For some of you, this track may have been a bit too, um “plugged in” for folk music. In my last semester at McGill, I actually took a history of popular music class where I learned (and finally understood) the history of the debate about separating folk from rock music. Many folk fans saw rock sonorities (like electric guitars and loud sounds) as antithetical to folk music. For them, folk music was about authenticity and personal storytelling and the inclusion of rock sounds suggested something too commercial. This sentiment was so strong that Bob Dylan was actually booed off the stage at Newport Folk Festival in 1965 for playing a set with rock instruments. Thankfully, over time, folk songwriters using sonorities that were popular at the time were able to convince folk audiences that their choice in intruments did not mean they were being any less authentic or any more 'commercial'. Based on this song, you may have already surmised that I don’t think folk and rock are opposites, but more like different color palettes to write songs with. In this case, this song pays homage to my time playing with the local Montreal rock band The History of Gunpowder where got to play a lot of distortion violin nonsense and it was a lot of fun. My time in the rockband clearly had its influence on my sound and it seemed perfectly appropriate for this song because it is actually about one of the band members in that rock band. He had gone through a bad breakup and when I set out to write a song about it, it would have felt inauthentic not to pay homage to him sonically as well as lyrically. The colour palette for this song is pretty dark and angry, but I think it works because this song is about betrayal and anger, after all.