Don Rooke

Don Rooke is a Toronto-based guitarist and leader of the nearly instrumental band The Henrys. He performs and records with a wide variety of musicians, and on soundtracks and TV shows. Guitar Player Magazine called him "one of acoustic guitar's greatest unsung heroes."

Atlas Travel is Rooke's first solo recording (although he writes almost all the music for The Henrys.) His main instrument now is the Kona, a 1920s acoustic Hawaiian guitar made of koa wood. This guitar is played slide style, and held flat in the lap. The music on Atlas Travel is very spare and distilled - the spaces between the notes seem almost as important as the notes themselves. The players he has chosen to complete the songs are all as masterful as their instruments are rarely heard.

Swedish nyckelharpa player Johan Hedin contributes to three songs. The nyckelharpa is a keyed Swedish violin first made in the 14th Century. Other violinists on the record are Hugh Marsh and Jesse Zubot. Ron Allen plays duduk, and bawu and bansuri flutes; there is pump organ (John Sheard), Sustainiac guitar (Rob Piltch), ukulele (Steve Dawson), Hawaiian art violin, and more.

From the song titles and instrumentation, Atlas Travel might appear to be a world music record, but in fact it is almost the opposite - it's a view of the world from the composer's basement. This is Rooke's idea, after looking at places on a map, of what these corners of the world where he has never been might sound like.

Don Rooke has taken his band The Henrys to festivals in New Zealand, the North Sea Jazz Festival in The Hague, to the Bottom Line in New York, to SXSW in Austin, and around Canada. With Mary Margaret O'Hara he appeared on the now legendary TV show "Night Music"; live on BBC several times, Roskilde in Denmark, and concert halls in the British Isles, New York and Toronto. He played on her classic recording Miss America. He has also recorded with Holy Modal Rounders, Gwen Swick, Gordie Sampson, Kim Stockwood, Vance Gilbert, Jamie Warren, Chad Kroeker, Sylvia Tyson and many others.