Tony Dekker

Great Lake Swimmers have announced summer tour dates in Canada, which includes festival stops in Ontario and Alberta. The band recently received a "Roots & Traditional Album of the Year" JUNO 2013 nomination for their acclaimed 2012 release, New Wild Everywhere. All tour dates are listed below.

As well, Great Lake Swimmers front-man Tony Dekker will be going with WWF-Canada (World Wildlife Fund) on a trip this September to the Great Bear region on the north coast of British Columbia. The Great Bear is a Canadian ecological treasure, one of the richest and most spectacular ecosystems on earth and home to the rare white Spirit Bear. For the past year, it has been at the centre of a high profile national debate about the Northern Gateway Project that proposes to build twin oil pipelines from Alberta through the Great Bear, and transport oil across B.C. coastal waters. Tony Dekker is a WWF supporter and advocates for the protection of the region as a Canadian for the Great Bear.

"['The Great Exhale'] exudes a somber quality, built from an orchestra of violin, shimmering cymbals and frontman Tony Dekker’s morose baritone." -- MTV Hive

Yesterday, MTV Hive premiered a new video for the song "The Great Exhale" from Toronto indie-folk darlings Great Lake Swimmers.  The track is from the band's fifth studio album, New Wild Everywhere.  GLS frontman Tony Dekker and video director Christopher Mills spoke with MTV Hive about the making of the video. Said Mills, “I found the song to be really haunting and beautiful, so the original concept for the video was based on a very loose idea of exploring empty, dissonant places, and to more of a visual essay that put ‘the music on the wind that passes through. The plan was to fill these spaces with these drawings, and ‘ghostly light and effects’ in ways that complimented the music.”  Read more at MTV Hive here: http://mtvhv.com/QDVRN2.

Great Lake Swimmers have announced additional east coast dates in the U.S. in August and October, which include stops in Hudson (NY), Baltimore, Portland (ME), Burlington, Brooklyn, Northampton and Ithaca. The band has been on the road for most of 2012 in support of their fifth studio album, New Wild Everywhere, which Paste Magazine called "a treat of melodic proportions." In addition to the newly added dates, Great Lake Swimmers are currently touring across Canada playing various festival and headline shows. All tour dates are listed below.

Newly added U.S. dates:
Wed, Aug 1 Hudson, NY @ Helsinki Hudson
Thur, Aug 2 Baltimore, MD @ West Mount Vernon Park (WTMD "First Thursday" Concert Series)
Tues, Oct 2 Portland, ME @ One Longfellow Square
Wed, Oct 3 S. Burlington, VT @ Higher Ground
Thur, Oct 4 Brooklyn, NY @ The Bell House
Fri, Oct 5 Northampton, MA @ The Iron Horse
Sat, Oct 6 Ithaca, NY @ The Haunt

Keep reading for all tour dates...

Toronto's Great Lake Swimmers have announced another handful of Canadian tour dates for August/September in support of their latest studio album New Wild Everywhere. New dates are listed below, but for the full list of upcoming GLS dates, visit GreatLakeSwimmers.com.

GLS Addtional Canadian Dates:
Aug 5 - Whistler BC @ Whistler Olympic Plaza
Sep 13 - St. Catherines ON @ Sean O’Sullivan Theatre
Sep 15 - Hamilton ON@ James Street North SuperCrawl
Sep 20 - London ON @ Aeolian Hall
Sep 21 - Meaford ON @ Meaford Hall
Sep 22 - Kingston ON @ Chalmers United 

Toronto’s Great Lake Swimmers are celebrating the debut of their fifth studio album, New Wild Everywhere, on the charts with the release of a brand new video for the album’s title track. The video, set on Toronto Island, is directed by Adam Makarenko, who hand crafted a miniature city of Toronto and used CGI technology to add impressive visual effects that showed the city being brought to life and reclaimed by nature.

The band achieved a career-high Canadian SoundScan debut this week, landing at #33 on the Top Albums Overall Chart, #11 on the Alternative Albums Chart and #17 on the Digital Overall Albums Chart. In the U.S., New Wild Everywhere landed on the Billboard Heatseekers Chart at #16.

Great Lake Swimmers kick off the European leg of their major tour in London tonight before heading back to North America on May 1 for their first U.S. date in Chicago (with Cold Specks). A full list of tour dates is below.

In case you missed it, Great Lake Swimmers performed live from The Glenn Gould Theatre in Toronto last week to celebrate the impending release of their fifth studio album, New Wild Everywhere (out now). The concert was broadcast live on CBC Radio 3 on March 20th, and is now available for viewing on CBC Canada Live. Watch it above here.

The band's international tour in support of the release of New Wild Everywhere kicks off today in Montreal at L'Astral. See full list of dates below. 

New Wild Everywhere Media Reaction:

“These are gentle transmissions from the eyes of life storms, to paraphrase Dekker, a songwriter who eases in and out of blue colours sublimely. It's as outreaching as we've heard yet from GLS, and an indication that the sky is still Dekker's limit. Another wonderful record…” --The Globe and Mail

"...their most mature and polished LP to date. Bouncing between draping strings and bluegrass fiddle, Dekker explores themes of love and change in his signature elemental style, and his choice of language lends a sense of timelessness to his songs." --Paste Magazine

“Dekker's new songs remain artfully enigmatic and haunting...” -- exclaim!

“Great Lake Swimmers, have graced us with an incredible new alb
um: This is another great notch on the belt of a band that has consistently put forth great music since their first release nearly a decade ago, and they show no signs of slowing down.” -- Northern Transmissions

Tony Dekker Talks To CBC About New Wild Everywhere, Out April 3

Great Lake Swimmers stopped by CBC Music last week to record an Up Close Session, a live, in-studio sneak peak of some songs from the band's fifth studio album New Wild Everywhere, out April 3. Listen to the session here: http://bit.ly/GTa8ha.

The band also unveiled their entire new album live last Tuesday, March 20 with a very special show from The Glenn Gould Studio at CBC Toronto hosted by Radio 3's Craig Norris. Video footage from the concert will be available on the newly launched cbcmusic.ca in the coming days, but check out CBC's interview with Tony Dekker from soundcheck at Glenn Gould above. 

Yesterday, Ontario's own Great Lake Swimmers launched a promo tour for their upcoming fifth studio album New WIld Everywhere (April 3) with a special live performance at The Grand Theatre in London, Ontario for CBC Q. The performance was broadcast this morning on Q with Jian Ghomeshi on CBC Radio One along with a feature interview. The entire show is now posted on the CBC website. Listen to the show and see a photo gallery from the live show here: http://bit.ly/AjKiQT.

The band heads to Austin for SXSW next week (full list of shows below), and then head back to Toronto to unveil the entire new album live with a very special show from The Glenn Gould Studio at CBC Toronto hosted by Craig Norris on Tuesday, March 20. The entire concert will broadcast live on CBC Radio 3 and will be broadcast again on Canada Live at a later date. Video footage from the performance will be available on CBC Music – CBC’s newly-launched digital music service – at cbcmusic.ca in the days leading up to the April 3rd release of New Wild Everywhere. Tickets for the Glenn Gould show on March 20 will be available at HMV with pre-order of the new album at any Greater Toronto retail location.

Great Lake Swimmers launch an extensive tour in support of New Wild Everywhere on April 5 in Montreal. All dates below. 

Today, Great Lake Swimmers release the second single and title track from their forthcoming album New Wild Everywhere (April 3). The track is available now in iTunes, and the band will be shooting an official video for the track, but in the meantime, they've put together a special "behind-the-scenes" video (filmed by Stephen Chung) from the "New Wild Everywhere" recording session at Toronto's Revolution Recording. Our good friends at AbsolutePunk.net premiered the video today and posted an exclusive Q&A with GLS frontman Tony Dekker. Check out the post here and watch the video above. 

Earlier this year, Great Lake Swimmers released lead single "Easy Come Easy Go," which swiftly climbed its way to the #1 spot on CBC Radio 3.

New Wild Everywhere, the fifth studio album from GLS, will be available April 3, and the band will kick off their album promotion with a special debut performance of tracks from the new album in front of a live audience at The Grand Theatre in London, Ontario for CBC Q, which will be broadcast the following morning on Q with Jian Ghomeshi on CBC Radio One, along with a feature interview. They will then head to SXSW in Austin, TX from March 14 - March 17 for their first of many lives shows in support of New Wild Everywhere. (Full list of tour dates below.)

With SXSW just around the corner, Nettwerk Records is excited to share details on its label artists who will be appearing in Austin: Great Lake Swimmers, Family Of The Year and Kidstreet. Keep reading for information on each artist and their schedules.

Great Lake Swimmers

Toronto’s indie folk/rock darlings Great Lake Swimmers (GLS) will release their fifth studio album, New Wild Everywhere, on April 3rd. The album captures all of the excitement and intuitive musicianship of a group at the peak of their creative powers, with 12 new tracks that reveal a depth and maturity only previously hinted at by lead singer and songwriter Tony Dekker. The first single (and the band’s most upbeat song to date), “Easy Come Easy Go,” just grabbed the #1 spot on Canada’s CBC Radio 3’s R3-30, signaling one of the fastest rises of any single to the top of that chart. New Wild Everywhere is the follow up to 2009’s Lost Channels, which debuted at #10 on the Billboard Heatseekers Chart, was a favorite among influential bloggers and NPR staff, and received public endorsements by the likes of Feist, Robert Plant, NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams and cyclist Lance Armstrong. Watch the video for “Easy Come Easy Go” above or here: http://bit.ly/z4CX4v.

Family Of The Year

(Keep readin for more information and schedules...)