GREAT LAKE SWIMMERS
TUESDAY, JUNE 29 • 8PM
WEST END CULTURAL CENTRE
Club Pass & Wristband venue
Individual show ticket: $18 in adv./$20 door
When Great Lake Swimmers’ Tony Dekker wrote the song “Everything is Moving So Fast,” he couldn’t have predicted that it would foreshadow the rapid success of the Toronto band’s fourth album, Lost Channels.
For a project that has seen a slow upward trajectory since its humble beginnings in 2001, the Great Lake Swimmers are suddenly getting exponentially more attention across North America and Europe, entrancing newcomers to the band with Dekker’s unforgettable voice and compelling songwriting. That Lost Channels was a success in Canada is no surprise: Great Lake Swimmers have long been a word-of-mouth favourite for whom critical mass was inevitable, and they are regarded as a national treasure by the CBC; Lost Channels recently topped the chart on CBC Radio 3. It also sat at number one on iTunes’ Singer/Songwriter chart.
But it’s not just the home team cheering on the Swimmers. The record debuted at #10 on Billboard’s Heatseekers Chart in its first week, re-entering the top 10 in May, and was #1 on the Amazon MP3 downloads chart. Meanwhile, an older non-album track, “See You On the Moon,” can be heard on prime time television in a Honda ad. And individual bloggers have been massive champions: Great Lake Swimmers reached “Most Blogged Artist” status on premier MP3 site Hype Machine.
No doubt much of this has been fuelled in part by public endorsements by the likes of Feist, Robert Plant, NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams and cyclist Lance Armstrong. The latter two have both raved about the band on their personal websites; the former have handpicked the Great Lake Swimmers to open shows and whole tours. They’ve also shared bills with Bela Fleck & The Sparrow Quartet, Hayden, Goldfrapp, and Bill Callahan of Smog.
This sudden exposure is new for a band that has always dwelled in shadows, telling tales of hidden histories, singing of "mining for light in the dark wells," of being "tuned to an instrument of greater and unknown design."
www.greatlakeswimmers.com
