Graventown Yard Pals: Stephen Stanley

Toronto-based singer-songwriter and guitarist, Stephen Stanley may most immediately be known as a founding member, lead guitarist and vocalist with acclaimed, early 90’s alt-rock band, The Lowest of the Low. The groups undeniable and “genuinely timeless album” (Exclaim!), Shakespeare My Butt…, earned gold record status and saw the band share stages with the likes of Billy Bragg, The Violent Femmes, amongst many others. Fame took the band on a relentless, highly pressurized and ultimately, band-fracturing tour schedule. Stephen was featured in the group’s recent documentary, Subversives that was released in September of 2023.
start time: 7 pm

Stephen ultimately, had his own mark and music to make and The Stephen Stanley Band became his focus. He’s assembled a collection of trusted players and has gone on to log monumental shows with the likes of, 54•40, Bob Mould, Cracker, Lee Ann Womak, Jake Clemons, Willie Nile, The Jayhawks, and Lloyd Cole. He’s played festival stages in Germany, and toured across the UK and Ireland.

The Stephen Stanley Band’s is happy to introduce their new album, Before The Collapse Of The Hive (Wolfe Island Records). It’s an album brimming with raw, unflinching urgency, steadfast observation and soul-searching storytelling that highlights Stephen’s immediate world: those he loves, and those he’s lost.

Recording the album on on Wolfe Island became an integrated life experience. Start and stop times were not regimented. “Often, we’d go and play a set at the Hotel Wolfe Island (co-owned by album producer and album contributor, Hugh Christopher Brown) and recording would just take place around the timing of the show.”

Except for Kate Fenner, Michael Blake and Ron Hawkins, outside of his band, everyone who played on the new record lives on Wolfe Island. A wonderful stable of players and singers, deeply affected the sound of this new work, produced again, by Hugh Christopher Brown.

The Stephen Stanley Band’s internationally acclaimed record, Jimmy & the Moon (2017), saw Stephen and his band going into the studio with a clutch of songs they had spent a long time pre-producing. Before The Collapse Of The Hive was very different. Due to long periods of time where no one could get together, six songs on this record were entirely new, starting off with acoustic guitar and vocals and building the songs from there.

If Jimmy & the Moon was loosely written about Toronto and the changes the city has gone through in his time, this album looks deeper at our collective place in a world seemingly falling apart. It’s a continued conversation between Stephen and his close friend and beloved radio enigma, Dave Bookman, whom Stephen shared the loss of, just prior to starting to work on these songs – two of which are in honour of that friendship and reflecting on the time spent finding the words for such an unexpected goodbye. “‘Before the Collapse of the Hive’ – man, that title means so many different things to me as I write this. Some of which will be obvious, others which are mine alone.

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