Joe Fournier:
Raw Sugar Shed

Americana music from <gasp> Canada!?

It's no secret that the Canadian country music scene outwardly pales under the shadow of it's formidable neighbor. Couple that with the fact that as a nation our reputation is one of quiet complacent political correctness smudged with more than a fair share of social conservatism -- one can get the impression that we're kind of, well, for a better lack of words - dull, coated with a delicate layer of 'boring' peppered with monotony. Of course that's only touching the surface of our identity --  if you really want to know what we think dig a little deeper past the Shania's, Wilkinson's and Tommy Hunter and you'll find Joe Fournier. Joe proves we can be belligerent, opinionated and irreverent with the best of them.

Fournier's music has been compared to the likes of Costello, Earle, Springsteen and Petty. Certainly there's a similarity lyrically and musically but the brand seared on this music is his own. Every song on this album stands in its own blood, sweat and tears fused together with sacred irreverence and raw attitude.

Life's full of ironies, imperfections and idiosyncrasies, and if we take a step back to look, it can be pretty darn bizarre. Joe captures it all perfectly. "Raw Sugar Shed" is packed with what he refers to as “music with dirt under its fingernails."

Like many Canadian youth, Joe grew up influenced by the country music of the US. Proving that the America doesn't have a stranglehold on benign country (after all we did give you Shania) Joe Fournier says what we've all been thinking in his irreverent look at country radio: Country Music's Gone To Hell. Doesn't get anymore direct than that.

So just what is country? Joe's got an answer for that too in "My Country Includes":

My country includes donuts and ice cold beer;
My country includes page three women and cheap wood veneer; My country includes all the jerks around here

With a gift of looking at the mundane through his eccentric brand of humor and insight, Joe dissects a fairy tale marriage that's met with it's eventual demise in "We Must Have Been On Drugs".  There's also a country music version of Cyrano de Bergerac in "Johnny Cash Plan," complete with Cash's trademark boom-chucka-boom intro, as a man comes up with the perfect way to get a woman to believe the love he vows while trying to circumvent an impending divorce. Getting Johnny Cash to say the words for him might be all it will take, after all if the Man in Black says it, it has to be true.

There's a quote on Joe's site that describes it all better than anything I can muster -- so I'll borrow it: "Raw Sugar Shed's about love -- love gone wrong, love gone right, love gone missin', love me, love my dog and love with a woman named Wayne."

Joe Fournier's a unknown Canadian treasure and I'll bet my bottom dollar Texas is placing bids on him as you're readin' this.