Welland, Ontario folk singer and songwriter Spencer Burton brought his 2024 ‘North Wind’ tour to Rum Runners in London, Ontario on Friday, March 8, 2024.
Burton has been touring in support of his latest album, North Wind, which was released back in January, 2024.
Photographer Whitney South captured the following images from Burton’s London performance:
Already living quietly in a slow country town, a period of intense world isolation prompted Burton to leave the city even further behind.
An overload of negative information and fear left him feeling hopeless and uninspired to create music.
He sat back for a couple of years watching what felt like the world crumbling around him.
Retreating to a small off-grid cabin in Northern Ontario, Spencer reconnected with nature and found peace and comfort in isolation.
Taking a step back from the realities of life let him step back into making music.
“I always felt this need for importance, this need to be poetic,” Burton stated on his official website after the album was released.
“It came, but it felt mandatory at times. I struggled with that. But then I found beauty in the simple things. A bird’s song. A rustling gale. A ripple in the water. With the beauty of those simple things came importance and poetry in an unforced, natural way.”
The majority of North Wind was written in the north woods, in solitude and reflection.
And while the songs have a spiritual importance, they also speak to ordinary life away from it all–fishing, an encounter with a coyote, sitting with your own thoughts.
“It’s really interesting what pleases the ear, musically, when isolated for a few weeks at a time,” Burton added.
“The only inspiration being yourself and the beauty of true untampered nature. It’s a different atmosphere than what we’re accustomed to. It really helped bring these songs to life.”
Recorded again in Nashville with Andrija Tokic the album fits sonically with the rest of Spencer’s catalogue, but the tone is noticeably different.
The songs are easier, more comfortable, at ease.
They encapsulate that same feeling he had out there alone, of singing by the campfire into the woods.
“I’m not really trying to write music these days,” he said.
“I’m trying to write good feelings.”
Hailing from Southern Ontario, Spencer Burton has toured nationally, and in the United States, with City and Colour, Daniel Romano, Jenn Grant, and more.
From his punk rock roots as part of Attack in Black to the darker country-inspired sound of his two first solo albums under the name Grey Kingdom, Burton’s multifaceted musical trajectory has branched into indie and rock aesthetics while maintaining his folky sound.
In 2012, he dropped Grey Kingdom in favour of his own name, moving towards a more natural country-folk sensibility.
Learn more at https://www.spencerburtonmusic.com/.