Dana Sipos

Dana Sipos is a songwriter's songwriter and her hypnotic, nuanced songs are filled with a wild wind. She tours extensively, occasionally by bicycle, tall ship, canoe and train. Her last album garnered her a Canadian Folk Music Award Nod in the Pushing the Boundaries category. A stunning follow-up, Trick of the Light, featuring a stellar cast of Canadian musicians including Mary Margaret O'Hara, released on Toronto's Roaring Girl Records in spring 2018 to critical acclaim.

Support from: Jess Shanks (The Eastern)

Often drawing comparisons to Natalie Merchant, Gillian Welch and Nick Drake, Sipos’ rhythmic fingerstyle guitar playing is textured and immersive, and her true strength lies as a songwriter. She shines a tenderly skewed light into the darkness and draws the listener in to the strange and mystical space occupied by the shadows..

Originally hailing from the industrial landscape of Hamilton, Ontario, Dana Sipos inhabited the far Canadian north - Yellowknife, Northwest Territories - for many years before going nomad. Her captivatingly nuanced songs continue to be infused with a wild wind and a haunting, slightly hypnotic surrealism, akin to the mysteries of the north.

The ten songs that make up her new album, Trick of the Light, travel extensively as well; to the Blue Ridge mountains of Appalachia, the Kentucky foothills, the wilds of Tennessee, the rolling hills of Virginia. It is partly by chance and partly by choice that rural, mountainous regions of the U.S.A inform so much of of the music, along with the pull of the tides, amateur palm readers, guiding lighthouses and hurricane season. These are tenuous times and there are gentle, tenuous threads that tie this evocative collection of sonic stories together. In making Trick of the Light, Sipos employed the help of experimental Toronto producer Sandro Perri and features Mary Margaret O’Hara, Jesse Zubot and Doug Tielli.