Reviews for John Wort Hannam

Maintaining his home base in Fort Macleod, over three previous albums John Wort Hannam has established himself as the province’s great folk hope; if anyone within this hard packed environment is destined for greatness, odds have to be in favour of it being the unassuming, former school teacher from the southland.

Troubadour John Wort Hannam is a native of the United Kingdom. His family migrated to Canada in the '70s. He used to teach English on a Blackfoot Indian reservation. This is his fourth CD and second produced by Steve Dawson best known now for producing Things About Comin' My Way - A Tribute to The Music of The Mississippi Sheiks.

Queen's Hotel, John Wort Hannam's fourth CD, is the first I've heard. Prior to this, the whole of my exposure to his music came from a 2006 Smithsonian Folkways collection, Alberta: Wild Roses, Northern Lights, which includes Hannam's "Church of the Long Grass." "Church," which reappears here, struck me as a pretty decent song.

Queen's Hotel is award-winning songwriter Wort Hannam's fourth album, and the second for album producer Steve Dawson's decade old label Black Hen Music. At the 2009 Calgary Folk Music Festival Songwriting Competition the metaphor-rich With the Grain, which opens this eleven song collection, won Wort Hannam the Grand Prize.

In 2002, John Wort Hannam quit his teaching job to pursue a career as a working musician. With Queen’s Hotel, his fourth album, the Canadian singer/song- writer shows he made the right decision with his finely crafted songs.

Just four years after this Canadian folk singer taught himself, as an adult, to play guitar, he quit his day job and started supporting himself with his music. (The story wound up as the basis for the wistful "With the Grain," the opener of this 2009 release.) Two years later, he won a major songwriting prize at the Calgary Folk Music Festival, and has been winning awards regularly since.

John Wort Hannam's classic story-songs have won many awards ... with good reason. He creates unvarnished, straight-from-the-heart material about subjects with deep meaning for him: lost love, small-town Ontario, redemption, fair play and the stumbling search to live a right life.

John Wort Hannam spent years teaching English in one of Canada’s largest native reserves when he discovered the Loudon Wainwright III record that inspired him to learn guitar and take up music as a profession.

Late-blooming Canadian troubadour keeps the dream alive

The fourth full-length release from John Wort Hannam. Hannam used to teach but in the mid-1990s he heard an album by Loudon Wainwright III that changed his life. Shortly afterward he bought a guitar and began making music. Produced by Steve Dixon (an incredible artist whose music we highly recommend), Queen's Hotel is chock full of pensive folky/pop with a smooth organic sound and feel.

9.25-out-of-10
It was October 2007 when I had the pleasure to review John Wort Hannam's disk Two Bit Suit. I liked it a lot, giving it a 9-out-of-10.
Hannam is back with Queen's Hotel, a disk that was released to the public only yesterday (Sept. 15). Guess what, this talented Canadian artist has not lost a step with this disk.

Recorded live off the floor while contributing musicians played in a communal circle, this cozy setup has permeated the sound of Hannam’s fourth release—and you’ll find yourself intuitively singing along to songs you’ve never heard before.

This week in my roots music column, besides advancing some coming shows- not a clunker in the bunch, I’m predicting- I finally get around to reviewing the new one from John Wort Hannam, Queen’s Hotel. The superlatives describing JWH have been exhausted in the Alberta area, and his appeal is spreading.

The acclaimed Canadian troubadour is making a tour swing through Southland venues this week, promoting this astutely crafted collection of musical narratives.

JOHN WORT HANNAM/Queen’s Hotel: Who knows what’s bubbling under the surface? John Wort Hannam quit his job after hearing a Loudon Wainwright album and becoming driven to be a folk singer. Not a bad start. Since then, there’s been no looking back as it seems like every time he opens his mouth he gets nominated for or wins an award.

Obviously, tradition is important to John Wort Hannam. Queen’s Hotel’s artwork is covered in vintage photographs of Fort Macleod, AB, courtesy of Calgary’s Glenbow Archives, and among this whole collection of well-crafted folk, immigrant and union songs there’s nothing that Woody Guthrie would have felt uncomfortable singing.

Will someone please get to our government and shove its goddam head north of the border? The Canadians underwrite so many great artistic ventures that it's small wonder we're getting a number of 'em moseying down here and classing up the charts. More power to 'em, I say.

'Folk' doesn't mean folk anymore.

So what do you do when you become disenchanted with being a public school teacher of language arts? You take up the guitar and become a noted Canadian folk singer/songwriter.

Canada is a nation full of mighty talented singers/songwriters/performers and John Wort Hannam is one of them. Lucky for us, this full-time public school teacher decided to leave teaching behind to pursue his long-time dream of being a working musician. He released his debut CD, Pocket full of Holes, in 2002. Two-Bit Suit is this Alberta native’s third.

You wouldn't know from listening to Two-Bit Suit that John Wort Hannam is a "new" or "emerging" singer/songwriter. He writes songs that speak of the Prairies with the eloquence of a Sinclair Ross or a W.O. Mitchell, a Margaret Laurence or a Sharon Butala. Other songwriters with whom he shares pedigree include Ian Tyson, Tom Russell and Corb Lund.

John Wort Hannam calls his craft “blue collar roots music.” It’s an accurate description. All of his songs involve a working class sensibility that helps the rest of us feel that dirt beneath the fingernails. This third CD from Hannam displays an increased sophistication in his writing as well as with the production by Vancouver’s Steve Dawson.

Education's loss is our gain. Former teacher John Wort Hannam released his third CD in April of this year, and he is a shining example that the musical contributions of our neighbors to the north -- Fred Eaglesmith, James Keelaghan, the Brothers Rogers and others -- are continuing unabated.

This week I'm going to do something a little different, looking at four CDs which are up for awards at the Western Canada Music Awards which will be presented later this month in Moose Jaw.
I'm starting with John Wort Hannam's wonderful recording Two Bit Suit, a CD up for Best Roots Solo Album.

John Wort Hannam looks like Billy Bob Thorton, hails from rural Alberta, and does roots-country like no one’s business. Although he doesn’t approach the genre with as creativity as some of his alt-country contemporaries - boundary-pushers like the United Steel Workers of Montreal - he still manages to create an impressive and engaging kind of music.

Someone recently wrote that John Wort Hannam has assumed his place beside Cockburn, Rogers and Francey as a great Canadian songwriter.

Now if only the general populace would notice.

As John Wort Hannam prepares to play the Pembina River Nights Festival this weekend, he's thankful for being able to take a deep breath between appearances.

It has already been a hectic summer for the Fort Macleod singer-songwriter, who is enjoying a boost in profile thanks to enthusiastic reviews of his third and most recent album, Two Bit Suit.

This Alberta roots performer aptly bills himself as blue collar. His songs speak for the everyman, in simple words and basic structures, packed with emotion and description. He taps into the feelings of today – and the past – without pandering to pop culture or mass-market hype. Instead he listens to the simple truths that affect ordinary people.

Listen to John Wort Hannam sing and you might picture him as weathered and stark; the unforgiving prairie wind having etched his face, life’s sorrows hardening the lines it. The Alberta troubadour – living where the Rocky Mountains ebb into prairie at Fort Macleod – sings parables of distance and longing, love and loss. His tales strum the sinews that connect heart and earth.

John Wort Hannam sings a happy song

‘I find solace in the fact that I’m two blocks away from everything in Fort MacLeod—grocery store, liquor store, postal office. I look west and see the Porcupine Hills.”

Flirting with songwriting
John Wort Hannam takes a novel approach when singing about love

Sailors, farmers, truckers and soldiers have all haunted Fort MacLeod songwriter John Wort Hannam’s songs. However, on his third album, Two-Bit Suit, a new ghost lurks in the lyrics – love. Writing a straight-up love song might be cliché for many, but Hannam says it is novel for him.

The songs on Two-Bit Suit are stitched from the same fabric as the likes of Stan Rogers, James Keelaghan, and Gordon Lightfoot.