Our new record (Nov 1 2024), is instrumental. With singing. Wordsmiths drive on, although if you like the idea of a sonic gumbo made from the following tone ingredients: trumpet, cello, reed organ, acoustic and electric non-pedal steel guitar, standup bass, and percussion, then maybe you’re at the right stovetop.
EFFECTIVE NOVEMBER 1/24:
If you bought the cd and want to learn more, the downloadable booklet is here.
Do you want to see it performed live? Come to our show on Nov 8 in Toronto.
If you want to buy a high resolution digital download, our Bandcamp page is the place.
Keen to buy a cd and have it shipped to your home? Then hit the Henrys store now!
Rather pre-order it than have to remember the release date? No problem.
If you want both digital and hard copy, buy the hard copy here and ask (nicely) for a download code. Alt, back to Bandcamp with you!
And if you have a Henrys Bandcamp download code, eg from the concert, you can redeem it via this link.
The musicians on Secular Hymns & Border Songs:
Michael White trumpet
John Sheard reed organ
Leana Rutt cello
Maggie Keogh voice
Andrew Downing bass
Jonathan Goldsmith reed organ (Pasado)
Clayton Rooke snare (Fairground)
Don Rooke guitars, percussion
The music was recorded in Toronto at Fort Henry (not that one!)
Written and produced by Don Rooke
Mixed and mastered by L. Stu Young
Here’s a review by Richard Williams (The Guardian, Uncut, Mojo etc) from his wonderful blog thebluemoment.com
The instrument in the photograph is a harmonium, sometimes known as a reed organ, or pump organ. Its earliest ancestor was invented by Gabriel-Joseph Grenié in France at the start of the 19th century. It has a sound I love, and this particular example is heard a lot throughout the new album by the Henrys, the Canadian band convened by the guitarist Don Rooke.
No single sound dominates Secular Hymns & Border Songs, although Rooke’s 1920 Weissenborn guitar and Michael White’s plaintive trumpet are prominent voices, but the gentle wheeze of the harmonium underlies it all, even when it isn’t actually present, like the layers of undercoat Mark Rothko applied to his canvases before beginning to paint his blocks of colour, sometimes allowing a little of the background to bleed out at the edge of the finished work.
I’ve been trying to think about how this music sounds. Handmade would be one word. Acoustic, too, in the sense that you’re unusually aware that these gentle, sometimes fugitive sounds are made by vibrations in the air. The listener notes the intimacy but also the feeling of uncrowded space. Most of all, I like the sense that it feels assembled — like something made by a skilled carpenter, working by eye and experience with familiar tools.
Rooke’s slide guitar is the first thing you hear on the opening track, “Garland”. Its tentative phrases barely disturb the air before others join in: Leanna Rutt’s cello, White’s trumpet, Maggie Keogh’s wordless voice, Andrew Downing’s double bass and John Sheard’s harmonium. That’s the basic ensemble, and collectively it has a lovely unfinished, almost skeletal quality: like something produced by a random bunch of musicians left over from a rehearsal by a much larger group, continuing to explore a common store of tunes because their bus home isn’t due for another hour, and because they like it.
There are 11 tracks, and each has its own character, but they move from one to another without significant breaks or changes of attack, just a pause for a breath, so that the whole thing sounds like a single semi-improvised composition. Occasionally, as when you reach “Fairground”, the fifth track, the ensemble coalesces on a melody that rises out of the surrounding mist, and the effect is gorgeous. Same thing on “Parish” (the one that sounds most like a hymn) and “Cortège” (the one that seems to exist most obviously on a border between cultures).
The informality of the music disguises the effort and skill that went into its creation, which is as it should be. As modern music goes, some would probably think it understated almost to a fault. But in the modern world, how could that possibly be a fault?
* The Henrys’ Secular Hymns & Border Songs is released on November 1, available via https://thehenrys.bandcamp.com/album/secular-hymns-and-border-songs
(translated from Dutch)
The Henrys is a completely unique Canadian band, around the brilliant Don Rooke, a composer and multi-instrumentalist who knows how to perform miracles on various guitars. Rooke usually invites some guest musicians, so that the Henrys are always a changing company, and for Secular Hymns & Border Songs, which is an almost entirely instrumental album, he has once again put together a sublime band, including a trumpeter, two organists, a cellist and a bassist, while Rooke himself takes care of the guitars (and steel guitar) and percussion.
Subdued music, where everything is perfectly balanced and the tension remains alive. Breathtakingly beautiful, there is no other way to describe it. All musicians also have a perfect sense of what Rooke wants, and that makes the music even more exciting and beautiful. Completely unclassifiable music, a world apart. Listen and enjoy.
In addition, each CD is packaged in a beautiful cardboard envelope with a photo attached. That completes it.
An album to cherish.
(Moors Magazine, Holland)