Music

It’s a sunny day in Enfield, and life is good. Luke Boyd—better known as rapper Classified—is hours away from premiering his newest album, the 11-track Luke’s View, and he’s taking a moment to soak it all in. It’s a rare occasion for the 46-year-old, even in a career that has afforded plenty. Nearly 30 years […]

Old Man Luedecke was feeling his age. It was the long days of COVID-19 isolation, and as the opportunity for live shows dwindled—let alone international tours and festivals—the Chester, NS, singer-songwriter wasn’t sure he wanted to get back on the road. Ditto for the studio, which had been a constant for the JUNO-winning banjo artist […]

Hawksley Workman was strung out. It was the early 2000s, and the JUNO Award-winner was hanging onto the twilight of a dizzying—and destructive—period he describes as being “briefly famous” in France. There were tabloid and magazine photo spreads. Television ads with soccer star Zinedine Zidane backed by his music. Shows with Morrissey and Franz Ferdinand. […]

Owen Harris and his bandmates knew they wanted to do something when they saw the HRM had cleared out and fenced off the Grand Parade tent encampment. Raised in Halifax, the Customer Service drummer had watched the city’s housing crisis turn “very severe” in recent years as the province grew and struggled to keep pace […]

Aysanabee was snowshoeing across a river in below-40-degree weather when he broke through the ice. He was working in the far reaches of Northern Ontario at the time. His job was to stake claims on land that could be mined. The then-teenaged musician would travel by bush plane and snowmobile with an axe. It was […]

Alana Yorke ran out of air. Years before the Mount Uniacke musician debuted the art-pop Dream Magic—an album The Coast hailed upon its 2015 release as “vast and otherworldly”—she was a graduate student at Dalhousie researching underwater invertebrates. The work involved scuba diving. She’d been collecting samples at the end of a long day when […]

Tenille Goodspeed still remembers her first time on the Halifax Jazz Festival’s main stage. At age 13, the lifelong choral singer and (eventual) music industry pro was part of a “small jazz group” called Generation Jazz, and they were enjoying their first taste of the spotlight. “It was a big moment for my 13-year-old self,” […]

Most days, when Halifax alt-pop artist Rich Aucoin isn’t touring, the two-time JUNO nominee is tinkering with sounds in his basement apartment and—as he puts it in a phone call with The Coast—“staring off at the wall.” It’s been a good formula for the 40-year-old producer: The routine helped him win a pair of ECMA […]

Editor’s note: A version of this story first appeared in The Georgia Straight, The Coast’s Vancouver-based sibling publication, before City and Colour played on the west coast in early February. “I think I’ve just gotten better at singing,” muses Dallas Green. The man behind indie folk and rock outfit City and Colour’s voice has changed over […]