Purveyors of: old man river sleeping in the pines
File Next To: The Wooden Sky, Mount Eerie
Playing #WL13 Saturday, February 16 @ The Great Hall Upstairs

Recently coming off of long European and Canadian tours in support of their second LP Spectral Dusk, an intensely personal record about frontman Jonas Bonnetta’s father’s passing away, Evening Hymns are taking most of the winter off, and have retreated to a more rustic part of Ontario to relax and reflect. Wavelength programmer Kevin Parnell guessed correctly that Jonas would be at the fireside with a cup of coffee and a good long book as snow fell outside when he received Kevin’s email. Taking a break from his much-deserved break, Jonas answered a few questions about Spectral Dusk, life and the future of Evening Hymns.

I was at your recent Music Gallery show in Toronto and it seemed like a very cathartic experience, for you, but also for the audience. It's rare that an audience is treated to such sincerity and openness from an artist on stage. Outside of the songs on Spectral Dusk themselves, was it hard to open up to strangers night after night on tour, in the stories, banter, and jokes?

It was brutal. I was so happy when I finished the record because it was really difficult to make. Emotionally difficult. And then I went on the road for four months playing this record every night. I thought maybe it would be cathartic, but it turned out to be pretty destructive. I think the catharsis might reveal itself in the next year or two. We'll see. Telling stories was a way to keep all the songs in context for myself. It was important that none of the songs on this album ever get treated just as songs. I wanted each one to be as important to me within each performance as they had been when I wrote them. By telling stories about my Dad between songs it really brought me into them again and so I was faced to really confront him and those songs, and therefore give a performance that was genuine. I feared just playing the songs because I had to. It was important to keep this song cycle real, as much as in the end it was really destructive to me. The jokes are there to just lighten things up a bit. It's a pretty sad show to see... I think I joke for my own sake.

I don't think anyone is ever "over" the passing of a loved one, but Spectral Dusk and your recent live shows give the impression that you're ready for the next step, musically and personally. Are you looking now at the future of Evening Hymns?

Yeah, I'm retiring this record kind of. I've been writing a lot of ambient drone material for the last while and hope to do something with that. I've got plans with a friend to start work on that record so we're sending ideas back and forth. It's something I've wanted to do for years and as I get older and mellower, I'm really keen to work on making this meditative drone stuff. Something similar to the string piece on Spectral Dusk. I'm spending my winters near Perth, Ontario, and wrote and recorded a full record up there last winter that I call the Tay Valley Waltzes. We're going to record some of those songs and a bunch of new ones in June for a new release. So I'm up here writing now for a new record or two. It's hard to make anything right now that feels important to me though. It all pales in comparison to Spectral in importance, and I've got to learn how to work through that.

A lot of your songs share a deep connection with nature, but more than that they're firmly rooted in an evocative sense of “place.” I'd assume a lot of that comes from writing songs drawn from your own life and history. But now that you're a touring musician, travelling around the world, a lot of the time with no fixed address, how do maintain that sense of “place” in your life, or has it faded? Does that loss of, or maybe lessening of, fixed place have an effect on you and your music?

I can't say whether it's because I'm getting older or if it's because I travel so much but place has never been more important to me than it is now. Just being able to “de-suitcase” now is the greatest feeling in the world. I've found myself really thinking a lot about buying a house in the country and actually having a home to come home to. We've subletted our apartment in Toronto so much in the last three years. I've been away more than I've been home. My friend Red Hunter (of the Texan band Peter and the Wolf) once told me that the space around him was his home. I think he said the three feet around him or something like that was what he called “home.” It seemed crazy to me at the time, but now I get it. I always make sure I have a few “comfort” things with me when I travel and then home can just be in your head. The Tay Valley Waltzes are all about place. Moving away from a fast-paced life and settling down in the country. It's my hippie record. The first of many.

You and your brothers are all very creative individuals, from woodworking to filmmaking, and for you music. What drew you to music instead of any other art form? This might be too abstract, but how do you know when something needs to be a song, rather than a short story or a film or a painting?

It's super weird because we grew up in the country with a trucker for a Dad and a secretary for a Mom. Not to discount them, they were amazing parents, but weren't really musical or anything, or into film, etc. We grew up on Jean-Claude Van Damme and Nat King Cole. We always had music in the house. I got into punk music in high school, and started singing in a punk band, and then transitioned into writing my own horrible music, and then it just kept going. I've never had much of an urge to make films. I've tried painting and was horrible at it, though I want to try again someday. I do some writing, but the song has always been the best way for me to express myself. I really think about a song as a film, painting and a short story though. When I'm writing, it's important for me to set an environment, either with words or sounds, and to create a story there. In my head these things play out like short films or stories. You work with a palette and try and create this space for the listener to exist in for five minutes, where they can smell the air and maybe feel something.