The Fugitives

The Fugitives are an acoustic folk-roots group headed by songwriters Adrian Glynn and Brendan McLeod. They’re joined by banjo player Chris Suen (Viper Central) and violinist Carly Frey (The Coal Porters). Over their first five albums, they’ve amassed a JUNO nomination, 6 CFMA nominations, and toured extensively through Canada, Europe, and the UK.

Performance highlights include major Canadian folk festivals, a Glastonbury performance, and a tour supporting  Buffy Sainte-Marie. In 2020, the band created RIDGE, a WW1-centered theatre show. Ridge has been performed at theatres across Canada and was named a Globe & Mail Top Arts Pick of the Year.

The band has earned a reputation for unforgettable live shows, brimming with complex harmonies, infectious storytelling, and top-notch musicianship.

NEW ALBUM this OCTOBER:

No Help Coming is about the climate emergency. This might seem like a strange leap after The Fugitives’ last album, which centered on WW1 soldier songs—but the band actually sees a lot of similarities between the projects. On their last album, they were drawn to soldier lyrics because they were as humorous as they were harrowing. “It was the voice of people in the thick of things,” says Brendan McLeod, one-half of the Fugitives’ songwriting duo. “All the reading we did around the climate lacked this kind of playfulness. Part of that is the seriousness of the topic, but another part seemed like a lack of immediacy. That society still doesn’t feel, or talk, or act, like we’re in it.”

No Help Coming constantly reminds us that we’re in it. The normal human stuff takes place—fraught friendships (“Dead Money”), career changes (“Wing and a Prayer”), coping mechanisms (“Not Burning Out”), romance (“It Might Just Rain Like This For Days”)—but all under the spectre of environmental disaster. “There’s still a tendency to create in a vacuum,” says Adrian Glynn, The Fugitives other songwriter. “To write a love song as if our province wasn’t engulfed in smoke. Or, to write just about that smoke, and not about being in love at the same time as you’re breathing it in.”