Toronto-based Jon Brooks is a truly remarkable songwriter and performer: on par with Bruce Cockburn and Steve Earle, two artists to whom he is often compared. While his music often explores the darker reaches of the human condition, they are also redemptive in a way that can't be fully articulated other than to say that it’s not simply the songs themselves - it’s being present while he performs them. This would also explain why an artist of his stature (thankfully) chooses to play small venues almost exclusively. It's also helpful to know that Jon's self-deprecating sense of humour helps to maintain the delicate balance between pathos and ethos.

"I’m at once consoled and terrified by Leonard Cohen's comment that 'songwriting is not a vocation, but a sentence...' It’s true that fame and money are the jurors and legislators of success in the current age; and at the mercy of such a court I am unanimously judged a failure. But I can’t help but question such narrow measures of success. The Canadian Folk Music Awards has deemed me worthy of being nominated - a record 4 times - for 'English Songwriter of the Year' (2007/2009/2012/2015); in 2010, I became the 4th Canadian since 1975 to win the prestigious Kerrville (Texas) Folk Festival 'New Folk Award.'

And yet still, on my best day, The Song is woefully all I know.  And on many more days, I don't feel I know The Song at all.  Like beauty, The Song remains an eternal mystery to me; and, as often as I chase it, I spend my time considering dropping the sad pursuit altogether for something more secure, more ‘responsible.’  

But I'm stuck.  The irreconcilable problem is this: I know no other thing more intimately than The Song - and outside of kindness, it's the one thing in the mournful world I've occasionally touched that ascends with purpose, force, and love and so I stay seeking it more or less blindly."

This will be an evening you won't soon forget.