Peterborough Folk Festival

Emerging Artist Award Winner 2012!

Born into a household of theatre actors and musicians, Joseph Fortin is well at home with a guitar on his lap and a pen in his hand and after fronting a rock group for several years, Jos. began to find his songbook cracking at the spine with songs that didn’t suit the band. Rather than letting these songs fade and sit on the shelf, Jos. opted to focus in on what seemed to be the oddities of his writing and enlisted Toronto engineer/producer James Bunton (Ohbijou, Evening Hymns, Diamond Rings, PS I Love You) in early 2010 to start work on Typewriter.

A record that rewards in patiently delivered hooks and whose Steinbeck-ian lyrics unveil themselves over time to occupy quiet nooks in the back of your head. The record is a secret, whispered between young lovers in late summer, marking the first chapter of an old soul’s songbook.

Typewriter marks Jos. Fortin’s debut release yet emerges fully-formed with a lyrical depth preceding his youthful age, and strong melodic arrangements, happy to sit and warm themselves in the sun and wait patiently for the night to come. These songs are wrapped in a quilt of double bass, clarinet, violin, piano, percussion and move with the arrangements, complimenting Jos.’s graceful delivery of both guitar and voice.

Visit his website here; purchase his album here.

Emerging Artist Award Winner 2010

Bio: Returning to Canada from a long sojourn in the state of Utah, Kate Le Deuce is bringing something unique to the alternative country scene. Channeling 1970s country music, when men lived hard, drank hard, and drove hard, she sing songs for truck drivers, drunks and sad bastards. On subjects such as year-long benders, sexual deviance and macho heartbreak. she cuts through all expectations with her original repertoire. If the greats of 70s country were chicks, they’’d sound like Kate Le Deuce

With her charismatic stage presence and larger-than-life personality Kate Le Deuce is like the Charlotte Bronte of the country music set. Her song writing belies her age, with world-weary themes, tough emotions, and a set of pipes that will knock you back on your heels. Kate Le Deuce has an uncanny ability to simultaneously catch the ears of a noisy bar full of music hipsters and make old boozers who don’t know and don’t care about the music scene cry into their beers. Currently recording a new album, Kate Le Deuce is ready to break hearts and blow minds across her home and native land.

Visit her website for more information!

Serena Ryder was the first recipient of the Emerging Artist Award in 2001.

Serena Ryder has already left an indelible impression in Canada, where her album If Your Memory Serves You Well has been certified Gold and contributed to her winning the 2008 Juno Award for Best New Artist.

For American listeners, this sets the stage for is it o.k., her full length debut for Atlantic Records on which Ryder paints a self-portrait that’s bitter in betrayal in “Sweeping the Ashes,”furious and yet not without affection in the hard-hitting “Little Bit of Red,”teasingly romantic on “Brand New Love,”struggling to understand another’s pain on “Hiding Place,”even careening through cascades of contradictory emotion, almost from one word to the next, on “All for Love.”

All of these moments Ryder brings to life with a performance that resonates in memory long after its last notes fade.

Passion, humor, playfulness, anger and exultation: is it o.k. offers each in abundance. But truth? Here, Ryder draws the line.

“This whole record is about realizing that the more we think we know, the less we do know,”she insists. “It’s about me coming to terms with the fact that I’m imperfect, about being comfortable with feeling what I’m feeling and embracing being human in any way I possibly can.”

Ryder’s vision for is it o.k. took shape at the Village Recording Studios in West Los Angeles. With Grammy-winning producer John Alagia (Dave Matthews Band, John Mayer, Jason Mraz) at the controls, Ryder and an all-star backup band brought these extraordinary songs to life over a run of six or seven days.

“It was unbelievable,”she says, smiling. “They made me see my songs from an outside perspective, which is a dream for songwriters because we’re so inside our own world. They brought up so many elements and emotions that I didn’t even know existed in this music. It was almost like I had folded up the origami, and then they pumped air into it.”

History surrounded Ryder during these sessions – literally, in the vocal booth, among the mirrors, candles, and stained glass that Stevie Nicks had included in her design for the space. But there was a sense of history being made too – a personal step forward for Ryder, and something bigger for those who would hear this music.

“To tell you the truth, I think with this album I’ve just started to write good songs – songs that connect with people by relating my own contradictions to them,”she says. “I’m realizing more and more that I’m not on a one-way street or even a two-way street. It’s a street with an insane amount of twists and turns, and not everybody on it feels the same thing as you. I’m feeling a lot more on this music than I ever have before. I’m feeling the cold a lot colder and the heat a lot hotter. It’s exciting and terrifying at the same time, because it’s opening my windows a lot wider to the world.”

Through those windows, the sound of is it o.k. heralds the arrival of Serena Ryder, an artist unlike any other – an artist who is ready to change your world.

For more information, visit her website.