New York, NY (Top40 Charts) Coming off a breakthrough year including receiving their first Juno Award nominations for �Rock Album of the Year� and �Breakthrough Group� earlier this week, today, powerhouse Canadian rock duo Crown Lands - Cody Bowles (vocals and drums) and
Kevin Comeau (guitar, bass, and keys) - ake their mighty return with two new songs �Context: Fearless Pt. 1� and �Right Way Back.� Backed by Universal Music, the band premiered the tracks and the seven-minute official video for �Context: Fearless Pt. 1� with Rolling Stone.
The songs bring Crown Lands back to their prog-rock roots and point the way to a limitless future while connecting the group to their legendary countrymen Rush, the band that served as their initial inspiration, in ways they never could have expected. �Context: Fearless Pt. 1� is a full-circle moment for Crown Lands as their admiration for Rush is returned back to them by three producers who were vital to Rush�s iconic career. Bowles reflects, �To have grown up with nothing but the purest adoration for this band, to have finally scaled the impossible summit together and sit at the table with our heroes is a humbling surreality unlike anything else. Working with these legendary producers-now-friends is something we hold near and dear to us. If life is a wheel, please let it spin.�
Early last year, Crown Lands revisited �Context: Fearless Pt. 1�, a song they had been working on for years. They cut early demos with Terry Brown, Rush�s producer for ten years � a dream come true for two massive Rush fans. After touring and performing the song live, it got sharper - so they decided to re-record it. This time around, they travelled to Nashville to collaborate with Nick Raskulinecz, Rush�s producer in their later years. �These guys are the two most important producers in Rush�s career,� says Comeau. But the day before the scheduled session, Rush�s legendary drummer Neil Peart died after a fight with brain cancer. Crown Lands assumed the trip was off, but Raskulinecz texted them with a message: �you guys need to carry the torch�you need to come down here.� In the studio, the producer brought out a drum kit that Peart had used on the 2007 Snakes & Arrows album for Bowles to play � in what they call �the most spiritual experience in my life.� Finally, to produce the vocals, the duo hooked up with
David Bottrill�who remixed Vapor Trails, Rush�s 2002 comeback record. �He�s the mythical third Rush-associated producer,� says a disbelieving Comeau. �This one fucking song had the triad of Rush producers!"
The second new song, �Right Way Back,� is a tribute to Peart that came almost effortlessly. They brought it to Nashville as a rough demo, working out the chorus and writing the lyrics on the spot. �It�s about the feeling of trying to carry on from where your heroes left off,� says Comeau.
The final recording for �Context: Fearless Pt. 1� is an epic, hydra-headed beast of a song, complete with a full-scale, Mandalorian-style sci-fi music video which premiered on today with Rolling Stone. Crown Lands enlisted
Blake Mawson, their collaborator on the �Leadfoot� video, to help them realize their concept.
"When Crown Lands approached me about working on a second video together, I was blown away by the scope of the vision they had in mind for their upcoming release,� said Mawson. �In the video, Crown Lands saw themselves as space travellers on a diplomatic mission to spread music to new worlds. A sort of retro-galactic space fable. Among their stop-overs on this voyage is a fallen civilization on a planet where music and hope had been lost for generations.�
Crown Lands� Juno-nominated, self-titled debut album, produced by Grammy-nominated Dave Cobb, was released in the summer of 2020, to widespread acclaim from the likes of Guitar World, Kerrang!, and American Songwriter; coverage from the BBC and the CBC; and placements in campaigns for Peloton, the Canadian Football League, and the incomparable �Hockey Night in Canada� franchise. Most recently, Crown Lands debut album was nominated for �Rock Album of the Year� alongside a nomination for �Breakthrough Group of the Year� at 2021 Juno Awards. But without the ability to tour during a global pandemic, the pair was frustrated by their inability to bring their blistering, hard-charging music to the people. So, like most of us, they adapted. They released an acoustic EP, Wayward Flyers Volume 1, including a cover of Neil Young�s �Birds.� They also focused on the politically charged song and video �End of the Road,� which pays tribute to the Indigenous womxn, girls, and two-spirits who have gone missing on the Highway of
Tears in North British Columbia.
Hailing from Southwestern Ontario, powerhouse Canadian rock duo Crown Lands �Kevin Comeau (guitar, bass, and keys) and Cody Bowles (vocals and drums) � are a startling fresh jolt of energy, making music that brings together a range of influences from folk and blues to psychedelic prog rock. The group�s name is indicative of their musical ambitions: �Crown Land� is territorial area belonging to the monarch�or, as Bowles (whose own heritage is half Mi�kmaw, an Indigenous tribe from Nova Scotia) puts it: �Crown Land is stolen land and we are reclaiming it.�
