Album Notes

Thomas King wrote that the truth about stories is that they’re all that we are. This is what one should be thinking when they listen to the songs on Ian Foster’s “Room in the City.”

The follow-up to 2006’s “Through the Wires” finds Ian singing songs about dark nights in bright places, long drives and longer conversations, all set amidst musical backdrops peppered with guitars, strings, piano, and a variety of other, less common sounds—marimba, glockenspiel and xylophone, just to name a few. The characters that inhabit the record make their way into and out of cities, taking their stories with them.

But the root of it all is the song. A finalist for the International Songwriting Competition and 4-time MusicNL nominee (including SOCAN Songwriter of the Year for his song “Troubadours”), Foster has proven himself as an up-and-coming writer in Canadian music. Case-in-point: the legendary Newfoundland singer-songwriter Ron Hynes lends his voice to the last song on the album, “Decisions.” The song was also a co-write between Hynes and Foster.

The songs on “Room in the City” are inspired by experiences at home and on the road—Ian toured throughout Canada twice in 2007, and will again in the summer of 2008, performing at cafes, pubs, and festival stages. His music has been featured on radio stations throughout Canada and in Europe. The songs on “Room in the City” were written in various locales, including St. John’s, Halifax, Montreal, and Ottawa, among others.