JOHN SOUTHWORTH

John Southworth is one of Canada's most distinctive and revered music artists. In the last five years John has traveled a rogue whirlwind, releasing the cassette-only SPIRITUAL WAR cassette tape - a collection of modern peasant songs recorded on a shoebox-size Sony cassette corder model TCM-939, an anti-record of actual rejected jingles (Failed Jingles for Bank of America & other U.S. Corporations), the grave and austere synth-rock of 2009's Mama Tevatron quickly followed by Human Cry's stunning, elegiac balladry, the grand delusional showtunes of West Coast Persona 98 EP, and Easterween, a surreal cabaret-operetta featuring the Klezmer-Stravinskyesque arrangements of Juno-winning composer-bassist-cellist Andrew Downing. His songs have been covered by or written for Canadian artists Sarah Slean, Buck 65, Martin Tielli (Rheostatics), Veda Hille, Hawksley Workman and Jully Black.