The Fugitives

The Fugitives, established in 2007, have released four records, which have been nominated for multiple Canadian Folk Music Awards and a Western Canadian Music Award. Their previous album, Everything Will Happen, spent ten weeks on the top ten Canadian folk charts, and earned them a support slot across Western Canada with Buffy Sainte-Marie and an appearance at UK’s Glastonbury Festival. Their follow-up, The Promise of Strangers, is set for release on January 26th on Borealis Records.

 

New Album & Film

Hey all! Our new album, “Trench Songs” goes out into the wide world tomorrow - November 10th, 2020! Very excited to share the work with everyone. You can buy/listen to it in all the normal places.

Trench Songs is an album made up of lyrics of WW1 soldiers, with new music by us. You can read about it in the following publications:

Also, a new movie featuring these songs can be found online beginning Nov.11th. It’s called “Ridge” and was written by Fugitive Brendan McLeod, with music by us.

STREAM RIDGE HERE

NEW A CAPELLA SONG + VIDEO

This is an a capella tune we wrote using lyrics from a 19th-Century soldier's song by W.F. Thompson. It's the first single off our forthcoming album, 'Trench Songs', out November 10th.

Why does it look so fricking pro? Because it's part of a larger filmed theatre piece called 'Ridge', written by our own Brendan McLeod, produced by the Chan Centre for the Performing Arts, directed by Mike Southworth with cinematography by Byron Kopman.

'Ridge' will have two live in-person screenings at the Pacific Cinematheque on Nov 7th and then will be available to stream online at the Chan's website after that, details here: https://chancentre.com/events/ridge/

New Album 'Trench Songs' Coming in November!

Trench songs were written by frontline soldiers during WW1. Essentially protest songs, they were often parodies of well-known tunes. We’ve rewritten new melodies and music for these words, in order to more readily access the emotional content of the lyrics, and to continue folk music’s long tradition of reshaping songs over time -- the same way soldiers reshaped these songs in the trenches.

It’s the most  stripped down album we’ve done. Other than percussion, the recording was performed by our 4 current touring members, a lot of it live off the floor.

During the pandemic, where war metaphors abound, these songs have given us much-needed perspective around hardship, the sacrifice of previous generations, and, mostly, what vulnerable communities can be forced to endure at the hands of the government and military in a crisis. We think about these soldiers when we sing, and hope you will too.



 

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