The Stanfields

"Smart rock... complete with driving guitars and inspired performances."
-Chuck Teed - Chuck Teed

"Like Stan Rogers with a patch cord shoved up his ass!"
-Jon Bruhm - Jon Bruhm

"One of the most exciting up-and-coming live acts in Halifax,"
- Johnston Farrow - Johnston Farrow

"I don't like your music, but your mother does, so I guess that is good enough for me."
-Kevin Landry - Kevin Landry

"Jon Landry of Folds of Policy beat out 350 entries from Nova Scotia and PEI at our regional competition, with “Victims (Of This)” from Folds of Policy’s recent album Stay in Your Homes." - Joan of Arts

"We thought we couldn’t get much better when Folds of Policy played their first song and blew us all away. This five piece band, who is also Halifax based, mixes traditional Nova Scotian folk sounds with modern rock for an alternative rock sound that is extremely fresh and appealing. They rocked a fantastically diverse set and made some new fans on the spot." - BYDA

THE IRREPRESSIBLE PUNSTER in me would like to say that Halifax independent outfit Folds of Policy built its latest CD Paradigm City on rock and roll, but that would be wrong.

For one thing it’s a terrible joke, and I fear I’ve condemned myself to living with a Starship earworm for the rest of the day, and for another, it doesn’t really sum up Folds of Policy’s complex blend of rock, pop and folk or singer/guitarist Jon Landry’s layering of life and literary references.

After working on Paradigm City for a couple of years, recording at Idea of East and Common Ground studios as well as on their own, Landry and bandmates bassist Craig Eugene Harris, drummer Mark Murphy and guitarist Charlie Coolen reveal the fruits of their labours at Saturday’s CD release show at the Seahorse Tavern, with Great Plains and Silvergun.

One reason for the length of time to make the record, besides its ambitious sonic design, is the fact that the members can’t resist a variety of side projects including folk and country acts, and an ever growing stockpile of songs that resulted in the release of the acoustic disc Divided Highway in September. And now they’re about to start work on a new record at Sonic Temple in two weeks.

"It’s all pent up, we’ve been held back," grins Landry. "We’ve been changing members for the last couple of years. At some point we were a seven-piece band, more or less. So at some point we had to boil things down; it’s hard to keep that going for too long.

"I think the music breathes a little bit better as a four-piece. We’re all a bit more like-minded now, and the band is pretty self-contained."

Self-contained, but also bursting at the seams. Paradigm City veers from raging rockers to piano-driven anthems and straight ahead acoustic ballads. Harris’s favourite description of their sound came from Halifax music writer Jon Bruhm, who said Folds of Policy sounds "like Stan Rogers with a patch cord stuck up his butt," which isn’t too far off the map considering Landry’s fondness for turbulent emotions and rich imagery.

A native of Stellarton, Landry says his songwriting has increased exponentially over the course of Folds of Policy’s five-year existence. In fact, they’ve accumulated so much that he considers the songs on the new CD "old" already, and reckons the upcoming Sonic sessions could result in enough material for a pair of discs.

The process should be different from Paradigm City, where he wrote many of the lyrics during the process of recording.

"There were a lot of changes happening at the time, but we came out of the experience a lot stronger," says Landry. "We covered a lot of territory over the course of making the record. When we went into it, we almost weren’t ready; we even wrote one of the songs three days before we started rolling tape."

The band even pokes fun at its own bookworm leanings on Paradigm City’s final track A Lesson in Humility, which opens with the lines, "I’ve got a record, but no one seems to listen/It goes on and on, and never goes away."

"Everything is pretty well escapist," he explains. "A lot of the songs are based around a series of books by Canadian author Jack Whyte about Arthurian legend. Songs like Trouble on the Wall, I’ve Been Called Away, The Bear and Surgeon’s Song all came out of that. 1,000 Ships comes from the Trojan War, and Rodina is set during the Russian Revolution.

"In the end, that last song is kind of summing up what it’s been like for us up to this point. ‘OK, we’ve got all these flakey tunes, singing about all these silly things. But this is the reality of it: let’s rock.’ "
- Stephen Cooke - The Chronicle Herald

Folds of Policy launch their Paradigm City disc Saturday night at the Seahorse. It's the second disc for Jon Landry and pals, and a great, eclectic listen.


- Tom Bedell - Q104

...to get a CD that is not only original....but good. The Folds of Policy CD Divided Highways, was one of my favorite CD's of the year. The live feel is fantastic and the songwriting is great. I can't wait
to see the band live." - Jimmie Inch, Executive Producer/Host, East Coast Countdown - East Coast Countdown

A raucus kitchen party with songs that give a raw look through the eyes and the heart of a road worker. Enough to give reason to pause and think the next time you're cruisin' one of those
twinned highways.

Carlton Munroe
East Coast Road Trip
CKEC New Glasgow - East Coast Road Trip