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.

Bandcamp: https://continentalrecordservices.bandcamp.com/album/before-the-collapse-of-the-hivewebsite: https://stephenstanleyband.com/Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/sstanleyband

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