of a brief encounter between a waitress and a homeless man on In the Alleys or a broader portrait of life for the mis-employed on If We Keep What’s Within Us What’s Within Us Will Kill, But if We Give What’s Within Us What’s Within Us Will Save Us. </p>
<p>The important thing is that his tuneful mix of imagery and emotion grabs a hold of listeners and strikes some sparks of recognition. </p>
<p>“If it’s done properly, that can really have an effect on people. Not every song works, but I have to say at the end of every one of my gigs, whether I’m playing in front of four people in Wabigoon, Ont., or 400 people at the Italian Cultural Centre in Halifax, it never fails. Someone turns their head ever so slightly, they’ve gone home slightly changed, they’ve been inspired and related to people, and the world has become a little bit smaller.” </p>
<p>( scooke@herald.ca) </p>
<p>Jon Brooks performs at Halifax’s Carleton Restaurant on Wednesday, Maxwell’s Lounge in Sydney on Thursday, a Point Rock House Concert (860-2345) in Fall River on Saturday, and Brookside Cottage Concerts ( brooksidecottage@hotmail.com) in Hubbards at 2 p.m. on Sunday. He’s also playing just over the border in Sackville, N.B., at the Bridge Street Cafe on Wednesday, May 26, and the Evergreen Theatre in Margaretsville on Friday, May 28. </p>
<p>http://thechronicleherald.ca/ArtsLife/1183014.html </p>
<p>May, 2010</p>Jon Brookstag:jonbrooks.ca,2005:Post/44443842016-10-30T16:13:53-04:002016-10-30T16:13:53-04:00‘Brooks Runs Through Cape Breton’ – THE CAPE BRETON POST <p>Singer-songwriter to make island debut May 20 at Maxwell’s Lounge </p>
<p>SYDNEY — He’s written songs about the island and now Jon Brooks is ready to make his first appearance on a Cape Breton stage. </p>
<p>Topics : </p>
<p>British Empire , Toronto Star , Cape Breton , New Waterford , Canada </p>
<p>The Toronto singer-songwriter will make his island debut May 20 at 8 p.m. at Maxwell’s Lounge on Charlotte Street in Sydney, as part of a tour of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia. </p>
<p>“I finally get to play in Cape Breton after writing about the place,” he said, noting his second CD, Ours and the Shepherds, a collection of songs written about Canadian war stories, had a strong connection to the island. </p>
<p>“I had to pick different geographical places in Canada and make sure I covered as much ground as I could. One of the statistics that I stumbled upon during my research was related to Vimy Ridge and in 1917, New Waterford in Cape Breton, supplied more men per capita than any other community in the British Empire,” he explained. “I wanted to write something about Vimy Ridge, for one, but I also wanted to have a song on the CD that was for the ones left behind and what better opportunity, when you’re faced with a statistic like that.” </p>
<p>The resulting song, Auction Days, focuses on the widows left behind in New Waterford and Brooks made sure he did the research. </p>
<p>“For the historical songs and for the story songs, I definitely like to make sure I get the details right,” he said. “It sounds lazy that I never actually went out to Cape Breton but that was probably the only example of a song that I did without actually going to a place but I did manage to interview some people from the area so I’m anxious to go try the song out, out there, and see how it’s received.” </p>
<p>Nominated twice for songwriter of the year by the Canadian Folk Music Awards, and with a spot on the Toronto Star’s 2010 people to watch list, Brooks has been making lots of waves on the national music scene in recent years. He says his goal is to inspire and uplift audiences across the country. </p>
<p>“I always say ‘I don’t do happy songs, but I do hopeful songs,’ and the aim is to unite people,” he said. “That’s why I would spend time writing about Fort McMurray, and then writing about New Waterford, so I can take these songs to Brandon, Man., and all of sudden the country shrinks a little bit when people relate to these stories that they might otherwise not be able to relate to.” </p>
<p>Brooks noted he used to think of touring as simply an opportunity to establish a fanbase and sell CDs, but now realizes it offers much more than that. </p>
<p>“After crossing the country a number of times, I’ve realized, it’s actually the opposite. The new songs come from visiting all these different points of the world, and Canada in particular.” </p>
<p>Brooks is hoping to follow up his 2009 release, Moth Nor Rust, with his next recording project, Delicate Cages, later this year. </p>
<p>For more on Brooks, go to http://www.jonbrooks.ca. </p>
<p>ljgrant@cbpost.com </p>
<p>http://www.capebretonpost.com/Arts/Entertainment/2010-05-12/article-1086883/Brooks-runs-through-Cape-Breton/1 </p>
<p>May, 2010</p>
<p>Published on May 12th, 2010 </p>
<p>Laura Jean Grant </p>Jon Brookstag:jonbrooks.ca,2005:Post/44443832016-10-30T16:12:45-04:002016-10-30T16:12:45-04:00Toronto Star’s ‘2010’s people to watch’ <p>Great songwriters, like the best artists in any discipline, defy convention and confound those who seek comparisons. </p>
<p>Toronto’s Jon Brooks stands among an exalted few in the enduring Canadian song tradition – Leonard Cohen, Joni Mitchell, Neil Young, Fred Eaglesmith, Bruce Cockburn – as a lyricist, composer and performer with a fierce commitment to his craft and his vision. </p>
<p>He says he’s proud to call himself a folksinger at a time when that particular f-word has ceased to have much meaning to armies of wannabe artists seeking little more than ordinary fame and glory. </p>
<p>For Brooks, 41, who wandered into Bosnia-Herzegovina in the late 1990s and was virtually struck dumb by the misery and senseless inhumanity he witnessed there, the stakes are much higher. </p>
<p>For several years the King City native put away his guitar and turned his back on music. He wrote poetry and essays until music found him again in 2006. That year he released No Mean City, a searing evocation of spiritual atrophy. </p>
<p>The follow-up, Ours and the Shepherds, examined the Canadian experience of war from 1914 to the present through the eyes of imaginary characters or ones drawn from published accounts. Neither cries of protest nor patriotic hoopla, these songs are postmodern dispatches, a series of dispassionate and unconnected snapshots of the warrior psyche under pressure. </p>
<p>Ours and the Shepherds earned Brooks a best-songwriter nomination at the 2007 Canadian Folk Music Awards, an achievement repeated this year with his third album, Moth Nor Rust, a call to arms, in the best Pete Seeger spirit, to those weighed down in an uncaring and troubled world. </p>
<p>Brooks performs alone, with his Taylor jumbo guitar and a couple of minimal effects pedals, content to let his words and tunes convey his meaning. When he does talk on stage – in the past two years he has appeared at a dozen major North American festivals and tours Canada’s folk circuit relentlessly – it’s in the voice of a humble troubadour. </p>
<p>“The most important things in a song are learned through experience, and those experiences take listeners on a trip to places they might never have known” says Brooks, who’s married to CBC employee Sandra Alves. </p>
<p>Toronto-based Scottish expat folksinger Enoch Kent, a festival favourite on both sides of the Atlantic and a noble survivor of the 1960s British folk revival, believes Brooks is the real deal. “Jon Brooks,” he says, “is the kind of writer who makes me think.” </p>
<p>This year, Brooks plans to release his fourth CD, Delicate Cages, with songs about different kinds of imprisonment in the modern world. He’ll be touring the Maritimes in the spring, Western Canada in the fall, and doing the summer festival circuit, all the while collecting stories for more artful songs. </p>
<p>http://www.thestar.com/entertainment/music/article/745218–2010-s-people-to-watch-jon-brooks-musician </p>
<p>January, 2010</p>Jon Brookstag:jonbrooks.ca,2005:Post/44443812016-10-30T16:12:01-04:002016-10-30T16:12:01-04:00L’Entincelle (French) <p>Ulverton (GM) – Pour fêter le deuxième anniversaire des spectacles intimes à Ulverton, Jon Brooks, l’artiste qui avait inauguré la série il y a deux ans, sera de retour avec un nouveau spectacle aux couleurs folk le samedi 28 novembre prochain, à 19h30. </p>
<p>Jon Brooks est un artiste engagé qui, par le biais de ses chansons, nous livre des réflexions intelligentes à propos de ce qui nous motive en tant qu’individu, ainsi qu’en tant que membre de notre société actuelle. Il est très préoccupé par les questions d’identité, d’intégrité et de solidarité. Son parcours artistique lui mène à chercher ainsi qu’à révéler les éléments essentiels de notre expérience commune, et il nous interprète ses chansons avec une voix un peu rauque et très doux à la fois, toujours à la recherche de la simplicité. </p>
<p>Son dernier album, intitulé « Moth Nor Rust », est une collection d’une dizaine de ses compositions autour du thème de la compassion, de la paix et de la justice. Son avant dernier album traite de l’expérience de guerre des Canadiens depuis le début de l’histoire du pays jusqu’au présent, et fait partie de la collection permanente du Musée Canadien de la guerre à Ottawa. Il a reçu de nombreuses éloges à travers l’Amérique du Nord, ainsi que plusieurs prix et récompenses, dont une nomination en tant que le meilleur auteur-compositeur (anglophone) lors des prochains Prix Canadiens de la Musique Folk, qui seront décernés le 21 novembre prochain à Gatineau. </p>
<p>http://www.letincelle.qc.ca/index.asp?s=detail_actualite&ID=130637 </p>
<p>December, 2009</p>Jon Brookstag:jonbrooks.ca,2005:Post/44443802016-10-30T16:11:19-04:002016-10-30T16:11:19-04:00Port Alberni Times – Concert Review <p>Sound Advice inaugurated its modest new performance space this past Saturday with a pretty full house showing up to hear Jon Brooks, a singer/songwriter/guitarist from King City, Ontario. The space itself, while unprepossessing, was entirely appropriate for a small gathering, and the intimacy of the surroundings meant that the sound system was almost unnecessary, though in the end the electronics allowed for projection without strain. The management also made refreshments available. The cozy room also led to an easy communication between Brooks and his audience, an audience that seemed predisposed to empathy and which was not at all disappointed by either the music or the patter that anticipated or clarified the musical material. <br>Brooks is an eminently competent guitarist who resorts to some reasonably novel approaches at times (using slaps at various locations on an open-tuned scale as well as the lower bout of the guitar, lots of different open tunings and a capo that rose to dizzying heights at times) and who employed electronic enhancements in subtle and judicious ways to enrich his sound without ever becoming anything of a focus. He has a convincing voice with about the right amount of rasp to give an edge to his delivery, and managed throughout his two sets to vary pace and mood in such a way as to avoid the tedium than can sometimes set in with limited instrumentation. <br>There was much interaction with the gathered listeners including some dialogue about the content of some of the songs as well as references to various people and places in a way that elicited mostly appreciative laughter. The music harkened back to some classic folk repertory from the era of protest, though Brooks penned most of the material himself: he performed Buffy Ste.-Marie’s Universal Soldier, but in his own material, there were echoes of Phil Ochs, Tim Hardin, and bits of Dylanesque rhyme smithing woven through the songs. <br>Brooks was pretty up front about being a story teller and leaving the interpretation to the listener, though it was pretty clear where he stands on issues ranging from the militarization of Canadian society to the debasement of language. There was a song early in the first set about the many people who are miscast in their work roles, including a bit of a shot at Don Cherry (though the sportscasters with political opinions could just as well be Dave Zirin or Keith Olberman), all of which elicited considerable comment and not a little hilarity. At no time did it really seem as though Brooks was preaching, but rather laying out a situation and calling on the listener to process the lyrics in his or her own fashion. <br>So it was also with the considerable Canadian content woven throughout the performance, references to people, places and events uniquely Canadian that somehow carry hints of a more general and universal meaning to those wanting to make the connection. Brooks’ evocative and somewhat self-deprecating sense of humour paced both the songs and the accompanying discourse in a way that gave a social unity to the whole performance. <br>At the end of the performance, he was quite willing to play an encore, but put the gathering on notice with a comment that he was ready because everyone gets an encore in Toronto, accompanied by what might have passed for a wink and a nod. The whole show had a relaxed, jolly and folksy character to it and was well worth the reasonably modest price of admission. <br>Thanks to Sound Advice for putting the event on and to Jon Brooks for a fine show. <br>Jon’s music is available through is web site (http://www.jonbrooks.ca/) and through iTunes Canada. <br>Expect another show in February. </p>
<p>-Dan Schubart </p>
<p>December, 2009</p>Jon Brookstag:jonbrooks.ca,2005:Post/44443792016-10-30T16:09:21-04:002016-10-30T16:09:21-04:00Edmonton Journal – Entertainment feature story <p>Meaty solo effort a collection of stories </p>
<p>When touring Alberta, singersongwriter Jon Brooks likes to have a steak with his breakfast. </p>
<p>Such was the case this Friday morning past, when at a Whyte Avenue eatery, the Ontario-based troubadour ordered up a juicy portion of beef with some eggs. One couldn’t help but draw a line between his plate and the compact disc case sitting on the table. The latest collection of 10 songs from Brooks, which was released under the title Moth Nor Rust, also has much meat on its bones. </p>
<p>So much so, that Brooks was nominated as English Songwriter of the Year for the 2009 Canadian Folk Music Awards. It was an event he dearly would have loved to have attended this past weekend, but here he was, out on the prairie singing songs like War Resister, When We Go and Safer Days, his fly-on-the-wall tale of staying in Calgary’s infamous Cecil Hotel. (As it turned out, Susan Crowe wound up winning that Folk Music Award.) </p>
<p>Brooks describes himself as “a collector of stories” who has sucked up the fumes and inspiration of such folk greats as Pete Seeger and Bruce Springsteen over the years. </p>
<p>“I’ve been doing some of that on this tour. I was up in Fort McMurray, and even though I was doing a show, the main reason for being there was to get a deeper understanding of what that town is like,” said Brooks, who plays the Blue Chair Cafe this evening–his second show in as many weeks in Edmonton. </p>
<p>“It is a place that is profoundly of our time.” </p>
<p>While Brooks insists he is not interested in politics, he certainly has a handle on the events of the day and what spurs and motivates change, both good and bad. If he’s not sure what the real story is, he is just as apt to head off to some unsettled region and find out. In 1997, he made such a pilgrimage to wartorn Bosnia to get a first-hand sense of the devastation caused by years of violence and deprivation. He was so struck by what he encountered there that he put down his guitar for a time. But since 2006, he has released three albums–including the critically acclaimed Ours and The Shepherds, a collection of Canadian war stories. </p>
<p>While sawing on his steak, Brooks talked about recording his latest disc, which takes its title from the New Testament. It is the definition of a solo effort, as listeners hear combinations of his voice, guitar and harmonica, and nothing more. </p>
<p>“It took three rounds of sessions to get it right and I don’t really know why.” </p>
<p>Tickets for the 8 p.m. show at the Blue Chair Cafe(9624 76th Ave.) are available by phoning the venue at 780-989-2861. </p>
<p>http://www.edmontonjournal.com/entertainment/index.html </p>
<p>November, 2009</p>Jon Brookstag:jonbrooks.ca,2005:Post/44443782016-10-30T16:08:41-04:002016-10-30T16:08:41-04:00Gulf Islands Driftwood – Renowned Folk Musican on SSI <p>CFMA finalist Jon Brooks plays Fridas Villas house concert </p>
<p>An award-winning folk musician comes to Salt Spring next week for a house concert at Fridas Villa. </p>
<p>Jon Brooks performs at the home of Tracy Harrison and Carl Borgstrom at 1375 Beddis Road on Thursday, Dec. 3. </p>
<p>Harrison describes the Toronto-based Brooks as “an exceptional and provocative songwriter” who has won a number of prestigious awards. He was a 2009 Mountain Stage New Song Contest finalist, the 2008 winner of the Mac Beattie Award at the Porcupines, the 2007 Song from the Heart award-winner at the Ontario Council of Folk Festivals, and a Canadian Folk Music Awards nominee for the best songwriter in 2007 and 2009. </p>
<p>Harrison notes that Harry Manx has bestowed fine praise on Brooks. </p>
<p>“He reminds me of Steve Earl, Bruce Cockburn and Ray Bonneville in his honest, gritty vocal delivery and his straight-shooting political songwriting which honours the tradition of folk music without the contrived earnest format of many folk songs,” said Manx. </p>
<p>Andy Frank of the Toronto City Roots Festival is also a fan. </p>
<p>“In my experience of booking roots-music festivals, videotaping and radio-broadcasting live music performances, I have observed that there are only a handful of solo guitar-slinging folksingers who are able to instantly grip and maintain an audience’s attention for whatever time they wish. Jon Brooks is one of those rare performers…a consummate professional troubadour.” </p>
<p>Next Thursday’s show sees the doors open at 6:30 pm, with the music beginning at 7. </p>
<p>Tea and treats will be available. People can bring food to share if they like and an item for the Salt Spring Food Bank. </p>
<p>Tickets cost $12. </p>
<p>As seating is limited, people should book their tickets as soon as possible. </p>
<p>Harrison recommends buying tickets online through the website http://www.fridasvilla.com/reservations . People can also call 250-537-1333 or send an email to tracy@fridasvilla.com . </p>
<p>November, 2009</p>Jon Brookstag:jonbrooks.ca,2005:Post/44443772016-10-30T16:07:45-04:002016-10-30T16:07:45-04:00North By East West – CD Review Moth Nor Rust: For the Disturbed and the Comfortable <p>Jon Brooks’ latest CD features an ominous title – “Moth Nor Rust” – a phrase taken straight from new testament scripture – and equally ominous artwork entitled “Out of the Cave: Series III”. These touchstones point to a serious disc, indeed. But like so many a biblical phrase, there are hints of horror and damage but also hope and joy. Brooks elegantly rails against the injustices of our times, but this is no easy cynical blast of anger. Brooks’ music features pretty melodies and soft picking guitar which are set against a gruff gravelly voice and syncopating guitar beats. Black and white, good and evil, love and hate, yin and yang – it’s all there. Brooks is clearly a fan of contrast, and this disc does a fantastic job of capturing these elements. </p>
<p>“War Resister” sets the stage for this dynamic tension: the first person narrative comes from a soldier, proud and mighty: “…Yeah we don’t know why we do what we do, it’s just breathe, trigger, squeeze. And I was trained to kill. Kill we will. In the 82nd Airborne we exceed the standard of soldiering…” But back at home there is a realization and an aching: “I got a secret that I can’t tell. My conscience is making me a criminal. And my hands they shake with the paradol. And I asked Allah and God’s son, ‘What’s freedom worth when it’s bought with a gun…'” </p>
<p>There’s no catharsis there: the song ends soon with a lament for the soldier’s hometown – a symbol of innocence lost. Brooks knows that life is not often resolved with easy changes. But all is not sadness on the record: “When We Go” picks things up with a brighter pace and a hopeful lyric. Although the song stresses that “If it’s not love, we can’t take it when we go”, the song reminds us of what is truly valuable in life: forget about all those material things and events, and focus on what makes us real humans. </p>
<p>“The Crying of the Times” is here in two versions: the first, shorter track is another call for recognition of what is important in these times of pain. Brooks uses the title phrase as a subtle criticism of mass disinterest in real change: we hear about so many problems – as close as the “neighbour’s walls” – but we can’t hear the broader crying of the times. Brooks’ simple guitar strumming provides a mellow backdrop: like on most tracks here, the lyrics and Brooks’ voice are the focus. The longer, slower, bluesier reprise of the track introduces a new element: while the first version is an exhortation – a rhetorical call to action – the second is a desperate statement of sad fact. </p>
<p>I can picture Brooks performing in a coffee house in 1964 just as easily as I could see him in a local club today. “God Pt. IV” is an old-timey folk protest song – complete with slow pickin’, a foot stompin’ chorus, and an uplifting refrain with gentle harmonica. This is obviously a play on U2’s “God Pt.II”, but this is no hero worship. Brooks takes on what he sees as the hypocrisy of wealthy rock stars preaching about peace, love and understanding: </p>
<p>“Well, I don’t believe in Lennon,Beatles, Bono, or U2; </p>
<p>I don’t believe in heroes ‘cause they’d say the same thing, too. </p>
<p>But I believe – if just one thing -it’s what a lot a little more justice </p>
<p>could bring, it’s what a lot a little more justice could bring. </p>
<p>On his website, Brooks describes the role of the folk singer – a classic definition which stands in stark contrast to many mega-performers: </p>
<p>“I believe the opposing blend of rational word and emotional melody may afford us the rare chance to see others as we might see ourselves. I want my songs to be three and half-minute pills which, if digested, induce upon the listener empathy toward others. ….I aim to comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable. The songwriter should attempt to improve the world by way of showing it to us as it is the mandate of all art to improve the world by inspiring empathy…ultimately, the folk singer is trying to politicize love – to lobby for compassion to be our principle representative on Parliament Hill.” </p>
<p>All these tracks illustrate this perfectly. And Brooks’ lyrics aren’t just directed at the political or social justice spheres: “Small” details a desire to be an astronaut – but not to travel space or claim some privileged view only few have. No, being an astronaut would allow us to see how small we really are. But it’s more than that: Brooks brings the viewpoint to an intimate level: an image of a son speaking to his father, the son who is the reason there has been no divorce, but who cannot understand how a couch was also a bed. A compelling, sad image, Brooks has an amazing ability to paint these sad pictures with grace and with humility. </p>
<p>“If We Keep What’s Within Us, What’s Within Us Will Kill Us, But If We Give What’s Within us, What’s Within Us Will Save Us” is a cumbersome title for a track that focuses on working people. But this is not a traditional homage to workers: Brooks let’s us know that we all work in what we do, whatever we do: thinkers and feelers who have so many chances to do and change and improve, but fail to take advantage of what we could do: </p>
<p>We’re administrators in the pulpit and we’re decisively agnostic in the pews. We’re the journalists working at The Second Cup. And we’re the statisticians reading us the news. We are the Marxists when there’s nothing on TV. We live bourgeois – our debt is proletariat. We bought a used copy of Solzhenitsyn once -we haven’t had a chance to pick it up yet. </p>
<p>The balance of these tracks continue the folky vibe, with themes of redemption and love, found in the simplest and sometimes most unusual of places. “In the Alleys” is a sad story with a pretty melody – told with the eyes of a John Prine, a Steve Earle or his mentor Townes Van Zandt: short, descriptive images of desperation, always with a bright lining of grace: “in the alleys and in love there is the truth”. This track is followed by “Safer Days”, a connected song for sure, this time longing for an innocence gone again. </p>
<p>“There Is Only Love” is a great closer, and the end of a journey starting with the soldier’s song at the beginning. It would be easy to be saccharine and overbearing with songs about the ties that bind, the love that lies behind everything. But Brooks never succumbs: these are genuine expressions, well worth listening to: </p>
<p>And we are fire and sometimes we are light. </p>
<p>We are passions that sometimes are right. </p>
<p>And we are brick, we are mortar, we’ll be ashes tomorrow </p>
<p>–that is to say, that there is only love,that is to say, that there is only </p>
<p>love. </p>
<p>If you live in Toronto, you’ll have plenty of chances to see Jon Brooks live. But there will be some gigs in other parts of Ontario and overseas as well. Here’s just a sampling of his upcoming sets: </p>
<p>• The Cameron House – TORONTO ~ August 6, 13 and 20 2009 </p>
<p>• The Troubadour – TORONTO ~ September 17, 2009 </p>
<p>• Gate 403 – TORONTO ~ September 19, 2009 </p>
<p>• The Spill – PETERBOROUGH ~ September 23, 2009 </p>
<p>• The Blacksheep Inn – WAKEFIELD, QC ~ September 24, 2009 </p>
<p>• The Griffin Pub – BRACEBRIDGE ~ September 25, 2009 </p>
<p>• Not My Dog – TORONTO ~ October 1, 8 and 15, 2009 </p>
<p>• The Bronson Centre – OTTAWA ~ October 18, 2009 </p>
<p>• Not My Dog – TORONTO ~ October 22 and 29, 2009 </p>
<p>• The Bookstore Cafe – CAMDEN EAST, ON ~ October 30, 2009 </p>
<p>• The Moonshine Café – OAKVILLE ~ November 28, 2009 </p>
<p>Brooks is working on his next full length, The Tired Soil, which will offer a view of the Canadian immigrant experience. If we’re lucky he’ll sample some tracks this fall. </p>
<p>http://www.nxew.ca/2009/07/cd-review-jon-brooks-moth-nor-rust-for.html </p>
<p>October, 2009<br><br>By David Yazbeck </p>Jon Brookstag:jonbrooks.ca,2005:Post/44443762016-10-30T16:05:27-04:002016-10-30T16:05:27-04:00Carleton University – The Charlatan <p>Folk From The Heart </p>
<p>Jon Brooks is a folk artist from King City, Ont. currently on tour promoting his latest release, Moth nor Rust. His tour will include a stop at the Blacksheep Inn in Wakefield, Que. on Sept. 24. The record is a tribute to faith, trust, hope, memory and the idea of justice – essential elements to the human spirit that neither moth nor rust can harm. Brooks sat down with the Charlatan’s Colin Harris to speak about his new record and the current state of folk and pop music. </p>
<p>The Charlatan (TC): Compared to your last two releases, Moth Nor Rust seems to be a more introspective record. What was inspiring you during the writing of the album? </p>
<p>Jon Brooks (JB): After touring around Canada singing about war stories, you get a little tired of the droning question, ‘Do you sing any happy songs?’ I felt the need to do a CD with more overtly hopeful themes, and it made sense after a war CD to offer some kind of hope, that a bit of healing is actually possible. </p>
<p>TC: I also read that this album was done solo and live-off-the-floor. Why did you take this approach to the record? </p>
<p>JB: I wanted to do something that I’ve always wanted to hear. My heroes like Leonard Cohen, [Johnny] Cash and [Bruce] Springsteen have done sparse albums before, but none of them have done something with no overdubs at all. There is an overrated practice in folk music today of overproducing music, to me they sound too pristine, too bloodless – and I don’t care for that. How do you make a kind of rawness come through when everything is wet with reverb, effects and every kind of instrument piled on top? I thought that this would be the perfect CD to do [a live-off-the-floor recording], as the theme of this record is stripping the human beast right down to its essentials. </p>
<p>TC: You said in an interview last year that folk music deals with the ‘we’ and the ‘us’ while pop deals with the ‘I’ and the ‘me.’ Can you elaborate on that? </p>
<p>JB: Pop music is very self-centered. But I’ve got to be careful, because there are many a pop star out there who are folk singers in disguise. In the song “God Pt. IV,” I’m talking about Bono and Lennon, and those are two such artists. Pop music is a world for the most part run by 14-year-old girls and their baby-boomer fathers. Today we’re currently glutted with this stuff, with nonsense. And it’s nonsense because it deals with the ‘I’ and the ‘me.’ </p>
<p>I’ve always called folk music the attempt to arrest the truth about a certain people in a certain place and time. If you’re talking about the ‘we’ and the ‘us,’ if you’re talking about the condition of the people – that’s folk. I mean, Rage Against The Machine is closer to folk than pop. Some of the good punk stuff that was alive in the late 70s had their roots in folk. </p>
<p>I really believe that folk has more to do with a state of mind than the fact that somebody’s playing with a mandolin or guitar, that’s bollocks. A lot of people in the community believe that it’s folk as long as the instrumentation is there on stage, but there’s a good handful of this music out there that’s filling us with the same empty calories as what’s coming out of Nashville or California. </p>
<p>TC: What is the most important thing you want people to take away after hearing your music, whether live or recorded? </p>
<p>JB: I want to ignite a flame in people watching me. I’m not here to preach. The job of the folk singer isn’t to tell you what to think, it’s to make you think. And that’s really important because if you don’t think, then you don’t have an opinion, and history keeps proving that there’s always a state ready and willing to make that opinion for you. I’m trying to inspire a little discourse. </p>
<p>http://www.charlatan.ca/content/folk-hearthttp://www.charlatan.ca/content/folk-heart </p>
<p>October, 2009</p>Jon Brookstag:jonbrooks.ca,2005:Post/44443712016-10-30T16:04:41-04:002016-10-30T16:04:41-04:00University of Ottawa’s Fulcrum Canadian singer-songwriter Jon Brooks brings back a musical tradition <p>JON BROOKS IS taking music back to its storytelling core. The independent musician, a resident of Ontario’s King City, recently released his latest album, Moth nor Rust—a solo acoustic project that preaches the simple values of faith, love, and justice. </p>
<p>“The only definition of folk music I care to discuss is the idea that these are the songs that outline the current spirit of the people, their suffering and their happiness,” reflects Brooks. </p>
<p>Brooks, who spent his youth as a member of Toronto rock group The Norge Union, shifted musical orientation after a seven-year hiatus, now using the edifying capabilities of folk as his preferred form of musical expression. Brooks’s music is lyrically dense, in the folk tradition of awakening others through song. </p>
<p>“Music works emotionally and irrationally—the words tend to work on the intellect,” says Brooks of his morally charged and occasionally political songwriting. “I feel like one part journalist, one part storyteller, and one part preacher.” </p>
<p>Moth nor Rust is a combination of these three approaches. Brooks gathered the material for the well-written compilation of stories through multiple interviews with everyday Canadians. In this album, Brooks departs from his previous concentration on his war experiences and resulting perspective, a focus that garnered a Canadian Folk Music Award nomination for best songwriter in 2007. Although delighted with the success of his previous album, Ours and the Shepherds, Brooks opted for a more positive tone with Moth nor Rust, feeling that he had more than just military tales to share. </p>
<p>“I couldn’t help but generate an image in people’s minds as this guy who has a strange fascination with war stories. With this [album], I’ve gone as far away from war as I possibly can.” </p>
<p>Although this latest release shifts dramatically in tone, Brooks decided to include one song, “War Resister”, in order to tie the two albums together. </p>
<p>“The first song on this [album] had to be a walk away from war,” explains Brooks. “I hope that the song is not moralistic, in the sense that I’m telling people what to think. That’s never my aim. My aim is to make people think.” </p>
<p>Brooks’s goal of creating thought-provoking material resonates throughout Moth nor Rust. </p>
<p>“I’m really sick of the ironic,” says Brooks. “There comes a time when we’ve shown the world as it is in the most postmodern, ironic, and cool ways. Now I feel bored by it. Now can we have someone go and try to show what Woody Guthrie did?” </p>
<p>Late American singer-songwriter Guthrie was a pioneer musician in the storytelling tradition of folk music. His work is known for its upbeat tone and focus on the complicated lives of ordinary people—exactly the kind of music Brooks sought to emulate on Moth nor Rust. </p>
<p>“I believe that an [album] is like a movement,” says Brooks.“Twelve little movements in a symphony.” </p>
<p>Besides touring Canada and the United States with Moth nor Rust, Brooks is also working on yet another album with a strong central theme—the Canadian immigrant experience. </p>
<p>“There’s a lot of great successes in the fact that we’re a country of immigrants,” Brooks explains. “But there’s a lot of dirty little failings too. I want to tell some of these stories that reveal maybe the not so successful aspects. <br><br>by Sepideh Soltaninia </p>
<p>http://www.thefulcrum.ca/articles/20323 </p>
<p>October, 2009</p>Jon Brookstag:jonbrooks.ca,2005:Post/44443642016-10-30T16:03:47-04:002016-10-30T16:03:47-04:00University of Ottawa Review <p>The ‘00’s’ perhaps may be remembered as a decade in which the Canadian nation was reintroduced to the realities of sending its young men and women overseas to fight hot wars on foreign soil after a half century of relative peace and contentment. If this is the case, Canadian folk artist Jon Brooks hopes his latest album Moth Nor Rust will give the listener some inner reflection and inspiration toward the ramifications and general social discontentment perpetuated by conflicts like the Afghanistan War. Brooks will be bringing his folk music performance to the Black Sheep Inn on Sept. 24 as part of a tour this year that has taken him to England and various locations in Southern Ontario. </p>
<p>The title of the album comes from a passage in the Bible in the Gospel of Matthew which suggests certain immaterial things which neither “moth nor rust can touch”; virtues and ideas that Brooks calls most important like faith, love, trust, memory, justice, and spirit. </p>
<p>From his music and storytelling combination, the artist has made a strong presence in the folk music scene in Canada in recent years with three albums and a Canadian Folk Music Award nomination for best songwriter in 2007, for example. Yet he also offers an assertive and authentic interpretation of what it means to live in the modern age. His music tends to be peppered with bread and butter Protestant Christian morals, themes of injustice, loneliness, hope, and war heroism; and probably most importantly involving real characters that have inspired him through struggle. Figures like James Loney, Romeo Dallaire and Sgt. Tommy Prince are but a few that have driven him to write tunes of great warmth and meaning in the past. One of his featured hits on the Internet is a piece called “War Resister” which is an anti-war ballad with a campfire style sound that speaks to the mechanized actions of war. The warm refrain hence goes back to “just breathe, trigger, squeeze.” “If You Seek Amy” all of this is not and that his sound is more mature and literate seems fine with him as he notes somewhat cynically “that the arts and entertainment industry is mainly fuelled by 14 year-old girls and their baby boomer parents’ money.” But he does know who is audience is and what they are looking for from his music. </p>
<p>“It boils down to the illiterate question: ‘do you sing any happy songs?’” he says. “The answer is no, I sing hopeful songs. The folk music community is currently divided into two distinct groups. The first group fairly aims to entertain a mostly passive audience. The second group aims to transform a participatory audience. The first group ushers its audiences outside of themselves and their worries. The second group ushers its audiences inward and to whom they are and to whom they could become. The first group offers a break from the examined life. The second group offers comfort and transformation by the examined life. The first group’s audience goes home tired, filled up with empty calories, and alone. The second group’s audience goes home just as tired, but hopefully, inwardly nourished and with the feeling that they are no longer alone. Neither group is better than the other for their mandates alone but: the second group, to me, is the truer purveyor of happy songs.” </p>
<p>Moth Nor Rust comes at a time when there is seemingly a bit of a hangover from the worst of the conflicts in the Middle East, whether it be in Afghanistan or in Iraq. As such there is a question as to whether people want to be as engaged with war art when the war is actually on, as to when the war is either over or at least winding down. The war film “The Hurt Locker” over the summer of 2009 was partly such a hit at the box office, it may be suggested, compared to other films of an Iraq war theme, because U.S. involvement is gradually coming to an end in 2011. </p>
<p>“Today people are justifiably too distracted by their own struggles to get from Monday to Friday to be engaged with our presence in Afghanistan,” he said. “Add to that, the impossibility of shaping an educated opinion on the matter when investigative journalism in general has degenerated into sound bytes, consumer blogging, and celebrity gossip. This is the real reason I wrote a CD of Canadian war stories: I wanted people to engage with such stories; I wanted to remind them: we are no longer a nation of peace-keepers – we are a nation at war! ” </p>
<p>What is key about Brooks’ music is that he believes that music and art can actually soothe souls and improve peoples’ lives. His drive to improve the world he does realize has its limits and he is realistic about how much he can offer. </p>
<p>“When I use words like ‘inspire’, ‘improve’, and ‘change’ – I’m only thinking of the individuals who are listening to my songs at the folk festival or club,” he says. “I’d be better off to sell the guitar and stay home to watch endless LAW & ORDER episodes eating dill pickle chips than to actually go out onstage every night with the absurd notion that I – personally – can, alone, lift humanity from moral ruin. Songs – and humanity – move more quietly and slowly than that.” </p>
<p>Jon Brooks will perform at the Black Sheep Inn in Wakefield Sept. 24 at 8:30 p.m </p>
<p>-Works, thoughts, and provocations of Simon James Whitehouse </p>
<p>Anti-war folk artist Jon Brooks to perform at Black Sheep Inn, Sept. 24 </p>
<p>September, 2009</p>Jon Brookstag:jonbrooks.ca,2005:Post/44443632016-10-30T16:02:32-04:002016-10-30T16:02:32-04:00The Waterloo Record & Guelph Mercury Jon Brooks doesn’t apologize for believing that art, including songwriting, improves the world, even if it’s in some small way by inspiring people. He translates this belief into songs of inspiration on his third release Moth Nor Rust. The 10 tracks on this solo, acoustic offering were recorded live, off-the-floor in the studio. The simplicity of the recording process adds to the eloquence, power and grace of songs that dare to affirm in the face of hopelessness and despair, whether its protesting war, demanding compassion, asserting love or expressing faith. Brooks’ dusty, lived-in voice receives the perfect accompaniment in guitar and harmonica. Moth Nor Rust might not change anything in a macro-political sense. Nevertheless, there is always room in our sad, sad world for songs that remind us of our humanity by afflicting the comfortable and comforting the afflicted. <p>-Rob Reid </p>
<p>The Record </p>
<p>July, 2009</p>Jon Brookstag:jonbrooks.ca,2005:Post/44443622016-10-30T16:01:50-04:002016-10-30T16:01:50-04:00Penguin Eggs, Canada's Folk, Roots & World Music MagazineJon Brooks is a welcome voice in an age crying out for great protest songs. When a former prime minister is grilled for taking envelopes full of cash while millions have lost their savings and jobs, we need protest singers in the worst way. <p>Armed with an acoustic guitar, a harmonica a gravelly voice and a pen, Brooks follows the tradition of poking holes in accepted truths, a path blazed by the likes of Woody Guthrie and John Lennon. You’re likely to hang on to his every word. </p>
<p>In his third disc, Brooks has penned some truly impressive songs that will likely be sung for generations to come. “How can we hear the stories of people but we can’t hear the crying of the times,” Brooks asks. </p>
<p>There’s a sadness, yet hope, in his lyrics. He sings of the man feeling trapped in a loveless marriage, wishing he were an astronaut so he could see how small we are. The seven-minute ‘What’s Within Us’ is full of the contradictions that could kill us, from the fisherman in the tar sands to the folksingers singing pop songs. </p>
<p>In God Pt. IV he says: “Well, I don’t believe in Lennon, Beatles, Bono, or U2; I don’t believe in heroes ’cause they’d say the same thing, too.” But then again, “there’s always love.” </p>
<p>-By Mike Sadava </p>
<p>July, 2009</p>Jon Brookstag:jonbrooks.ca,2005:Post/44443612016-10-30T16:00:23-04:002016-10-30T16:00:23-04:00If It’s Not Love We Can’t Take It When We Go (Pt I) <p>by Andrew Stephens-Rennie </p>You know? It’s always a little nerve-wracking when you throw your hat back in the ring.
<p>After growing up in a musical void for much of my life, I discovered more music while away at school than I knew how to handle. Continually catching up on the music that should have been the soundtrack to my childhood, and listening to the new stuff popping up around me, I was hooked. It was a late discovery, but when I finally discovered the music that was out there, it changed my life. </p>
<p>From the sounds of U2, to G’n’R, Ben Harper, Dave Matthews, Metallica, Pearl Jam, Sigur Ros, discovering bands like Anberlin, Further Seems Forever, and Big Wreck who awoke me to the diversity of musical expression. Suddenly my world was way bigger than the CBC. </p>
<p>With this love of music came a desire to experience it live, and from that desire, a continuing series of risks. I put on my first concert in the summer of 2000 at Mill Race Park in Cambridge featuring several bands from the GTA. More concerts followed, including a few with Bedouin Soundclash at Clark Hall in Kingston. </p>
<p>I pulled in Canadian bands like Turn Off the Stars and Lucerin Blue to mix things up, and eventually found myself managing the band Obsidian, now known as Born Destroyers, putting them on stage with Gob, Jersey, Closure, Robin Black and Three Days Grace amongst others. </p>
<p>But sometime in 2004, after graduation and the acquisition of a real job (who knew? and with an English degree at that!), I gave the whole racket up, leaving it behind for longer work weeks which left a lot less time to negotiate with agents, venues and the rest. I gave it up, never feeling I’d go back again. Part of it the futility of the business, part of it pure exhaustion. I told myself that I wouldn’t jump back in until it made sense. I wouldn’t do another concert unless it was an artist I truly believed in. </p>
<p>Fast forward 2008. </p>
<p>Martyn Joseph is planning to come back through Canada. I’ve moved to Ottawa, away from the familiarity of Kingston or Toronto, and yet feel that this is the time. If ever there was an artist I would want to bring anywhere, it would be Martyn. </p>
<p>Experienced and stage ready, he’s been performing for almost as long as I’ve been alive, and is one of the most intense, one of the most charismatic shows I’ve ever had the chance to witness. I send an email, sign a contract, and suddenly I’m promoting a concert featuring one of my heroes on February 5, 2009. </p>
<p>Empire Remixed presents Martyn Joseph at Ecclesiax Church in Ottawa. </p>
<p>And when the day arrived, it all started to click. There were the usual pre-event hiccoughs, but then 55 people showed up, most of whom I’d never met before, and the show was underway. </p>
<p>Jon Brooks opened with his understated, melancholic portrayal of War Resister Jeremy Hinzman, the fire sparking, cracking, and beginning to burn deep and wild as he transitioned to “When We Go.” The refrain powerful and true, the refrain ripped from Matthew’s gospel, and presented to us anew: </p>
<p>We can’t take it when we go, </p>
<p>when we go, wherever we go; </p>
<p>if it’s not love, </p>
<p>we can’t take it when we go </p>
<p>to that place where moth nor rust </p>
<p>cannot touch us past this dust – </p>
<p>if it’s not love, </p>
<p>we can’t take it when we go. </p>
<p>Brooks’ ability to confront oppression with redemption, to embrace pain with heart continued as he boldly marched through “God Pt 3,” concluding his set with a call to life, a life rooted in gift, singing “And if we keep what’s within us / what’s within us will kill us / But if we give what’s within us / what’s within us will save us.” </p>
<p>A gift. A brilliant gift to kick off the evening, and the best was yet to come. As Jon walked off stage, Martyn entered from the rear of the room, guitar in hand, singing “Strange way to start a revolution…” </p>
<p>But more on that tomorrow… </p>
<p>http://empireremixed.com/2009/02/09/if-its-not-love-we-cant-take-it-when-we-go-pt-i/ </p>
<p>February, 2009</p>Jon Brookstag:jonbrooks.ca,2005:Post/44443602016-10-30T15:59:22-04:002016-10-30T15:59:22-04:00Penguin Eggs, Canada's Folk, Roots & World Music Magazine- Feature Story <p>FOLK FOR FOLK’S SAKE </p>
<p>Just like the late nineteenth century aesthetes who believed in “art for art’s sake,” Toronto-based folk singer Jon Brooks believes in folk for folk’s sake. The passionate artist – who quotes everyone from Jesuit priests and seventeenth century philosophers to Pablo Picasso – speaks more like an academic than like an artist. </p>
<p>I meet up with the truth-seeking songwriter and self-professed idealist following his short set at Toronto’s Winter Folk in mid February. Dressed in a black hat and denim and armed with only his words and trusty Taylor 615 acoustic guitar, Brooks played with several other song slingers as part of the Protest Songs session. Buffy Sainte-Marie’s timeless anti-war song, “Universal Soldier,” sung by Brooks was one of the highlights of the songwriters’ set. </p>
<p>After he packed up his gear, we grab a pint of Guinness and head to the backroom at the Irish pub across the street. With a band playing out front, we engage in a discourse on Brook’s folk thesis. With each answer, Brooks pensively strokes his grey goatee, laying out the astute arguments of his oral essay. </p>
<p>“For my money, the folk song is the only thing violent and brutal and loving and tough and brave enough to get inside people,” he says. “I see it every night, whether it is my own songs or the Buffy Sainte-Marie song I sing, you make an effect on people and they’re forever changed.” </p>
<p>Brooks feels Canada has always struggled to classify its art and there is a certain inherent insecurity with the celebration of these home-grown forms of expression. He says the music industry today is so glutted that pop singers are getting invited to folk festivals; it frustrates the songwriter that no one really knows how to define folk music since, for him, there is but one definition. </p>
<p>“Folk music is the intent to arrest in song the truth about a particular people at a particular time and place … that is folk,” he explains. “All the great rap records of the late 80s and 90s had their roots in folk. “All the great punk rock of the 70s had their roots in folk. Of course Guthrie is the obvious example, but folk is an artistic decision. The artist looks at his or her world and decides to show it to others in the hopes of showing it we stand some chance at improving it … that’s folk to me. All the rest is pop music. </p>
<p>“Folk music is that opposing blend of opposites,” he adds. “You have lyrics, which are rational poetry, but then the music comes along and mixes with it and the way it works on it is more irrational … you mix those two things together and you’ve got a very violent instrument of change.” </p>
<p>The 2007 Ontario Council of Folk Festival’s “Songs from the Heart” winner is in the midst of writing a folk trilogy that he hopes taken together can be used as an instrument for change in what he deems “dangerous and diseased times.” </p>
<p>Brook’s debut No Mean City (2005) chronicled the underbelly of his hometown Toronto while exploring the metaphorical homelessness of the modern soul. This was followed by his latest Ours and The Shepherds, which is a disc of Canadian war stories inspired by heroes from history – from John McRae (the author of the famed poem “In Flanders Fields”) to Senator Romeo Dallaire and James Loney. The title of this sophomore effort was taken from a Dorothy Day quote: “Whose fault is it? Ours and the Shepherds.” Brooks describes the record as an attempt to tell the truth about Canadian soldiering in the midst of the present malaise of what is going on. </p>
<p>“When I sing in the first person in the voice of a war widow from 1917 Cape Breton, people have no connection to that world, but if the song works on them they are there and through the power of empathy we have connected,” he explains. “I feel disappointed that so many people I thought were card carrying folk community members in Canada were slightly miffed as why someone who introduces themselves as a folk singer would do an entire record of war songs. To me, that’s absurd. </p>
<p>“A folk singer has to be singing about that. They need to sing about what is broken to make people want to fix it. This is the role of the artist in general. If people don’t have an opinion, the state throughout history has been more than willing to make an opinion on their behalf and that is what is happening today.” </p>
<p>Brooks says that as a songwriter though it’s not his role either to make up someone else’s mind. “I want to tell them and let them decide,” he says. “You have the power as a songwriter to make people not only think rationally, but to feel emotionally about a subject that they otherwise wouldn’t be privy to. </p>
<p>“A great quote I love, that I’ve been using on stage recently, is by the Scottish Renaissance philosopher David Hume who said: If you want to know about a culture or society or a people don’t ask who writes the laws, ask who writes the songs.” </p>
<p>Brooks hopes to release the final instalment in his folk trilogy, titled Moth Nor Rust, sometime in 2008. </p>
<p>“I feel a real urgency to get this CD out because the rest of Canada doesn’t know I had a first album since it’s out of print and it was Toronto-centric,” he says. “I fear that some people think I’m just some dude who goes around writing about war stories, but no that’s just the middle section of the three CDs.” </p>
<p>As our candid conversation comes to a close and the last sips of our pint are drunk, Brooks leaves me with his final thesis on folk and how it differs from pop music. </p>
<p>“Folk music deals with the we and the us while pop deals with the I and the me,” he says. “The last thing the world needs right now is another pop song. What the world needs more than anything is somebody to come along and give us a true folk song.” </p>
<p>-David McPherson </p>
<p>February, 2008</p>Jon Brookstag:jonbrooks.ca,2005:Post/44443592016-10-30T15:58:21-04:002016-10-30T15:58:21-04:00The Canadian Press <p>CANADIAN WAR STORIES DRIVE ONTARIO SINGER-SONGWRITER JON BROOKS </p>
<p>TORONTO — Canadian folk music is failing its grand tradition of truthful storytelling in times of war, says Ontario singer-songwriter Jon Brooks. The straight-talking musician is nominated for a Canadian Folk Music Award for his disc of Canadian war stories, “Ours and the Shepherds,” a stirring collection of tales touching on the Korean War, the genocide in Rwanda and Canadian peacekeepers in Afghanistan. It includes songs about James Loney, the northern Ontario activist held hostage in Iraq while working for a Christian pacifist organization, Romeo Dallaire, the former general who led an ill-fated United Nations peacekeeping force in Rwanda and Sgt. Tommy </p>
<p>Prince, the decorated Canadian aboriginal veteran who died a forgotten hero in 1977. </p>
<p>“If we went back 40 years and I was a folk singer and it was 1967, I don’t think I would be able to call myself a folk singer if I didn’t have a song about Vietnam, you know?” he says. </p>
<p>“I wouldn’t compare the two, but still, the idea of singing about wherever there is violence and social inequity in the world, that to me is the essence of folk songwriting, and yet, it’s not that common. There’s a lot of people uneasy about it.” </p>
<p>While artists like Neil Young, Steve Earle, Green Day and Bruce Springsteen have all produced albums critical of the U.S. involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan, Brooks says the Canadian </p>
<p>experience has been largely ignored. The 39-year-old adds that he has even been turned down for gigs because of his provocative portraits. </p>
<p>“They said, `We’re not quite sure, we think you might be a bit intense for our audience.”‘ he says of being rejected by some venues in northwestern Ontario. </p>
<p>“It makes me angry and it also makes me laugh because I just think that folk singing is not about writing in my diary about my last break-up. That’s pop. The folk singer should be singing about </p>
<p>the problems of the world.” </p>
<p>Fellow Folk Music Award nominee Bruce Cockburn, however, says he’s been inspired by what he sees as a healthy social awareness in music today. Cockburn, whose catalogue of politically charged songs includes “If I Had a Rocket Launcher” and “Lovers In A Dangerous Time,” says many of today’s protest songs are subtle in their approach. </p>
<p>“I’m hearing a lot of stuff lately that does seem to touch on the current goings-on, I think I hear it in the Arcade Fire stuff, kind of across the board,” says Cockburn, who has a leading four folk nominations for his disc, “Life Short Call Now.” </p>
<p>“The references I was thinking of are more oblique and seem to be more springing from a recognition that we are faced with a period of conflict and that the times are very volatile and that there’s reason to be fearful. And to me that’s very much like what was in the air in the ’60s during the Vietnam period.” </p>
<p>Cockburn says his job as a musician is to simply describe hisfeelings about real-life encounters. </p>
<p>“For some people it’s not necessary to personally encounter something before they write about it but for me, it generally is,” says Cockburn, who heads to Nepal this week, 20 years after his first visit. </p>
<p>“A song like `If I Had a Rocket Launcher,’ I didn’t write that in the abstract, I wrote it because I felt that way, because I’d been in those refugee camps in the south of Mexico where the people I had met had been subjected to unbelievable horrors.” </p>
<p>Brooks said he spent the better part of two years researching material for his album, which included interviews with dozens of veterans and military chaplains, and befriending Loney. </p>
<p>“Jim Loney, in my opinion, is a Canadian hero,” Brooks says. </p>
<p>“I know he’s a figure of contention, he put a lot of people’s lives at risk, he was over there doing something which most people in this day and age would consider completely irrational. But to me, he represents a hero of our time because here was a rare example of somebody acting on purely moral impulse.” </p>
<p>The Canadian Folk Music Awards will be handed out Dec. 1 in Gatineau, Que. </p>
<p>November, 2007</p>Jon Brookstag:jonbrooks.ca,2005:Post/44443582016-10-30T15:57:39-04:002016-10-30T15:57:39-04:00Penguin Eggs, Canada's Folk, Roots & World Music Magazine CD Review Jon Brooks is a Canadian singer-songwriter from Ontario, former leader of Toronto based band Norge Union til they disbanded in 1995. Brooks then moved to Krakow, Poland, traveled and played around Eastern Europe. He made it to Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina, devastated by recent wars and the experience inspired The Latest Great Embarrassment, recorded in Poland in 1997. In 2005 Brooks released his first full length CD, ‘No Mean City’, a thematic observation of urban life as witnessed in Toronto. But because of the vagaries of Canadian independent record releases, none of these earlier recordings had filtered out way out west here, so Jon was completely unknown to me until I received his new CD, the intriguingly titled ‘Ours And The Shepherds’. It is a collection of songs about Canada’s war experience, from WWI through the peacekeeping missions of Rwanda, Bosnia, and Somalia to full involvement in a war in Afghanistan. To do any justice to this theme in 13 songs would seem a dauntingly impossible task. It could have been a predictable polemic, once again stating the obvious. Not here -I am glad to say. Jon pulls it off with brilliance, originality, great skill, emotion, and craft. From ‘Auction Days’ about New Waterford widows after Vimy Ridge to ‘Tajik Boy’, which recounts a combatant’s haunting memories of killing a 14 year-old boy outside Kandahar, this collection is a powerful and stunningly lovely piece of work. The sparsely produced 11 original pieces work very well thematically and more importantly – they also stand alone as good songs – each an individual gem. Included in Jon’ original work, is an original and moving version of ‘In Flanders Fields’ and a song I particularly loved – ‘Cigarettes’- a brilliant love song of sorts to the importance of cigarettes to human beings in times of great stress. ‘Cigarettes’ is taken from the words of Frank P Dixon, a soldier from Elkhorn, Manitoba, who died, at age 20, of wounds inflicted in 1918 and set to a lovely and jaunting melody by Jon. Oh Yeah – the title is taken from a Dorothy Day quote: “Whose fault is it? Ours and the shepherds.” This is a thoroughly wonderful, truly important and satisfying addition to the canon of Canadian folk music. One of the best albums I have heard ever. <p>– les siemieniuk </p>
<p>November, 2007</p>Jon Brookstag:jonbrooks.ca,2005:Post/44443572016-10-30T15:56:25-04:002016-10-30T15:56:25-04:00CBC Metro Morning <p>Local singer/songwriter Jon Brooks has just released an album with an intriguing concept. It’s called Ours And The Shepherds and it had me interested even before I cracked open this record. There was a little sticker on the cover with the words, “A collection of songs examining Canada’s war experience. From WWI through to Afghanistan.” Musically, it’s a laid-back affair that’ll appeal to fans of roots and folk. And lyrically, the stories that inspired these 13 narratives are so interesting and the songs are so visual. </p>
<p>In an interview, Brooks told Speak Music’s Jennifer Claveau that he has no knowledge of a record like this being done before in Canada. And he said that he feels that folk musicians here have veered away from the subject of this country’s war experiences. On the subject of the stories and characters behind these songs, “Sgt. Tommy Prince” is dedicated to the Ojibway Canadian war hero, “Tajik Boy” is about a Toronto cop who still fights the memories of killing a 14 year-old Tajik boy outside Kandahar, and “Jim Loney’s Prayer Parts 1 and 2” honour the work of Canadian Peacemaker and former hostage, Jim Loney. </p>
<p>Jon Brooks describes himself best on his home page (http://www.jonbrooks.ca). In it he writes, “Jon Brooks is part unrepentant idealist, part fallen mystic, part secular preacher. He is a troubadour wholly devoted to the song as being a necessary means toward greater social justice. His inspiration is taken from those on the outside of the circle of approval.” </p>
<p>Brooks’ last album was called No Mean City, and he says that disc and this one share a theme. No Mean City, he says, was about the failure of neighbours to get along and this disc addresses the failure of nations to get along. </p>
<p>The song we signed off with was “The Latest Great Embarassment,” which calls out the UN and the West for turning a blind eye toward Darfur . ‘Tajik Boy’ and ‘Cigarettes’ were also played. </p>
<p>NOTE: If you like what you hear, check out Jon Brooks when he plays the Cadillac Lounge (1296 Queen Street West) tomorrow, and The Dakota Tavern (249 Ossington) on Friday. </p>
<p>-Errol Nazareth </p>
<p>May, 2007</p>Jon Brookstag:jonbrooks.ca,2005:Post/44443562016-10-30T15:55:45-04:002016-10-30T15:55:45-04:00The Waterloo Record – CD Review <p>Toronto singer/songwriter Jon Brooks is the latest in a long, honourable –and depleting — line of folksingers who write and perform to further the cause of social justice. </p>
<p>The 13 songs comprising Ours and the Shepherds offer a clear-eyed, sharp-minded and big-hearted series of snapshots of Canada at war, encompassing the two world wars, Korean War, conflicts in Bosnia and Rwanda and mission in Afghanistan. Brooks has deep compassion for the men and women who are wounded — psychologically and spiritually as well as physically — by war. But he has intense contempt for those, especially politicians, who cower in the face of moral responsibility. As direct, immediate and powerful as Brooks’ message is, he never forgets that he’s a songwriter and that, to be successful, art must not surrender to propaganda, however well meaning and deeply felt. Ours and the Shepherds is an important album in these confused and troubling times. </p>
<p>– Robert Reid </p>
<p>May, 2007</p>Jon Brookstag:jonbrooks.ca,2005:Post/44443552016-10-30T15:54:59-04:002016-10-30T15:54:59-04:00The Toronto Star – CD Review <p>Rating: 3 1/2 stars (out of 4) </p>
<p>Twelve songs – originals except for World War I Canadian veteran Frank Dixon’s poem “Cigarettes”, which Brooks’ has put to music – examine the Canadian experience of war from 1914 to the present through the eyes of characters that inhabit this gifted Toronto singer-songwriter’s imagination, or are drawn from published accounts in newspapers and journals. Though Brooks’ evocative work chronicles emotional, spiritual and corporal pain, it is neither a cry of protest nor saccharine patriotic hoopla. Apparently inspired by a trip to Bosnia in the aftermath of the civil war there, these songs are chapters in a classic musical version of ‘Dispatches’, a series of dispassionate and unconnected snapshots of the Canadian warrior psyche – if there is such a thing – under pressure, and compelling tales of those at home who are left to ponder the consequences of war. Brooks’ is an exceptional acoustic guitarist, and co-producer Pat Simmonds – a ubiquitous expat New Zealand folk artist who is known for his work in the Celtic music arena – has deftly captured both the power and compassion in Brooks’ big voice and the fascinating subtleties of his guitar technique. </p>
<p>Top Track: “Hill 677” – for the constant, harrowing question in the chorus “Whose fault is it?” </p>
<p>-Greg Quill </p>
<p>May, 2007</p>Jon Brookstag:jonbrooks.ca,2005:Post/44443532016-10-30T15:54:18-04:002016-10-30T15:54:18-04:00The Newmarket Era Banner - BROOKS CONNECTS PEOPLE TO STORIES <p>When Jon Brooks was growing up in King City, he was more concerned about delivering his newspapers than world events. </p>
<p>“I delivered papers, skipped classes, dislocated shoulders in the King arena, carried out bags of groceries at the IGA and made lots of necessary adolescent mistakes.” </p>
<p>Two years of washing dishes at Hogan’s give him plenty of time to reflect on his place in the world and he eventually found it in music. </p>
<p>He describes himself now as “a troubadour wholly devoted to the song as being a necessary means toward greater social justice”. </p>
<p>Mr. Brooks, recently named Best Songwriter of 2006 by the international Green Man Review, has just released his second CD, Ours And The Shepherds (Exile Music). He will be a featured performer at the Kingfest Music Festival June 23 at Seneca College in King City. </p>
<p>He is an unrepentant folk artist who says the folk song is “a legitimate and relevant art form and vehicle for social change. I am a songwriter that aims to tell the truth about a certain people in a certain place and of a certain time and thus improving the world by showing it to others. That’s folk, that’s the mandate of art and that’s a vocation to be proud of.” </p>
<p>The latest CD is a collection of Canadian war stories from the First World War to the current mission in Afghanistan. </p>
<p>“It begins where my 2006 CD, No Mean City, leaves off,” he said. </p>
<p>No Mean City is a 13 song/novel set amid the homelessness of Toronto streets and is aimed at what Mr. Brooks considers “our contemporary moral fatigue and lack of inner life”. It examines the failure of neighbours to get along. Ours and the Shepherds examines the failure of nations to get along and particularly how Canadians have participated in wars. </p>
<p>Greg Quill of the Toronto Star gave the new CD 3 1/2 stars (out of 4) and called him an exceptional acoustic guitarist. CBC Radio One – Metro Morning said the CD should appeal to fans of roots and folk. But Mr. Brooks is not an overnight sensation. </p>
<p>These days, he play primarily guitar and harmonica, but paid some dues as a Hammond organ player and leader of The Norge Union, a Toronto and area band that recorded Bulldozer in 1993. When that band broke up in 1995, Mr. Brooks moved to Poland, travelled and played solo shows throughout Poland, Ireland, Latvia, Lithuania, Ukraine, Hungary and Belarus. </p>
<p>In 1996, he hitchhiked throughout Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina, the former Yugoslavia, which had been devastated by civil wars and ethnic cleansing. It was here he experienced war first-hand and was impressed by the soldiers he met who still had “hope in the face of hopelessness”. </p>
<p>Years later, he wrote two of the songs on the current album — Jim Loney’s Prayer Part 1 and Part 2. James Loney was the Canadian “Christian Peacemaker” held hostage in Iraq in 2006. The songs are meditations for a world that challenges hope, love and faith. </p>
<p>“I chose to bookend a collection of Canadian war stories with stories of James Loney because I consider him a hero of our times,” Mr. Brooks says. “As well, I understand the controversy of his story. Today’s humanity is seldom driven to moral action. I wanted to include something hopeful, a prayer attuned to the difficult idea that if one part of the world hurts, we all hurt.” </p>
<p>Mr. Brooks is pleased to be playing on the Habitat Stage at Kingfest and says: “Like James Loney’s Christian Peacemakers, and like every urban church with a basement shelter and soup kitchen, Habitat For Humanity is a rare and accurate witness to those living on the outskirts of privilege. </p>
<p>“Habitat is ecumenical and global as only true charity can be and I look forward to playing a festival that seems to understand that songs and charity do, essentially, the same thing: they connect people and, in so doing, they improve the world.” </p>
<p>Mr. Brooks is working on his next CD, to be called The Tired Soil, which will tell stories of new Canadians. His own path has taken him to many places, but through his parents who live here, he is still part of King City. His dad, Jack, played drums on the latest release. </p>
<p>Mr. Brooks has the following suggestions for young artists. “First, ask yourself what is it you need to say to the world? Then ask yourself why does the world need to hear you say it? Or, what is so unique about your artistic voice/expression that the world needs to hear it? If you can answer those questions, perhaps you can improve the world by offering your artistic voice.” </p>
<p>May, 2007</p>Jon Brookstag:jonbrooks.ca,2005:Post/44443522016-10-30T15:53:18-04:002016-10-30T15:53:18-04:00Tandem – CD Review <p>The vast majority of CDs received by this scribe are clearly designed to entertain or titillate. Not so Ours And The Shepherds, the brilliant new disc from local songsmith Brooks. He aims to educate us, via a collection of songs that examine Canada’s war experience, from the Second World War to the current and likely ill-fated Afghanistan mission. Given the continued blurring of the truth from our politicians and military leadership, his timing is impeccable. Brooks personalizes the stories of the soldiers in a poetic and compassionate way. His 2005 album, No Mean City, probed the dark side of urban life, and Ours And The Shepherds is an even stronger effort. Such musicians as SUZIE VINNICK, JAMES GRAY (BLUE RODEO) and co-producer PAT SIMMONDS add subtle and effective accompaniment. Brooks recently launched the CD with a Hugh’s Room gig. </p>
<p>-Kerry Doole </p>
<p>May, 2007</p>Jon Brookstag:jonbrooks.ca,2005:Post/44443512016-10-30T15:51:51-04:002016-10-30T15:51:51-04:00NOW Magazine – CD Review <p>Rating: NNNN </p>
<p>CRITIC’S PICK </p>
<p>It’s hard to believe, but there’s more going on in Toronto than just indie rock. This city has a thriving folk scene, and it’s a shame more stoic indie kids aren’t heading to Hugh’s Room to hear 40-something guitar-slingers peddle their organic tunes. One such musician (though he’s still under 40) is Jon Brooks, a wandering folkie who’s spent time playing in Poland and Bosnia. His new record is full of simple but infectious guitar tunes about Canada’s history with war. Tunes about Roméo Dallaire, the country’s mission in Afghanistan and even a haunting rendition of In Flanders Fields make this record not just a fab listen, but a thought-provoking history lesson as well. </p>
<p>-Bryan Borzykowski </p>
<p>May, 2007</p>Jon Brookstag:jonbrooks.ca,2005:Post/44443502016-10-30T15:50:38-04:002016-10-30T15:50:38-04:00Metro – CD Review <p>No Mean City </p>
<p>Exile </p>
<p>* * * * (4 STARS) </p>
<p>If you’ve ever waited for the all-night bus to take you home after putting in overtime on the Friday late shift at a downtown bar, you’ll know where this former Norge Union organist and Richmond Hill native is coming from. No Mean City reflects on a bittersweet homage to life in the urban world – namely, Canada’s largest city. While the music itself isn’t anything you haven’t heard before (the acoustic guitar and harmonica on How Good It Is To Love Someone, How Right It Is To Care are reminiscent of Bob Dylan), the real power of Brooks’ offering lies in its altruistic, good-natured poetry in the face of a place that, more often than not, couldn’t care less. </p>
<p>From the man who buys the Somali heroin addict a beer and a shot at the Steerburger bar on the track Miracle On Bleecker Street, to the emptiness the young Scarborough ÈmigrÈ feels as she moves away from her east-end home in the title track, here is Jon Brooks’ brushstroke of calm humanity against the canvas of a pitiless city. </p>
<p>-Brian Towie</p>Jon Brookstag:jonbrooks.ca,2005:Post/44443492016-10-30T15:48:17-04:002016-10-30T15:48:17-04:00Penguin Eggs – CD Review <p>‘Oh great,’ I thought, ‘another bloody singer-songwriter.’ But, as I’ve learned before, never judge a book by its cover. This is a startlingly simple CD, which proves that if you have solid content you don’t need much else. It is made up of songs about living in a Toronto that remains unseen by the casual visitor. Back alleys, mean streets, dollar stores, bars, cheap hotels, low rent apartments and such-like form the scenarios through which Brooks’ characters move, sometimes desperately, sometimes hopefully. </p>
<p>Straightforward playing and honest gritty vocal delivery with a real sense of urgency are the hallmarks of this record. You have to be able to cope with the unrelenting bleakness of the imagery that pervades every song but his poetic and interesting lyrics make it worth the bother. This is a CD that deserves to be heard and begs to be listened to. </p>
<p>-Tim Readman </p>
<p>March, 2006</p>Jon Brookstag:jonbrooks.ca,2005:Post/44443482016-10-30T15:47:37-04:002016-10-30T15:47:37-04:00Exclaim! – CD Review No Mean City – <p>This is certainly no typical singer-songwriter release, as Toronto-based Brooks has one ambitious concept in mind. In his own words, No Mean City bears witness and indictment to the modern urban disaster as seen through Toronto’s example. A well-travelled troubadour (formerly leader of the Norge Union), Brooks had planned to write a novel about the city before deciding on a musical forum for his thoughts. The result is a highly literate, musically sparse work of true grit. Some tracks are totally solo – with Brooks supplying guitar, harmonica and harmonium – while others have subtle contributions from the likes of James Gray (Blue Rodeo), Dan MacDonald, and multi instrumentalist/producer Pat Simmonds. The city Brooks knows is not that of the martini-sippers at the Drake or yuppies buying lofts, but he knows the streets walked by the downtrodden very well. The pawnshops on Church, the all-night coffee shops on Parliament, the cheap rooming houses – these are his characters, and he evokes them with real skill. “No Good” is a fine example: “Another dollar store toy drags tired mom and boy home under the flood of Parkdale’s red setting sun.” Over the course of its hour length, No Mean City and its pervasive bleakness can become hard work, but Brooks deserves credit for his bold ambition. </p>
<p>-Kerry Doole </p>
<p>February, 2006</p>Jon Brookstag:jonbrooks.ca,2005:Post/44443292016-10-30T15:46:02-04:002016-10-30T15:46:02-04:00chartattack – CD Review <p>No Mean City – </p>
<p>Equal parts folk-blues record and literary piece, No Mean City is a bittersweet love letter to Toronto, though often more bitter than sweet. Local singer-songwriter Jon Brooks has crafted a sparse, thoughtful and eloquent collection of stories that cast light into some of the dark corners of urban life. Political without being preachy, Brooks’ roughened vocal delivery invokes shades of Tom Waits or NQ Arbuckle. The understated acoustic instrumentation aids the flow of the songs in an almost hypnotic manner. No Mean City is great as a mellow background listen, but definitely stands up to focused scrutiny. </p>
<p>-Shannon Whibbs </p>
<p>January, 2006</p>Jon Brooks