Canadian alt-folk rockers Village Manor are encouraging the act of “Gunsaway” with the release of their new single.
The imploring plea arrives as their debut release, and was inspired by how “tired everyone is waking up every morning to the news of gun violence on a consistent basis,” co-frontman John Weinberg says.
“It’s every single day!”
“How many times can we wake up, how many times can we hear,” asks the lyrics. “It’s only time – and a time for winning, time for losing, time for loving, and a time to stop saying goodbye.”
Picking up where Mumford and Sons paved the path, “Gunsaway” is poignant prose woven within music that’s well-steeped in roots before it branches out into indie alternative, and incorporating harp and rushing percussion along the way. The track re-imagines a genre marked by the Drive-By Truckers and made notorious by Wilco, and Village Manor succeed in bringing alt-folk rock to the foreground of musical soundscape — stitching themselves into the fabric of the pattern: excellent songwriting, beautiful lyrics, and impeccable musicianship with a message.
Hailing from the indie mecca of South Western Canada, Village Manor sprang up in Toronto, back in 2018. A chance encounter between group founders John Weinberg and Sam Kay during an open mic at the Free Times Cafe set the band in motion; they soon collected up an amazing singer in Mike Levine (Tragically Hits Band), percussionist extraordinaire Corey Weinberg (Numb Tongues), and sound engineer/bassist Mike Grundy (Wychwood Sound), fleshing Village Manor into the soundscape we’re hearing today.
For the guys who lined the halls, cafes, stages, and spaces of Toronto’s open mic community, it’s a testament to the coming together of Canadian musicians. Village Manor became an open door for a collective of indie artists with a common love of songwriting, and performing, and now it’s home to all of us.
And within a similarly welcoming sentiment arrives their plea for a safer world.
