•BIO•
Hailing from London, Ontario, Luke Maynard may be one of Canada's best-kept musical secrets. A triple-threat singer, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist, Luke cut his teeth on the live stages of the Southwestern Ontario folk circuit in the late 1990s and early 2000s.
Highly sought after as a sideman and instrumentalist, Luke is probably best known for his work with the Dixie Flyers, Canada's longest-running bluegrass band. Luke toured extensively with the Flyers from 1999 to 2005 and was inducted into the Jack Richardson London Music Awards Hall of Fame with them in 2013.
Luke with the Dixie Flyers at the Home County Folk Festival, 2001.
After a three-year stint with London-based rock trio The Dystonics, Luke returned to his roots as a singer-songwriter and set about recording his first album after a 17-year career on live stages across Canada.
Luke's ambitious début CD, DESOLATION SOUND, is a double-length folk/roots album with a concept. Tying the public and private struggles of small-town Canadians to the traditions of the folk festival scene that fed his wide-ranging musical education, Desolation Sound chronicles the rise and fall of two important chapters of Canada's history and heritage.
Written, performed, recorded, engineered, and produced alone, Luke's first commercial release is a milestone years in the making. Stepping out of his role as a sideman, Luke lets his heartbreaking lyrics and emotive acoustic guitar do the heavy lifting on this prodigious, precocious album of vintage-style folk music brought forward for a new generation.
"A modern-day Leonard Cohen."