An Evening with Daniel Lanois

An exceptional night of musical artistry and soulful songcraft, this special ticketed Supercrawl Presents event will see the legendary Daniel Lanois joined onstage by bassist and multi-instrumentalist Jim Wilson and drummer Kyle Crane. Tickets go on sale to the public Thursday, June 15 at 10:00am EST through Ticketfly and DrDisc Hamilton (20 Wilson St., Hamilton).

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Daniel Lanois is a name that deserves to be mentioned alongside the finest sonic experimenters of the 20th century – and the 21st century too. Yes, he's been willing to step back into the background as others take the limelight, but that shouldn't diminish his contribution, which ripples throughout practically every style and sound of the modern era. Whatever you're listening to - whether it be acoustic or electronic, roots or futurist, underground or pop – if you listen closely you'll hear traces of the sonic signatures of Daniel Lanois.

What's more, he's still experimenting as eagerly as he ever has. At a point when most musicians with anything resembling his level of success would be resting on their laurels and playing on old successes — an epic list of production credits that includes landmark albums by Brian Eno, U2, Peter Gabriel, Bob Dylan, Emmylou Harris, Robbie Robertson, The Neville Brothers, Willie Nelson and Neil Young — Lanois still has more hunger for the new than people a third his age, and as a result is creating music as beautiful and new as ever before.

This refusal to sit still, this constant hunger for new ideas and techniques, has defined Daniel's solo work too. Though his albums have been few and far between, everyone has dug deep for inspiration and roamed widely in its sound and style: as much as someone who counts Lee "Scratch" Perry as a literal neighbour in Jamaica should. Whether exploring his French Canadian identity and folk heritage in bilingual songs or taking mainstream rock themes into outer space with manipulations as strange as any electronica, shoegaze or post-rock young guns were managing at the time, every record has a questing spirit to it.

Most recently, Lanois has hit a rich creative seam, and on the rhythmically complex Flesh and Machine and now on the gorgeous, weightless Goodbye to Language, he is going all the way with that experimentation. On both of these records he connects the most forward-looking instincts that constant contact with studio technology can develop with the natural rootedness that only a lifetime in music can give a person. And while fusions of influence can sometimes lead to homogenisation in the blending of source material, this record does precisely the opposite: it's about highlighting the highest common factors from a lifetime of influences. Or as he succinctly puts it: "I operate under the banner of soul music – music that just feels right and comes from a truthful place." When a musician with as much expertise and experience as Daniel tells their own personal truth, you should really listen closely.