About Spencer
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Already living quietly in a slow country town, a period of intense world isolation prompted Spencer Burton to leave the city even further behind. An overload of negative information and fear left him feeling hopeless and uninspired to create music. He sat back for a couple of years watching what felt like the world crumbling around him.
Retreating to a small off-grid cabin in Northern Ontario, Spencer reconnected with nature and found peace and comfort in isolation. Taking a step back from the realities of life let him step back into making music.
“I always felt this need for importance, this need to be poetic. It came, but it felt mandatory at times. I struggled with that,” says Spencer. “But then I found beauty in the simple things. A bird's song. A rustling gale. A ripple in the water. With the beauty of those simple things came importance and poetry in an unforced, natural way”
The majority of Northwind was written in the north woods, in solitude and reflection. And while the songs have a spiritual importance, they also speak to ordinary life away from it all–fishing, an encounter with a coyote, sitting with your own thoughts.
“It’s really interesting what pleases the ear, musically, when isolated for a few weeks at a time. The only inspiration being yourself and the beauty of true untampered nature. It’s a different atmosphere than what we’re accustomed to. It really helped bring these songs to life.”
Recorded again in Nashville with Andrija Tokic the album fits sonically with the rest of Spencer’s catalogue, but the tone is noticeably different. The songs are easier, more comfortable, at ease. They encapsulate that same feeling he had out there alone, of singing by the campfire into the woods.
“I’m not really trying to write music these days,” says Spencer. “I’m trying to write good feelings.”