There's Something About Maria For Jon-Rae

01/08/09 1:53pm

by Steve McLean (CHARTattack)

We were hoping that the songs on Jon-Rae Fletcher's forthcoming Oh, Maria would be about having sex with Jesus, but Weewerk tells us that its Feb. 3 release "follows the story of a soul torn apart by betrayal and longing, a man coming to terms with his role in the playing out of causal circumstance and his eventual redemption in the acceptance of time and change."

With that description, fingers are crossed that there could still be some "sexy time" with Jesus somewhere in the mix.

The 10-track album was made with help from producer/engineer Colin Stewart (Black Mountain, Great Aunt Ida). It features Fletcher on vocals and acoustic guitar, Ladyhawk's Darcy Hancock on electric guitar, Immaculate Machine/The New Pornographers' Kathryn Calder on piano, Crystal Dee Denham on bass and Denver Rawson on trombone.

The songs were rehearsed one day and recorded in a "turn-of-the-century living room" the next to capture the feeling of a specific time and place. First takes were recorded and there were no overdubs.

You can hear demo recordings of six songs from Oh, Maria on Fletcher's MySpace page.

Fletcher will head east from Vancouver to play these shows:

March 7 Toronto, ON @ Horseshoe Tavern w/United Steel Workers Of Montreal and The Schomberg Fair
March 11 Hamilton, ON @ The Casbah
March 14 Toronto, ON @ Lee's Palace w/Herman Dune, The Acorn, Cuff The Duke and Basia Bulat (CMW)

Here are the songs on Oh, Maria:

"Maria"
"City Lights"
"The Story"
"No Dancing"
"My Hands"
"Big Talker"
"Downtown"
"The Sound"
"The Hill"
"Oh, Maria"