pale fire union

A flame burns hottest at it’s palest point. The singer digs down and the people feel it. We come together and rise. For a moment we are still in the chaos and grace of sweat, livity and the yearning beat.

pale fire union is Toronto, Canada based singer/songwriter Kelvin Wetherell.

From our primal beginnings to our current world disorder, Kelvin’s songs explore life in all it’s battered glory. The message behind the music is one of self-awareness and our commonality in a global society warped by ignorance, consumerism, hatred and greed. To quote him from an interview in the August 2011 issue of Guitar Justice magazine “The common thread running through the songs is just that, our common thread, as human beings. We are all connected to each other and everything else. The animal kingdom. Things we perceive as inanimate. There is dynamic energy running through everything, and everything is interdependent on everything else. We co-exist.”

Branded K. by his longtime cohorts, Kelvin spent his years in the whelping box listening to the likes of the Who, Pink Floyd, Little Richard, Black Sabbath and the Bee Gees. His early youth found him in breakdance crews, jamming out West Indian bass lines and wearing out his big sister’s only Bob Marley cassette. When heavy metal claimed his soul at the tender age of fifteen he began playing the drums in bands in his hometown of Malton, Ontario.

Stricken with an acute case of LSD(Lead Singer Disease) after touring the country as drummer with Strawberry/A+M recording artists Rev., K. began writing his first tunes on acoustic guitar. As a vocalist he was reintroduced to the music of Sam Cooke, thus beginning a deep and lasting love for Black American Soul. The storytelling and boom-chicka-boom of Johnny Cash also became, and remains, a major influence.

Kelvin released independently, on his Shark Tank Sounds label, the albums Bones in the Blue Mist, Home, for which he did a 16 city European tour, and the Waking Field.

His latest project, pale fire union, was hatched in 2008 with an eponymous release of acoustic roots music. It was during this time that his songwriting came under the sway of such greats as Bob Dylan, Stevie Wonder, Jimmy Page and the late, great Joe Strummer. Liberation Inc., K.’s second full-length recording under the pale fire union name, sees these influences flourishing.

The pfu live show is a stripped down, solo affair, highlighting K.’s unique voice. Like Dylan, Lightfoot and the great folk messengers in history, the words become the focus of the communication. As well as concert venues, Kelvin, a certified Yoga teacher, performs regularly in the Yoga community in various workshops that incorporate music with the teachings of this ancient path to liberation. On a western Canadian promotional tour for Liberation Inc., Kelvin had the opportunity to perform in both the night club and meditation hall settings. The reaction to his music was the same from these disparate audiences: Soulful.

In the winter of 2012, K. traveled south of the border to record some new music. The result is the pfu EP, Fly. Five epic numbers recorded in Nashville, Tennessee with producer John Capek and the Grease Corps, whose collective experience includes working with John Lennon, Keith Richards, Bruce Springsteen, James Brown, Chet Atkins, Smokey Robinson and Rod Stewart, among others.

Kelvin is currently supporting live his recorded works and, always prolific, is in studio fleshing out a new set of songs that see a return to his acoustic roots.

Common Lines / White Light Sound.

One nation under the groove.

This is pale fire union