Spirit of the West
Origin: North Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
Genres Folk rock, Celtic rock
Spirit of the West were a Canadian folk rock band from North Vancouver, active from 1983 to 2016. They were popular on the Canadian folk music scene in the 1980s before evolving a blend of hard rock, Britpop, and Celtic folk influences which made them one of Canada’s most successful alternative rock acts in the 1990s
Geoffrey Kelly and J. Knutson had begun playing music together as a duo when Kelly’s then-girlfriend Alison, at the time a theatre student, told them she had a classmate with a really great singing voice,
That classmate, John Mann, joined Kelly and Knutson as a folk trio called and scored early gigs as an opening act for rockers such as Art Bergmann and Barney Bentall.Eavesdropper,Early on their set predominantly comprised covers of artists such as Bruce Cockburn, Eric Bogle, Richard Thompson and Billy Bragg with original compositions gradually introduced into their set.
The band garnered a Juno Award nomination for Most Promising Group at the Juno Awards of 1991. They are a member of the Canadian charity Artists Against Racism.
The band performed a reunion set at Spirit of Canada, a benefit concert for Alzheimer’s awareness at the Commodore Ballroom on November 19, 2017. The concert’s lineup included Odds, Barney Bentall, Dustin Bentall, Jim Byrnes, Kendel Carson, Jim Cuddy, Alan Doyle, Colin James, Sarah McLachlan, Ed Robertson, Shari Ulrich and Spirit: The Next Generation, an act consisting of the band members’ children.
Before the show, the performing musicians participated in a group recording of the band’s signature song “Home for a Rest” as a tribute to Mann.
Mann died on November 20, 2019.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia