A storyteller. A singer. A band.
An evening of mongrel sorrow, dappled by magic and wonder, fringed with regard for the gift of the tongue, harkening and hortatory and bardic and greying, steeped in mortal mystery.
These nights have the mark of our time upon them, and they’ve become timely, urgent, alert, and with some swagger.
They are nights devoted to the ragged mysteries of being human, and so grief and endings of all kinds appear. What would you call such a thing?
We called it Nights of Grief & Mystery.
Stephen Jenkinson
Stephen Jenkinson is a Harvard Educated Theologian, Culture Activist, founder of The Orphan Wisdom School. He is the author of Die Wise: A Manifesto for Sanity and Soul, the award-winning book about grief, and dying, and the great love of life. He is the subject of a National Film Board of Canada documentary, Griefwalker. He brings teachings of the ramshackling kind, about honour and grace under pressure, about how we might learn our darkening times. His new book, Come of Age: The Case for Elderhood in a Time of Trouble, wonders about elderhood in an age of age-intolerance, and about the withering World Tree.
Gregory Hoskins
The songs of Gregory Hoskins were not written specifically to be joined with Stephen's work, but chosen from his catalogue of original recordings over his 28-year career for whatever connective tissue they might contain to help glue a concert together. Hoskins’ lyrics and voice tend to break and bind at the same time in songs that are steeped in beauty and a muscular type of sorrow...and he does it over propulsive grooves, brooding electric guitar work, and rich sonics. He and the band use those sonic textures to underpin Jenkinson’s readings, too, using swirls of drums, bass, guitar textures, and synth throbs along with vocal harmonies, trumpet, and live looping.
About the Nights
Stephen Jenkinson and Gregory Hoskins began collaborating in 2015. It was an improvisational intersection of their separate bodies of work. They called the live shows they were doing Nights of Grief & Mystery. Initially touring as a duo, then a three-piece band, they concluded their most recent tour (Fall 2019) with seven people on stage.
Their first recording , Nights of Grief & Mystery, was released in 2017 and culled from live performances in Australia and the UK. DARK ROADS was released in 2020 recorded live in Los Angeles. Their third release and first studio effort, ROUGH GODS, began with a writing and recording session in Mexico and continued at Dead Starling Studio in Canada during the beginning months of the pandemic and released in November of 2020. In December of 2021—still having not been able to tour—the band shot a short performance/doc film called Dead Starling Session, named so after the location they shot it in: Hoskins’ studio in the bowels of a 135 year old factory. It is a multicam, live-off-the-floor, faithful rendering of their first encounter with some of the material they had meant to take on the road, and the film serves as the calling card for the current tour.
With 6 international tours under their belt, they have played on three continents, in eight countries, to capacity houses in venues ranging from tractor sheds in Australia and sheep huts in Iceland to bonafide concert halls in New York and LA. Joining Stephen and Gregory for the ROUGH GODS TOUR will be drummer/Moogist Adam Bowman; Lisa Hodgson on keys and vocals; and Colleen Hodgson on bass and vocals.
Our Lady of the Apocalypse
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