You’ve likely seen Geordie Gordon on stage. The Toronto singer/songwriter is currently a member of two internationally acclaimed indie acts: U.S. Girls and Islands. He also served as a sideman for Andy Shauf just prior to that songwriter’s 2016 breakthrough. When not on the road, Gordon works in a queer bookstore stocked with coming-of-age stories. His second solo album, Tambourine, is Geordie’s own coming-of-age story, in more ways than one. It’s the album that will introduce the world to Geordie Gordon’s depth of talent as a singer, arranger, lyricist and melodicist.
That’s the intro of a bio I wrote for my friend’s new album, which he’s officially releasing this Wednesday, November 22 at the Burdock in Toronto.
Hearts on Fire readers: Tambourine’s title track is set in 2003, about a teenage and closeted Geordie Gordon taking a bus to Toronto to see the Hidden Cameras at Trinity-St. Paul Church, and losing himself in the communal joy. I would love this song even if it wasn’t about a historic gig I was also lucky enough to attend:
Full disclosure: I’ve known Geordie Gordon since he was 15, and playing in a (non-Jewish, non-fraternal) band called the Barmitzvah Brothers, which formed at Guelph’s Family Thrift Store – which tells you a lot about their aesthetic. Despite being twice his age, my band and his often shared bills around southwestern Ontario, and collaborated on a few projects. I was there when a still-teenaged Gordon first shook off both his baritone and his shy demeanour by performing the Isley Brothers’ “Shout” at a campus radio fundraiser, shocking everyone who knew him. When I left Guelph, Gordon and Mitchell wrote a song about it. It’s one of the most beautiful things that’s ever happened to me. So there’s that.
The Barmitzvah Brothers were surprisingly successful in the late 2000s, considering what an odd band they were: they toured the country and were on the cover of Now Magazine. When the Barmitzvahs packed it in, Geordie and his brother Evan (who was briefly a Constantine) then formed a pop band called The Magic (shortly before a different Toronto pop band with a similar name became a huge international one-hit wonder). But most of Gordon’s musical life in the last 15 years has been as a sideman.
In 2021 he put out The Tower, a lovely low-key solo record that was all but ignored – the pandemic didn’t help. Among its many strengths was this music-as-metaphor pop single, for which his roommate Colin Medley also made a fun video:
Earlier this year Gordon played a songwriters circle hosted by my (since-deceased) friend Vicki Fraser at the Tranzac. I had never seen him play solo guitar before: he’d always had either a band or electronics behind him. It was a surprise and delight to hear him finger-picking like Bruce Cockburn or Nick Drake – or his own father, James Gordon, who’s been a celebrated folksinger for the past 45 years (most famously covered by Cowboy Junkies on The Trinity Session, and most recently had a viral pandemic hit).
But more important, it was his new songs that blew me away: the melodies, the lyrics, and Gordon’s continuing evolution as a singer. I was stunned. Which doesn’t often happen with someone I’ve followed for more than half their life.
The album lived up to all my expectations from that gig.
What follows, for paid subscribers only, is my conversation with Geordie Gordon about his new album, about coming-out stories, about surviving a van crash with U.S. Girls, and about his magical grandmother, who is at the heart of the record.
“I’m not making sexy dance music,” he tells me. “I’m making a private folk record about my grandma.”
Geordie Gordon
May 9 2023
Tell me why you wrote a song about that Hidden Cameras gig, which sounds like a pivotal moment in your coming-out story.
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