Join Woodland Telegraph as they explore screen culture in a pixilated landscape of folk songs. Summertime circuitry, springtime computers; folk music for a screen generation.

While the preceding albums in the trilogy explored the Rocky Mountains and prairies, Screendeath Summersong steps into a world where the lines between nature and technology are blurred. Travel through a landscape where circuitry grows from trees, folk songs melt into pixels and we see screens instead of peoples eyes. These are folk-roots songs about constant digital connection; about what happens to our online lives when we die. Songwriter Matthew Lovegrove set out to explore screen culture through the lens of Canadiana roots music: “We spend so much of our waking life on screens, but there doesn’t seem to be too many folk songs about it. I wanted to create a musical and lyrical landscape where I could engage with these ideas in a meaningful way.”

On Screendeath Summersong, Woodland Telegraph hack the folk genre by mixing in field recordings from big box stores and ambient soundscapes, creating a world where folk music blends with the digital. From hazy summer pop songs like summerblood to the darker roots sound of factory work; Woodland Telegraph shine a light on our digital age with rich imagery and harmonies. By the second half, we move closer to the heart of the album where we have a choice: to fully embrace our lives on screen, or find another way.

WOODLAND TELEGRAPH BIO

Formed in Vancouver in 2008, Woodland Telegraph performs Canadian folk/roots music inspired by the landscapes and stories of Canada. Their debut album Woodland Telegraph sings Revival Hymns was named the #1. Canadian Album of the Year (CBC Galaxie Folk/Roots charts) and was put forward for the 2009 Polaris Prize. Revival Hymns spent two months at #1. on the !Earshot folk/roots charts and received critical acclaim from the Toronto Star, Vancouver Province, Red Deer Advocate and influential music blog Herohill. Revival Hymns marked the first album in the Canadian Landscape Trilogy, a series dedicated to capturing the beauty of Canada’s landscapes and culture in song.

In 2010, chief songwriter Matthew Lovegrove moved to Lethbridge Alberta to research and write songs for From the Fields,  an album depicting the rolling farmland and prairies of Canada. Awarded an Alberta Foundation of the Arts grant for the album’s production, Woodland Telegraph began recording at the Warehouse Studio in late 2010 for an early 2011 release. Penguin Eggs magazine lauded the album’s “sparkling, energetic and breathtaking acoustic arrangements”,  while the Toronto Star ranked the album #4. on the Anti-Hit List. From the Fields charted highly on !Earshot charts and received significant airplay on regional and national CBC stations.

In 2011, Woodland Telegraph was asked to appear on popular east coast music blog Herohill’s Gordon Lightfoot tribute album which was launched by CBC Radio 3 on Canada Day. Later that year, the band was commissioned by Alberta Parks to produce an album about the Willmore Wilderness Park in order to raise money for children’s nature activities. Songs for the Willmore Wilderness was made available via the Gateway to Nature smart phone application and songs from the album were featured on the documentary Wild Alberta: The Willmore Legacy.

Press play, large up the screen and bliss out to wonderful images of Southern Alberta set to samples of Woodland Telegraph’s latest album From the Fields! Big thanks to John Novotny and Alberta Parks for the footage and inspiration.

The great folks over at Herohill have been working long and hard to organize a Canada Day Gordon Lightfoot tribute for free download on their site . The free download includes over 30 groups including Shotgun Jimme, Jerry Leger, The Warped 45’s and Twilight Hotel.

Video for Woodland Telegraph’s cover of Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald

 

 

Some great reviews have been rolling in for Woodland Telegraph’s From the Fields. Big thanks to all of the people who have written kind words about the 2nd release In Woodland Telegraph’s Canadian Landscape Trilogy.

“Remember Sufjan Stevens’ fanciful plan to write an album for each of the 50 U.S. states? This Alberta band’s “Canadian Landscape Trilogy” could be our characteristically modest equivalent. The first, Sings Revival Hymns, was devoted to the mountains. The just-released second entry concerns itself largely with farms and prairies, though those settings extend beyond geography into metaphor.”

“A labour of love for Matthew Lovegrove and friends, From the Fields is the second volume of the Canadian Landscape trilogy, following 2009s beautiful, mountain-inspired Sings Revival Hymns. That album topped year-end lists as well as CBC Galaxies’ folk/roots annual chart, ahead of folks named Cockburn and Tyson. Using the western prairies as a backdrop, Lovegrove and his cohort have crafted a brilliant tribute to those who have forged a life within a harsh landscape, and give fair measure to the land itself. Most of the instrumentation is of an acoustic and gentle-electric nature with banjo, guitar, and strings conveying the melodies. When “Move to Town” fades, the journey concludes as naturally as it began.”

“Sparkling, energetic, and sometimes breath-taking acoustic arrangements underpin Matthew Lovegrove’s paens to the pleasure of rural living”

“Delicate and sung with genuine amazement- These melodies live in cabins and farmhouses, deeply breath the winter air, and share a spirit of community. These songs are Canada, seen in her finest light”

“Woodland Telegraph’s togetherness is undeniable  […] This is definitely worth a listen!”

Woodland Telegraph would like to take you into the heart of these places on their Canadian Landscape Trilogy, three distinct albums capturing the feeling, history and culture of the landscapes that mark Canada’s national identity and imagination. Northern Folklore is proud to present the second installment in this trilogy: From the Fields….

Written and recorded in Southern Alberta, songwriter Matthew Lovegrove wanted to capture the atmosphere and feeling of the prairies while exploring the stories of the people who call it home. Crafting songs from personal anecdotes, newspaper clippings and historical books, the lyrics tell of the hardship and beauty of the plains, backed by a musical landscape rich in vocal harmony and diverse instrumentation. You will hear atmospheric folk songs and stomping bluegrass alongside orchestral washes and fierce electric guitar. In Little Seed Rising we meet Saskatchewan farmers sued by a multi-national corporation, their message of hope resounding with choral vocals and driving train-track banjos. In the lush instrumentation of Niagara Escarpment, Ontario’s farmland winter nights are described with a dream-like ambience. From the harsh realities of prairie living to the awe of watching a harvest moon rising over the horizon, these songs are held together by a love of place and a passion to map out the landscape of our country…

Woodland Telegraph’s Canadian Landscape Trilogy: Three albums of anthemic roots music exploring three different iconic Canadian landscapes. Packaged in hand-sewn cardboard cases along with a origami/topographical map inserts, the first 2 albums of the series (Mountains, Prairies) are available below for $18 a peice or $32 for both (shipping included).  Shipped day of order anywhere in North America.

 

Canadian Landscape Trilogy

From the Fields $18.00…sings Revival Hymns $18.00…sings Revival Hymns/From the Fields package $32.00

Digital Music Downloads:
Direct “Pay What you Want” Digital Download from Northern Folklore

You decide how much you would like to pay for a digital copy of Woodland Telegraph’s From the Fields. Available in MP3, FLAC and ALAC audio formats and includes album art work…  Click on the Paypal Donate button below, choose the amount, and after checkout you will be taken to a secure download site to begin the downloading magic!

Other Digital  Purchase Options: (Woodland Telegraph get a percentage of your purchase to continue their musical journey, big corps get the rest)

The cherry on top of a wonderful last year for Woodland Telegraph was when was named the #1. Canadian record for all of 2009 on the CBC Galaxie Folk/Roots charts. What a holiday surprise!

CBC GALAXIE FOLK/ROOTS YEAR END CHART

1. Woodland Telegraph — Sings Revival Hymns — (Northern Folklore)
2. Great Lake Swimmers — Lost Channels — (weewerk/nettwerk)
3. One Hundred Dollars — Forest of Tears — (Blue Fog)
4. The Breakmen — When You Leave Town — (thebreakmen.com)
5. Bruce Cockburn — Slice of Life: Live Solo — (True North/Linus)
6. Jesse Winchester — Love Filling Station — (Appleseed)
7. Nathan Rogers — The Gauntlet — (Borealis)
8. Amelia Curran — Hunter, Hunter — (Six Shooter/Warner)
9. Dave Gunning — We’re All Leaving — (Wee House of Music/Fontana North)
10. Catherine McLellan — Water in the Ground — (True North/Linus)

Thanks for dropping on by our humble outpost, Matthew here from Woodland Telegraph…

We haven’t spoke in awhile- since our tour to Vancouver Island- and I thot I would fill you in on what’s been going on around these parts. Like a ghost town in the waves of summer heat, things have been very queit at the Northern Folklore camp, but in the glint of the setting sun in a broken window, things are stirring alive…

Pre-production is well underway for Woodland Telegraph’s sophomore release entitled: “From the Fields”. It is the second in their trilogy of Canadiana Landscape records and promises to raise the bar for homegrown roots exponentially….expect a summer 2010 release.

After a summer of tree planting, Happy Feet Howe is MIA: but be rest assured that he is out there somewhere blowing harp and singing songs to move your feet. Last I heard he was back on Vancouver Island, but again, that’s just talk you hear at night when the drink is flowing and spectres of the bluesmen arise…

Below is a little press that Woodland Telegraph amassed in the Canmore Leader in regards to a concert at the wonderful Mt. Engadine Lodge in the Rocky Mountains. Over $500 dollars was raised for the Canmore Food Bank and they delighted the intimate crowd with new farmland songs, a few old favourites and Lindy Gray introduced her latest instrument, the singing saw, on a new song called “In Half”.

 WT was also recently included on the second edition of the “Tofino Live” CD which was recorded back in April at a sold out show on Vancouver Island. It includes 11 local Tofino and Ucluelet acts as well as WT who were joined by Happy Feet Howe on stage sporting a life-like giraffe mask which proved difficult for playing harp through but provided some great pictures! 

In a half whispered tone, i might speculate that Lindy Gray is hard at work on a solo album based on circus love songs and matador ballads with some of the finest musicians in Vancouver’s vibrant east-end scene…Definately on the horizon…

Again, thank you for coming by…I hope that this finds your summer lingering and the ideas flowing! 

Born of these mountains Lovegrove returns to the setting of his Revival Hymns Posted 19 days ago “Early in the 1900s there were two brothers who were living in Dead Man’s Flats and one of the brothers started to complain about hearing weird mechanical noises through the walls so — what I assume from what I read was that he was maybe schizophrenic, or he had a mental problem in that way — but he wound up killing his brother with an axe. The story is just horrific . . . .” And so the hamlet of Dead Man’s Flats got its name. But that’s not a historian speaking per se, those are the words of a folk singer, Matthew Lovegrove, from Woodland Telegraph. Lovegrove wrote a song in the hamlet’s name for “woodland telegraph sings Revival Hymns” the first in a planned trilogy of historically based folk recordings. The resulting disk was well received by critics and fans of folk alike. It’s a contemporary take on old-time music, one that was well informed by both history and a modern appreciation of the folk style. Lovegrove started his project in 2007, soaking in the history of the Bow Valley while living and working in Kananaskis Country. Lovegrove’s work brought him into the Canmore Museum and Geoscience Centre as well, where he approached the curator Edward van Vliet. “I went to him with the idea: I was like, ‘Hey maybe I can get some old audio samples to use for the record.’” Lovegrove said. “And he was just like, ‘You know what? You should do this . . . you should apply for this grant . . . he’s just good at stoking people up. He’s a great guy.” The meeting lead to the Canmore Cassette Project, where Lovegorve transferred old audiotapes the museum had archived into digital recordings. The tapes, recorded in the 1980s were, a window into this town’s past and helped to provide much of the understanding the singer-songwriter now has for the area. “I would just sit and have a cup of coffee and listen to these old-timers tell stories of Canmore,” Lovegrove said. The musician further categorized the recordings: if Vic Lewis was talking about the coalmines, or if the man who introduced band music to the town was talking about another aspect of Canmore life, it’d be categorized differently, he said. “I’m not sure, exactly who it was, but a gentleman was talking about the Ghost River and his trip up there one time,” Lovegrove recalled. “You know how rivers sometimes kind of go intermittent, they’ll go underground for a bit and then rise up? He had this crazy story, where they went up there and they were stopping for lunch. And the guy’s like, “I’m going to put this butter in the river to keep it cool.’ So he puts the butter in the river with a rock on top of it and he turns around to cut his loaf of bread and he turns around and the river’s gone.” It’s not just an appreciation for the stories of old-timers that pushes Lovegrove forward. The hand-crafted packaging of the record is a statement. He said he wants continuity in his songs, something more than a favourite single that pops up in an iPod playlist. “I get stoked on the whole concept though, I like concept records, not that Revival Hymns is a concept album, but there’s themes running throughout,” Lovegrove said. “And I like songs that connect with each other. “I want to map out Canada with my songs, I want to map out the landscape with songs,” Lovegrove’s recorded eight songs for the next album, the next one is going to be about Canadian farmland and prairies, he’s moving to Lethbridge soon to continue work on the project’s second record, “From the Fields.” But while Lovegrove is back in the area, he’ll play Thursday, Aug. 27. at 8 p.m. at Mount Engadine Lodge. Joined by Lindy Gray (vocals and singing saw), the two will perform from Woodland Telegraph’s catalogue as part of the lodge’s “Singing for your supper” summer program. Tickets are $55, including dinner, or $10 for the show only: all ticket proceeds will be matched by Mount Engadine Lodge and donated to the Canmore Food Bank.         Â

 

Congratulations to Happy Feet Howe for the completion of his monumental, 60+ plus concerts, 71 day Winter Tour of Canada!  Miles joined up with woodland telegraph on Vancouver Island to finish off the tour and was greeted with dancing fans at everystop~

 When asked if he would ever play that many shows again, in the middle of winter living out of a station wagon, the harmonica-mandolin madman replied: “Next winter, I’ll do more.”

Greetings from the desk of Northern Folklore here in sunny Vancouver!
We are busy with all sorts of plans for the upcoming summer, so please keep posted!

We are working at getting two interviews that Matthew Lovegrove conducted: one with Alberta radio station CKUA and the other with CBC Alberta. In both, he speaks about the process of reseaching the historical moments found on “…sings Revival Hymns” as well as the inspiration and need to bring Canadian heritage stories to light in innovative formats.

We are also in the planning and grant writing stages of a project to record the stories of Tofino area residents on Vancouver Island. Very exciting news to follow soon…

And don’t forget that Happy Feet Howe and Maxim are still heading westward, playing their own unique brand of roots music and sharing stories from the heartland of Canada!

Stay Tuned!

Listen to Happy Feet Howe and Maxim on CBC RADIO Bandwidth Saturday March 7th, 5 pm-6 PM Eastern Time:

www.cbc.ca/bandwidth.com

Hear woodland telegraph on the Toronto Star Anti-Hit List Podcast here:

http://starweb.blogs.com/podcasts/antihit_list/    Click on February 28th

We were honoured to be included on John Sakamoto’s influential Anti-Hit List which was in the February 28th edition of the Toronto Star. We were number 3 on the list, here’s what he had to say about us:

3. WOODLAND TELEGRAPH-“Flood Those Spirits”
Vancouver’s Matthew Lovegrove writes songs that are Canadian in the way that, say, Blue Rodeo’s “5 Days in May” or The Tragically Hip’s “Locked in the Trunk of a Car” are Canadian, which is to say you’ll twig to a certain something in the music long before you get to the lyric about the Kananaskis River. On either level, this is a particularly potent exploration of forging connection out of isolation John Sakomoto,    Toronto Star

This winter there are two madmen roaming the icy landscape of Canada, from town to town, bringing the love of all that is good in roots/ blues/rockabilly mayhem to thaw your hearts and get you dancing~ Come out to a town near you for an unforgettable night of storytelling, amazing music and the finest acoustic music this country has to offer!

Early reports from the tour are already rolling in:

“Miles Howe works the town as well as the room. One minute everyone clapping  and  stomping the next minute Miles is running out the door with Maxim on his shoulders headed who knows where?”
Dave Tobey, owner , The Spill Peterborough, On.

“Blistering Fun!”
Jeff Boudreau, Manager, The Grand, Lindsay

Canadian Tour Dates

March 28 – The General Store – Twin Butte, ALBERTA

March 30 – The Brickhouse – Fernie, BC

April 1 – Ceili’s Irish Pub – Calgary, ALBERTA

April 2 – Auditorium Hotel – Nanton, ALBERTA

April 3 – Truffle Pigs Bistro – Field, BC

April 4 – Golden Taps Pub – Golden, BC

April 5 – Woolsey Creek Cafe – Revelstoke, BC

April 7 – Voodoo’s – Penticton, BC

April 8 – Osoyoos, BC

April 9 – Minstrel Cafe and Bar – Kelowna, BC

April 10 – The Flying Steam Shovel Co. – Rossland, BC

April 12 – Cedar Creek Cafe – Winlaw, BC

April 15- Cambie-Nanaimo, BC-with woodland telegraph and Suzy Wedge and the Waves

April 16- Joe’s Garage- Coutenay-w/ woodland telegraph

April 17- The Local Liquor House – Salt Spring Island, BC- w/woodland telegraph

April 18-Spiral Cafe-Victoria, BC w/ woodland telegraph and Jeremy Walsh

April 19-Duncan Garage-Duncan, BC: w/ woodland telegraph, Tone Bent (California)

April 22- SOBOs Eatery- Tofino BC: w/woodland telegraph, smalltown empire

April 23-Digny Dock Pub- Protection Island (Nanaimo), BC- w/woodland telegraph, Kristen Wald

~~~!!!!Come on out!!!!~~~

Over in the woodland telegraph camp, good spirits pervade:

“Not as religious as the album title implies but as serenely bucolic. It is like a view of the great outdoors from a forest ranger tower, there is that much scope and fresh air in writer Matthew Lovegrove’s evocation
of understated folk“ –Tom Harrison, BC Province

woodland telegraph’s debut album “…sings Revival Hymns” recently charted at Number 2. on the !Earshot Folk/Roots charts on Canadian campus’ after spending the month of December at 1.  They also had the fortune of charting on CBC’s Galaxie Folk/Roots charts for December/February as well:

The Galaxie Folk/Roots Channel’s
most-played, high-rotation album releases for December 2008 – January2009:
Canadian:
1. Maria Dunn — The Peddler — (Distant Whisper)
2. The Breakmen — When You Leave Town — (thebreakmen.com)
3. Annabelle Chvostek — Resilience — (Borealis)
4. Elliott Brood — Mountain Meadows — (Six Shooter/Warner)
5. Rae Spoon — Superior You Are Inferior — (raespoon.com)
6. Woodland Telegraph — Sings Revival Hymns — (Northern Folklore)
7. Ian Tyson — Yellowhead to Yellowstone and other Love Stories —
(Stony Plain)
8. Yonder Hill — Yonder Hill —(www.yonderhill.com)
9. Ian Tamblyn — Raincoast — (North Track/Outside)
10. Wyckham Porteous — 3 AM — (Cordova Bay)
11. Anique Granger — Pépins — (La Grange)
12. JP Cormier — The Messenger — (Fontana North)

They will be joining Miles Howe and Maxim to tour Vancouver Island in April, yehaww!

Are you in the mood for a little old time Rocky Mountain storytelling? Do you enjoy a songs about gold rush towns and the sound of freight trains at night? Well if so, we have got an album for you! “woodland telegraph sings Revival Hymns” is an album of atmospheric folk music dedicated to the landscape and lore of the Rocky Mountains- from stories about the abandoned “Oil City” in Southern Alberta to the tale of how Deadman’s Flats got its name, travel with woodland telegraph into the history of the Rocky Mountains and discover some of the the beautiful folklore of Canada.

Roll on over to the woodland telegraph artist page to your east  to hear samples  of  songs on the album =>

Packaged in handsewn-cardboard cases complete with an origami insert depicting the cartography of the Rocky Mountains, we offer same day delivery anywhere in North America for $16

With love, from Northern Folklore…