Jesse LeBourdais

Just stumbled across this beautiful bluesgrass/folk music by Jesse LeBourdais who also fronts a punk band in Vancouver called Cambridge. You can definitely catch glimpes of his punk background in his solo effort, which helps keep the bluegrass sound a little more modern and gives it rockability (yeah sure that's a word now). These two solo songs are catchy and help me meet my banjo quota for the day. Buy it on bandcamp.
- New Music Collaborative

Jesse Lebourdais is the vocalist/guitarist of Vancouver punk band Cambridge, but on this solo outing has unplugged his guitar. After writing five originals Jesse found a database of old public domain songs that were free for the taking and re-working. He did just this with five more, pieced all ten together seamlessly and created quite a diamond in the rough. Albums like this usually have me craving some drums, but you don’t miss them at all on this go around as an array of cool instruments and sounds are featured. Most of the old tunes have a folky bluegrass feel, while his new ones range from punky all the way to the reggae tinged “Four Doors of Freedom” completed with a great piano line. Other memorable tracks are the summer anthem “Hella Tight” and the Johnny Cash-esque “John Hardy”. There is a lot of feeling evoked from these songs and even as mainly a punk fan, everybody needs to turn it down once in a while to chill out, smoke a fatty and reflect upon times of yore and times of fore.
-Denis Maile - Absolute Underground

A handful of folks, obviously here to see the music. Black hoodies with white graphics, denim with band patches. One of the out of town acts I talked to remarked upon the high ratio of good looking girls, wondering if Nanaimo was always like that . . . everyone clearly enjoyed the evening.

Jesse LeBourdais

Disappointingly, I made it down in time to see Jesse play his last two songs. I saw enough to tell you he's a passionate, confident and strongly rhythmic guitar player and singer. Instant parallels to the punk folk ethic of Woody Guthrie and the blue collar ring of Bruce Springsteen. Jesse has spent several years fronting accomplished hardcore band Cambridge out of Vancouver, check them out here

http://cambridge.bandcamp.com/

if you like your punk fast, tight, melodic and politically potent.

In contrast to the hard-edged sound of Cambridge, LeBourdais pursues an acoustic sound steeped in folk process on his solo efforts, but retains a bit of the sometimes heavy-handed political bent. Instrumentation varies from simple guitar and vocals to fuller ensemble including piano, fiddle, and accordion. Strong originals, far from cliché covers.
I really enjoyed (read: played ten times in a row) “Go To Sleep” from his two-song Little Mountain EP,
a strong comment on nationalism, patriotism, and American Manifest Destiny/continentalism:

“I go to sleep to the sounds of the engines firing up
And I wake to the sound of the death of my country
And in some ways I am happy for the loss
Cause I never asked to be born inside of an invisible line on a map.
But I know that I will miss this when it's gone.”

Also check out his new full length album, ”The Worst Kind of Ambition”

Jesse's solo material can be accessed and purchased here

http://jesselebourdais.bandcamp.com/ - Hib City Shit Mix