For Immediate Release
The Crooked Brothers criss-cross the Canadian frontier
Folk festival favourites showcase new CD on national tour
(July 21, 2011 – Winnipeg, MB) With their banjos, mandolins, dobros, scrap metal pieces and other instruments in tow, Winnipeg’s The Crooked Brothers will trek across Canada to debut songs from their sophomore CD, Lawrence, Where’s Your Knife? Their national tour commences August 12, 2011 (full schedule below).
Concert dates include Ontario’s Trout Forest Music Festival, New Brunswick’s Summer's End Music Festival and Manitoba’s West End Cultural Centre. The Crooked Brothers’ blend of timeless country classic sounds, back porch blues and stomping scrap yard funk has gained the attention of many folk festival and roots music fans.
Crooked Brothers – Fall 2011 Concert Dates:
EAST:
August 12-14: Trout Forest Music Festival, Ear Falls, ON
August 16: The Apollo, Thunder Bay, ON
August 18: Loplops, Sault Ste. Marie, ON
August 19: Piebird B&B, Nippising, ON
August 20: Le Divan Orange, Montreal, PQ
August 22: Plan B, Moncton, NB
August 23: Just Us, Halifax, NS
August 25: Lorax Community, Wolfville, NS
August 26-28: Summer's End Music Festival, Grand Manan, NB
August 29: Baba's Lounge, Charlottetown, PEI
Sept 4: This Ain't Hollywood, Hamilton, ON
Sept 7: The Cameron House, Toronto, ON
WEST:
Sept 23: West End Cultural Center, Winnipeg, MB
Sept 24: Happy Nun Cafe, Forget, SK
Sept 25: Ye Olde Jar Bar, Medicine Hat, AB
Sept 28: General Store, Twin Butte, AB
Sept 30: The Royal, Nelson, BC
Oct 1: The Schoolhouse, Ymir, BC
Oct 13-16: Ontario Council of Folk Festivals, Niagara Falls, ON
Oct 7: Café Deux Soleils, Vancouver, BC
(more dates TBA at www.crookedbrothers.com)
The Crooked Brothers are known for their diverse instrumentation, vocal arrangements, and a fascination with the past. Even their name has a contemplative, seasoned aura about it. “The brothers part of our name relates to the archetypical bluegrass, folk, family band idea. We’re essentially brothers every way but biologically,” explains The Crooked Brothers’ Jesse Matas. “The crooked part is derived from a book we all read called “Ironweed” by William Kennedy. He used the term “crooked” to described people after they’ve died. He says ‘they’ve gone crooked’, or ‘he was all crooked’. It seemed to fit with our band. One of our original goals was to see beauty in everything including death.”
That includes the first song on Lawrence, Where’s Your Knife? The album comes blazing out of the gate with the song “17 Horses”, which paints a historic depiction of hard times during a rural anthrax epidemic in the spring of 1931. “It’s somewhat historical, rooted in a story about a bunch of horses passing away when they were building the Trans Canada Highway through Manitoba’s Whiteshell Provincial Park,” says Matas. The horses had kicked up some naturally-occurring anthrax in the soil, leading to their demise.
Other songs, like “Winter’s Come” tackle the painful end of relationships. “We have a lot of heartbreak songs which are definitely ‘moving’ to yourself when you’re writing them. ‘Winter’s Come’ is about a woman leaving a man to go south, and the man figuring out what to do now.” Matas says two of the band members went through some “pretty heavy heartbreak” while writing material for their new CD.
“This album is a lot more direct in inspiration. These songs are all based on things that really happened,” says Matas. Despite the sometimes heavy subject matter, the CD as a whole is lively, energetic, danceable and entertaining.
To learn more about The Crooked Brothers, please visit www.crookedbrothers.com
High-resolution images and MP3s of The Crooked Brothers can be found here: http://www.soundstrategymusic.ca/Crooked_Brothers
Download a private, media-only copy of The Crooked Brothers’ new CD Lawrence, Where’s Your Knife? here: http://lawrence.transistor66.com/
To learn more about Transistor 66 Record Company, please click here: http://www.transistor66.com
To set up an interview with The Crooked Brothers, please contact:
Lisa Saunders, publicist
Sound Strategy Music
e. lisa@soundstrategymusic.ca
p. 204.799.4641
www.soundstrategymusic.ca
