artist Brett Caswell

“Oh great souls!” Cry the presses.“Who is this brave young chap at the piano – guitar strapped to his side?”

The sweet pitter patter of cracked ivory keys (oh… wipe that dust out from the corner of the piano’s mahogany…there, that’s better) and oily skin threaded in the phosphorus-coated guitar strings seems to be enough for today’s folk artists. But, of course for Brett Caswell to tell his stories, he walks with the people; his spectacles speckled with appreciation for the folks who put him here.

Caswell is a storyteller – through and through. And like all good stories, his begins with the first awkwardly formed guitar chord 18 years prior in Barrie, Ontario. As his hands shed their younger skin cells, the townsfolk grinned upwards at his aging frame, begging him to teach they’re nimble fingers so they too could form awkward chords. But as Brett Caswell’s fingers stretched across the fretboard of the sprawling city, his restless soul began to drift towards the dirty streets of another sprawling metropolis, Toronto.

Alas, in the name of striking a new balance (Wait… Isn’t “A New Balance” the name of the latest album?) – yes, fine folks, it is – Brett Caswell saw it fit to part ways with his home (of course, not after planting a studio there as an excuse to return) and point his compass in the direction of Toronto’s sprawling music scene. “Granted, we all experience loss and lie about our age and move to bigger towns– so what makes him different?” You ask. But when tragedy struck, Caswell told a story. When he fell from a balcony during a deceptive Nicaraguan night, his jaw was battered and dangling, shattered pieces of marrow and blood and teeth and… oh you get the picture… Brett Caswell wrote music in his head (and pondered how limited our soup selection was).

Now, surrounded by his family of vagabonds and musicians for hire – The Marquee Rose – (which stars members of Fox Jaws and other Barrie alumni) Caswell has readied his stories and dusty keys and oily strings and crisscrossed the land in search of young, open hearts. He’s played with the likes of Jeff Healy, Jason Collett, The Trews, Bahamas, Zeus – a humble slave to your hungry ears and eyes.

And he sings! He sings again! For you! The people! The open hearted! The tired! The tall and beautiful, the young and old, the weak and strong! And his people smile up at him – no longer shocked by his modesty.

Brett Caswell, the storyteller. A man after our hearts but satisfied with our ears.