Acclaimed singer-songwriter, Joe Grass today announces his new solo record, Falcon’s Heart, set for release via Simone Records on May 26th. To coincide with the announcement Joe shares the second track to be taken from the LP, a cheerful portrait of apocalypse - “Guadalupe”.
Listen/Share: Joe Grass “Guadalupe”
Grass has been writing and recording his own music for almost 20 years, but since moving from Moncton, NB to Montreal he’s also become one of this city’s most sought-after musical partners. His credits include work with Lhasa, the Barr Brothers and his avant-pop band Klaus; he co-produced Elisapie’s Polaris- and Juno-nominated LP, The Ballad of the Runaway Girl, and helped write and arrange Patrick Watson’s Love Songs for Robots and Wave.
Falcon’s Heart sees Grass lifting fresh sounds out of old forms—deconstructing timeless country music and making it kaleidoscopic. The record’s tracks burst with colour and texture, but they were born in the sparest way: by a man with three chords and his father’s guitar, writing in the tradition of John Prine.
"I thought that if I could write a simple song, the rest would follow. And I learned that from working with other people,” Grass says. Those partnerships with Patrick Watson, The Barr Brothers and Elisapie, among others, have taught him how to unmake a tune—picking up someone else’s idea and finding new ways to fill it in. With Falcon’s Heart, he tried to bring that same process to his own work.
While Grass began writing Falcon’s Heart in the spirit of John Prine and George Jones, the finished album evokes the wider spectrum of Grass’s affections: from Tom Zé and Ry Cooder to Steve Reich and Lata Mangeshkar, not to mention Astral Weeks, Sam Amidon’s All Is Well, and the latest Big Thief.
Falcon’s Heart is dedicated to the record’s engineer, Robert Heaney, who died of a heart attack four days after the band finished tracking. A Canadian legend, Falcon’s Heart would be the last LP Heaney would complete. The album is also dedicated to Grass’s father, Douglas, who recently passed.
Falcon’s Heart will be released by Simone Records on May 26th 2023.