Tractor Presents: Wake Owl with Andy Shauf and Guests

Wake Owl

Singer/songwriter Colyn Cameron of Wake Owl has been immersed in the world of music for the past ten years. Now based in Vancouver, BC and Portland, OR, Colyn was originally born and raised in southern California. “In the beginning I was mostly into rhyme stuff/hip hop,” Colyn notes, “I wrote rap basically. I used to go around the school ground rapping my verses to whoever would listen. Then about seven years ago I picked up a guitar and taught myself basic stuff and immediately began writing songs.”

After graduation Colyn trained in organic agriculture at Emerson College in England, worked on different farms throughout the UK, Germany, Chile and Canada, and traveled the world. Colyn found his journeys to be a catalyst for writing songs. “My writing process is always changing. I usually find the most inspiration after these long periods of not having too much of my own space, touring or traveling. A lot just tends to pour out rather quickly,” he reflects.

Upon returning to Vancouver, Colyn spent some time playing in bands before deciding to record the songs he had written after his journey, and thus began the Wild Country EP. “With this EP I was really focused on just creating recordings I could be proud of and felt connected to as a group of songs. I wanted to capture and represent, in all its instrumentation and arrangement, what those songs mean to me,” says Colyn. The result is a five-song EP that harvests raw, honest, emotion through Colyn’s words and melodies.

The Wild Country EP will be made available nationwide via Vagrant Records on January 29th, 2013. 

Andy Shauf

Patience is likely a virtue of Andy Shauf’s prairie upbringing. After the release of his 2008 debut Darker Days, he learned to play the waiting game. With 2010′s EP Waiting For The Sun To Leave, he began the long process of releasing only a few songs every couple of years. No easy task for a prolific writer. It would be another two years until his next proper release, 2012′s Sam Jones Feeds His Demons; an introduction to the artistic growing pains that would eventually lead to a brighter sound, and a darker story.That story, The Bearer of Bad News, released November 6th, is his first full length record in over four years. It is also undeniably his best. A journey of long winter nights spent writing and hot summer days spent on the road with friends.Recorded alone in the basement, Bearer is 11 songs built on a weathered piano, a warm guitar, a clarinet, and the melody of a broken heart. At the heart is Andy’s one-of-a-kind voice and dark knack for story. It eventually found its way to producer and engineer, Jonathan Anderson (Julie Doiron, Aidan Knight, Jordan Klassen) who gave the songs a humble trademark polish, and helped them find a way to speak for themselves.