DOWNLOADS

TOUR POSTER DOWNLOAD

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BIO DOWNLOAD:

BIO DOWNLOAD

Click the button above to download a .docx copy of the full Strange Path bio. You can also scroll down to read the bio below.

PHOTOS

By :Erica Chan

Photos available for download:

STREAMING

ALBUM DETAILS

AWARDS + RECOGNITION:

INDIE88: Singer-songwriter artist of the year nominee. (2018)

WESTERN CANADIAN MUSIC AWARDS: Recording of the year nominee. (2018)

WESTERN CANADIAN MUSIC AWARDS: Roots solo artist of the year WINNER. (2018)

WESTERN CANADIAN MUSIC AWARDS: Recording of the year nominee. (2018)

CANADIAN FOLK MUSIC AWARDS: Solo artist of the year WINNER. (2017)

ALBERTA’S 95.3 PEAK FM: Peak Performance Project WINNER. (2015)

CALGARY FOLK MUSIC FESTIVAL: Pros and Prose contest WINNER. (2014)

WEST COAST MUSIC AWARDS: Roots solo recording of the year nominee. (2013)

BIO:

It’s said the cells in your body replace themselves every decade or so. After 11 albums, two EPs and 17

years as a singer-songwriter, Leeroy Stagger has been wondering if maybe the soul works the same way.

Ten years sober, with two kids, a home in Lethbridge and a world class recording studio to go with it, he’s

far removed from the hard-living twenty-something who started on this musical path. As far as Stagger

can see, they aren’t even the same person.

Strange Path is the name of Stagger’s newest album and book, a name that applies as much to his

unexpected route from the BC punk scene to southern-Alberta singer songwriter as it does to the album’s

own evolution. Following from 2017’s Love Versus, itself a creative re-emergence after a years-long fog

of anxiety and depression, Strange Path is the end result of a triple-album’s worth of scrapped demos,

record label rejections, and a spirit-reviving retreat inwards. It’s also Stagger’s most ambitious and

philosophical creation yet, a veritable self-help book pulled from a lifetime of struggling towards the light

and brimming with the hard-won joy at the heart of his recent renaissance.

From the appropriately haunted “Leonard Cohen is Dead” and the cosmic reflections of album-closer “The

Light” to the hard-edged stomp of “Jesus and Buddha” and glam-rock bliss of “Strange Attractor,” it’s an

album of sharp hooks and sharper insights, a statement on loss, forgiveness, pain, faith, The Clash, Gord

Downie, love, death, fear, letting go, higher powers, Mother Earth, obsession, redemption, and the path

we all walk through life.

Exploring all that terrain takes one monster of a band. To piece it together, Stagger surrounded himself

with some of the best players in the business. The first step was enlisting “Love Versus” drummer Pete

Thomas (Elvis Costello and the Attractions, Elliot Smith, Los Lobos) to once again lend his meticulous

musicianship to the mix. If anyone could navigate the heady themes Stagger was charting, it’s the man

Tom Waits once called the best rock drummer in the world. Longtime collaborator Tyson Maiko stepped in

on bass, with Paul Rigby (Neko Case, Garth Hudson, Jakob Dylan) joining on guitar, and Stagger’s

touring band, the Rebeltone Sound (Ryland Moranz on guitar, mandolin and vocals, and Michael Ayotte

on piano, synthesizers and keyboards) rounding out the arrangements.

Production duties were trickier to pin down. Brad Barr of acclaimed act The Barr Brothers shared the helm

on four of the eleven tracks. That left Stagger, a veteran producer of other artist’s albums, to steer his

own ship for the first time. Self-producing took a more methodical and patient approach than the shoot-

from-the-hip style Stagger usually preferred. Then it was turned over for mixing by 5 time Grammy winner

Ryan Freeland (Ray Lamontagne, Bonnie Raitt, Aimee Mann, Rodney Crowell and more).

It turned out to be a blessing, though, another insight gained on the long road to Strange Path.

Of course, there’s no path so long without a fork or two along the way, and one of the roads-not-travelled

on the way to the album turned out too tempting to abandon. Released on May 17th, Me and the

Mountain is a companion piece to Strange Path, an Americana-influenced counterpart to Strange Path’s

contemporary sound. Featuring guitar wizard Steve Dawson (Zubot and Dawson), and award-winning

multi-instrumentalist Steve Marriner alongside Stagger and Rigby as well as Barr, the album shows yet

another facet of Leeroy Stagger’s ongoing musical reflections.

Following up a career-redefining album like Love Versus is no small task. Strange Path and Me and the

Mountain prove Stagger is more than up to the challenge. Bristling with love, grit, and confidence, they

show the singer, songwriter, producer and performer at his best. He’s stared down his past, retraced his

steps, reflected on the beauty and pain of a life that’s had more than its share of both. Maybe he’s not the

same person he was 10 years ago, but if anything, Leeroy Stagger is more himself than ever.

Strange Path the book will be out at the same time as the album. It is described as an artists’ path

through trauma, healing and music and finding self purpose through the art that this work entails.

VIDEOS:

PRESS:

“It’s weird how the good thing that we sometimes pursue relentlessly because we want it so bad, can also be so bad for the soul. Ah, the irony of loving it to death and killing ourselves in the process. Stagger couldn’t have painted a more complete of picture of living the dream."

– Beatroute (Dream It All Away)

"There has always been a swagger about Stagger, a slightly cocky self-confidence that’s actually quite endearing. His sound and vocals have a somewhat loose and ragged feel that brings Paul Westerberg to mind, and there’s an open and honest feel to his unaffected voice. This is arguably his best work yet.”

– Exclaim (Radiant Land)

"A little Steve Earle, a little John Prine, a little Bruce Springsteen and whole lot of his own heart and soul make up Canadian alt / country / folk / rock minstrel Leeroy Stagger’s music."

- Cash Box Canada (Dream It All Away)

“There are few people you feel you get to know through their music more than Stagger.”

– The Calgary Herald (Dream It All Away)