Great Lake Swimmers

Recording in an abandoned grain silo was a risky plan, but for the music of Great Lake Swimmers, it was the perfect way to capture their stark acoustic sound. "We were literally out in the middle of nowhere, no electricity even,” explains singer/songwriter Tony Dekker. "It picked up a lot of the ambience of that location. We brought in a power generator, filled the silo with microphones and then sifted through the various different vantage points of sound after the fact. The process of recording became equally as important to me as the songs themselves.” The end result — echo and crickets included — is a hauntingly beautiful debut album rooted in classic country and folk, with its closest contemporaries being My Morning Jacket or Will Oldham. The album does feature traces of organ, lap steel guitar and accordion from an evolving line-up of band members, but it is Dekker, his lush voice and his guitar that form the foundation. The deeply personal songs cover the thorny side of Dekker’s emotions, touching on themes of loneliness and disillusionment. "Some of them are representative of tough times that I was going through, but more so, they reflect and document a way of seeing things. All are a result of becoming a kind of filter to the things happening in my life and around me. Those things had to come out, and it was part of my own ongoing compulsion to write. My impetus for making music is in the creative process itself. Allowing the music to be made, so that it exists in the world, is its own reward.” To Dekker, Canada’s landscape finds its way into more than the name of the band. "I think that the landscape definitely informs the songs. Our country is rich with images, natural and cultural features, that I find can make strong connections to themes of the human condition.”