Rootsy Music - Leeroy Stagger -

Leeroy Stagger

Den kanadensiska heartland-rockern Leeroy Stagger turnerade i Skandinavien så sent som i november 2019. Och han gillade så mycket att han nu tar första bästa chans att komma tillbaka hit. I maj hakar han på kanadensiska kollegan Frazey Ford som support act. En kanadensisk stjärn-uppställning som heter duga!

It's said the cells in your body replace themselves every decade or so. After 11 albums, two EPs and 17 years as a singer-songwriter, Leeroy Stagger has been wondering if maybe the soul works the same way.

Ten years sober, with two kids, a home in Lethbridge and a world class recording studio to go with it, he's far removed from the hard-living twenty-something who started on this musical path. As far as Stagger can see, they aren't even the same person.

Strange Path is the name of Stagger's newest album and book, a name that applies as much to his unexpected route from the BC punk scene to southern-Alberta singer songwriter as it does to the album's own evolution. Following from 2017's Love Versus, itself a creative re-emergence after a years-long fog of anxiety and depression, Strange Path is the end result of a triple-album's worth of scrapped demos, record label rejections, and a spirit-reviving retreat inwards. It's also Stagger's most ambitious and philosophical creation yet, a veritable self-help book pulled from a lifetime of struggling towards the light and brimming with the hard-won joy at the heart of his recent renaissance.

From the appropriately haunted "Leonard Cohen is Dead" and the cosmic reflections of album-closer "The Light" to the hard-edged stomp of "Jesus and Buddha" and glam-rock bliss of "Strange Attractor," it's an album of sharp hooks and sharper insights, a statement on loss, forgiveness, pain, faith, The Clash, Gord Downie, love, death, fear, letting go, higher powers, Mother Earth, obsession, redemption, and the path we all walk through life.

Exploring all that terrain takes one monster of a band. To piece it together, Stagger surrounded himself with some of the best players in the business. The first step was enlisting "Love Versus" drummer Pete Thomas (Elvis Costello and the Attractions, Elliot Smith, Los Lobos) to once again lend his meticulous musicianship to the mix. If anyone could navigate the heady themes Stagger was charting, it's the man Tom Waits once called the best rock drummer in the world. Longtime collaborator Tyson Maiko stepped in on bass, with Paul Rigby (Neko Case, Garth Hudson, Jakob Dylan) joining on guitar, and Stagger's touring band, the Rebeltone Sound (Ryland Moranz on guitar, mandolin and vocals, and Michael Ayotte on piano, synthesizers and keyboards) rounding out the arrangements.

Production duties were trickier to pin down. Brad Barr of acclaimed act The Barr Brothers shared the helm on four of the eleven tracks. That left Stagger, a veteran producer of other artist's albums, to steer his own ship for the first time. Self-producing took a more methodical and patient approach than the shoot-from-the-hip style Stagger usually preferred. Then it was turned over for mixing by 5 time Grammy winner Ryan Freeland (Ray Lamontagne, Bonnie Raitt, Aimee Mann, Rodney Crowell and more).

I tilltal inte helt olik samtidingen David Ramirez är Stagger en poetisk och stridbar artist som vill tala till rebellen lika mycket som det kärlekstörstande hjärtat. Med lätthet kanaliserar han här namnkunniga föregångare utan att göra avkall på sitt eget uttryck. Ut kommer skarpt formulerade och högst beständiga sånger, inte sällan friskt humoristiska i den påtagliga svärtan och med en framtidstro som övertrumfar allvaret.«
Av Mark Andersson, Rootsy.nu

"A little Steve Earle, a little John Prine, a little Bruce Springsteen and whole lot of his own heart and soul make up Canadian alt / country / folk / rock minstrel Leeroy Stagger's music."
Av Cash Box Canada

Konserter Support to Frazey Ford

Datum	Scen	Förköp
2020-05-14	Plan B, Tranås	Förköp
2020-05-15	Hylte Folkbibliotek, Hyltebruk	Förköp
2020-05-16	Klubb Undergrunden, Borås	Förköp
2020-05-17	Café Strandgatan, Halmstad
2020-05-19	Katalin, Uppsala	Förköp
2020-05-20	John Dee, Oslo	Förköp
2020-05-21	Folk å Rock, Malmö	Förköp
2020-05-22	Klubb Nalen, Stockholm	Förköp