Jon Brooks returns to TNMH

Take Note! Music House, address given upon reservation, Barrie, ON

We are absolutely thrilled to be bringing one of our favourite songwriters to the Take Note Music House ' and we're sure he'll become a favourite of yours, too!

Jon Brooks will be giving a house concert at the Take Note! Music House on Saturday, March 28 at 8:00 pm (doors open at 7:30). Suggested donation is $15, with all proceeds going directly to the performer. You may reserve your seat by calling (705) 305-1687 or emailing concerts@takenotepromotion.com.

Jon Brooks (www.jonbrooks.ca)

'I write songs to calm those who've looked into, and seen, what is in their hearts. I also write songs to terrify those who have not.'

It was in 1997, at 28 years old, and at the end of a year of travelling throughout Eastern Europe, the former Soviet Union, and particularly, throughout war ruined Bosnia-Herzegovina ' it was during this time Jon Brooks discovered what kind of song he wanted to write. In 2006 he began singing that song. In 2014 Borealis Records released his 5th album, The Smiling and Beautiful Countryside. Jon is Kerrville New Folk Winner and a three-time 'Songwriter of the Year' nominee at the Canadian Folk Music Awards.

No Mean City, released in 2006, was the first in a trilogy of albums of sparse instrumentation and densely layered poetry ' a singular writing style characterized by paradox, understatement, overstatement, and by allusion to Western religious, literary and folk traditions. It was followed by Ours and the Shepherds in 2007 and the solo acoustic set Moth Nor Rust in 2009. Each album is imprinted with a theme: architecture and homelessness of the modern urban soul; war; and all the things that neither moth nor rust may touch: love, hope, faith, memory, gratitude, trust, inspiration, and forgiveness.

Delicate Cages was released by Borealis Records in May 2012. The album earned Jon his third 'Songwriter of the Year' nomination in 5 years from the Canadian Folk Music Awards. Like its predecessors, Delicate Cages' songs were inter-woven by themes of love and fear; and freedom and imprisonment. The idea was inspired by the Robert Bly poem, Taking The Hands: 'Taking the hands of someone you love, / you see they are delicate cages.' Also consistent with Jon's albums, the song subjects were as wide ranging as they were topical and controversial: the Alberta tar sands (Fort McMurray); Bill 101 and Quebec's language laws (Hudson Girl); Palestinian suicide bombers (Son of Hamas); Bosnian child soldier turned Canadian mixed martial arts fighter (Cage Fighter); and so-called 'Honour Killing' (The Lonesome Death of Aqsa Parvez). Morally and politically ambiguous, Delicate Cages offered what Jon has since called, 'necessary and alternative understandings of 'hope' and 'grief' that are neither sanitized, dumbed down, nor degraded by the modern lie of 'closure.''

The Smiling and Beautiful Countryside crashed the folk/roots party in late 2014 with a death count of 75. It's an album of rural Canadian murder ballads and was recorded in Toronto by well-awarded and oft-acclaimed producer/engineer, David Travers-Smith. Jon's 5th full length release is an intrepid solo set that defies categorization and resists any 'folk,' 'singer-songwriter,' or 'solo acoustic' description. Equal parts local Canadiana and universal horror, this is a collection that has buried all the trademark Jon Brooks social commentary in a shallow, roadside grave. Philosophical paradox, gallows humour, impossible love, titillating gore, adulterous sex, serial killers, gun dealers, rampage killing, missing women, First Nations catastrophe, necrophilia, Shakespeare, and John Milton: The Smiling and Beautiful Countryside is neither an album for casual fans nor is it music that will ever be heard in your dentist's waiting room. Why record such a violent set of songs? In Jon's words, 'because: a) I wanted to write an album from which nobody indifferently escapes, an album that can only be loved or hated; b) if courage is a muscle, it needs to exercised with a healthy dose of fear today; and c) I've already done four albums that inspire: it's now time to offend.'

'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.' [Greg Quill, Toronto Star]