Holy Oak

Emerging singer-songwriter Neil Holyoak is the founder and songwriter for the US/Canadian 5-peice Holy Oak. Originaly performing under the name hi, lonely oak received an excellent response at the 2007 Pop Montreal festival and Neil's first EP �All These Mountains Look the Same� was short-run released through Broken Electric Records. A new release is planned later this year self titled as Holy Oak.

Neil was introduced to music with The Smiths' Hatful of Hollow CD at a young age, and began writing songs when he was 16. �An old rock guitar player named Miles taught me to play� I asked him how to play so that it "sounds good, but isn't hard," and he told me that finger-picking was where it was at.�

In his late teens he suffered from depression and was sent to a strict reform school in Montanawhere he wasn't allowed to have a guitar or to listen to music. He started borrowing guitars from other kids and writing and recording songs on an old tape machine. �I would record multiple tracks by bouncing between the tape machine and a little cassette player I had. Also I would smuggle CDs in and record them on my cassette player� secretly listening to music after lights out was one of the greatest joys of my life for the next sixteen months� I wrote a lot of songs in Montana, I guess, because I didn't have anything else to do. Not many of them were any good, but I'd guess I wrote at least two hundred songs in my time there. At the time I thought those songs were just practice songs, but later I found out that all songs are essentially just practice songs�Outside of my bedroom my songs were unwelcome, but by this point I was accustomed to people telling me to shut up and determined to continue playing.�

Neil continued shaping his craft both formally (e.g. Los Angeles Music Academy) and informally before dedicating himself fully to personal investigation of his craft.