When you listen to the Big East, you can hear the echo of the best days of songwriting being carried forward: Soaring and simple; poetic and contemporary; new and timeless. The music is layered with subtle inference and bold strokes. The voices are evocative, approachable and a superb blend. 

Following their homegrown album Under Currents, the Big East has set out in a new direction with a fresh, and uniquely Canadian take on Rock music for a new era. With their monumental second album Hungry Ghosts, The Big East has re-defined themselves. 

The eleven songs of Hungry Ghosts runs the gamut from love to politics and plays on the best elements of rhythm, harmony and melody.  You can feel the long shadow of past decades of rock music coalesced around songs like The Wild Life and Shine On, but you can feel the personality of the band come through in every track. 

The songwriting is the best of James Jones and typically he tells many stories from his unique point of view.  The title track Hungry Ghosts tells the story of bitter love and offers the tale up in poetic language that stokes your imagination in every phrase.  The stand-out track Scarecrow is a fusion of forlorn lament about feeling alone, neo-motown vocal arrangements and jazzy guitar motiff.  Somehow it comes together to work like magic.  This album is eclectic.  Somehow theyve woven together high energy, light hearted rock with cuts like Monkey On My Back and The Wild Life with romantic vocals and storytelling. 

Much of the credit of the Big Easts new sound is due to the influence of veteran Canadian producer Andre Wahl.  Under Wahls guidance the band has bridged the gap between talent and experience and taken things to a new level. 

James Jones and Kip Daynard are the driving force behind the Big East.  Jones and Daynard are both long time residents of Muskoka, Canada.  The friends live in the same small town a few blocks apart.  They are both end products of the best of the rock era and it is sincerely evident in the music the make.

Tree rings are a record of history. Tree rings are nature’s ripple effect, frozen in time. Tree Ring Records plans to follow this grand design for singer/songwriters in the Muskoka and Near North regions, through a series of live performance documents, captured in front of studio audiences.
There is no surprise that tree rings resemble LP vinyl records, the original medium for sharing recorded music. The medium may have changed but true music hasn’t. In an age of autotune, drum machines and cut and paste composition, at Tree Ring Records, we firmly believe real music can only come from the burning of muscles, the flowing of breath and the frailness of existence.
Tree Ring Records is less of a record company and more of a record co-operative… a non-profit organization that has pooled together experts in their own fields to volunteer their unique skills, crafts and art for the greater purpose of exposing the music community in this region. Tree Ring Records recognizes that the musicians and audiences in this region may not be able to see their own musical forest for the trees. Below the bark, this community rings of a music culture that is as of yet untapped. In the tradition of the industry that created the communities in this part of Ontario, a “new” logging industry is about to begin…Tree Ring Records.

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