Album Notes

Fred Eaglesmith grew up on a series of farms in southern Ontario. His father, an evangelical minister, went bankrupt twice. Eaglesmith recalls his childhood as either working the farm or driving to church. By age 16, he'd left home, hopped freight trains out west and made his way back east to the farms of Ontario. But the hillbilly radio stations that bounced over the Great Lakes when he was a kid promised him an easier road: like Elvis, the Stanley Brothers, and John Prine, he figured he could make it as a musician.

Eaglesmith and his band, The Flying Squirrels, are legendary,putting on a show that is a mixture of hard-edged honkytonk, a balance bewteen rock and early-sixties country music that's passionate, funny, and sentimental all at once, as if Hank WIllims joined the Rolling Stones. As one reviewer said, "It takes a jaded soul to leave a Fred Eaglesmith show unaffected."