The Guest List
Thursday March 21st, 2019 with Joe Reilly
Interviews with Wintersleep, Jon Bryant, Ten Fe and Dave Gunning

A busy show with great conversations about music and some fabulous tunes! It is always a pleasure to catch up with the members of Wintersleep and today we enjoy a conversation with Paul Murphy - the vocalist and guitarist with the group. The band has just released a brand new album In the Land Of and Wintersleep will be playing at the Bronson Centre on Saturday night (March 23.) We open things up with Paul by talking about the sentiment behind the song "Beneficiary" which is Paul's comment on how many of us have benefited from the genocide of Indigenous Canadians. He tells us how it ended up having a happy, uplifting sound despite the sobering lyrics. We also talk about how the band manages to create albums that have powerful political songs as well as beautiful personal pieces side by side. We talk about how his voice is fitting into the current mix on this album and how the band blends old and new songs in their setlists while touring for this new album. http://www.wintersleep.com/ https://www.spectrasonic.com/event/1802143-wintersleep-ottawa/ Next up we hear from singer-songwriter Jon Bryant. Jon was preparing to play a show tonight (March 21) at Babylon. Jon is originally from Halifax but currently lives in Vancouver. His latest album (soon to be released) is called Cult Classic and some songs from the album tell the story of Jon breaking free from a cult that he had fallen into. Jon tells us that naturally he's a bit wary of spending all of his interviews about this album talking about the cult. He explains how the song "Cultivated" is about the cult experience but about much more like our need to connect with others and find community. He talks about the desire he felt to create uplifting sounds to surround some of these serious songs and we ended by talking about the sentiment behind the song "Did What I Did." https://www.jonbryantmusic.com/ https://www.spectrasonic.com/event/1820555-jon-bryant-ottawa/ Then we connect with Leo Duncan, who is one of the two principal singer-songwriters in the London (England) based group Ten Fe. He explains how the group arrived at using a Spanish term for the band's name and how he and his key bandmate Ben Moorhouse are hopeless romantics in the broadest sense of the word romantic. We have some fun talking about the bad habits we all have and try to kick, as this is referenced in the song "Won't Happen" and about the ideas behind the song "Superrich." The band is playing at the 27 Club here in Ottawa on Sunday night, March 24. https://www.tenfemusic.co.uk/ https://www.spectrasonic.com/event/1803507-ten-fe-ottawa/ Finally we check in with Dave Gunning who is appearing at the National Arts Centre on Sunday afternoon for a 3 p.m. matinee performance (March 24.) Dave has just released a strong new album titled Up Against the Sky. The album features plenty of great songs that tell small stories about rural life along with some powerful, politically-charged anthems like "Wish I Was Wrong." Dave explains how that song was partly inspired by a political fight against pulp and paper producers harvesting trees and wanting to dump pollution directly into the ocean. He also talks about how he loves to capture those little narratives in many of his songs. https://www.davegunning.com/ https://nac-cna.ca/en/event/20221 Get out and see some live music this week and remember if you like some music then please buy it... support musicians so they can continue to make great music for us all to enjoy!