Friday, March 16   1:00 a.m.
Light Bar   (408 Congress Ave)

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The rider lifts a finger in the horizontal rain. The sky, with sunken cheeks, casts a watchful eye towards the snowy peaks. Hapless ghosts scribble out their memoirs wearing dusty petticoats. Requiems are stolen. Highways speak their minds.

Justin Rutledge, tagged �a master of gothic understatement� by UNCUT, returns with his highly anticipated sophomore album, entitled The Devil On A Bench In Stanley Park. On the heels of his critically acclaimed debut, No Never Alone, hailed by the UK�s NME as �an incredible breakthrough,� Justin Rutledge delivers another lushly orchestrated, vividly poetic Canadian Americana masterpiece. The Devil On A Bench In Stanley Park was recorded almost entirely �off the floor� in ten snowy days at the Woodshed studios in Toronto. Mixed by Darryl Neudorf (Neko Case, New Pornographers), and mastered by Peter Moore(Cowboy Junkies, Lucinda Williams), Rutledge�s second studio effort sees him alongside some of the finest musicians in Toronto, including Bazil Donovan, David Baxter, and Burke Carroll. It also features guest appearances from Jim Cuddy, Greg Keelor (Blue Rodeo), Tim Vesely (Rheostatics), Oh Susanna, and Melissa McClelland. There is a decidedly new colour to Rutledge�s songwriting on Stanley Park. While he adheres to the heartworn highways paved on No Never Alone, the listener is welcome to find themselves in unfamiliar territory. In 'The Suffering of Pepe O�Malley (pt. IV)' Rutledge imagines a world in which the demise of art and poetry is imminent. In 'This Is War', a young man must decide if he should follow in his father�s military footsteps, after which Rutledge saunters into a jovial ode to the Grim Reaper in 'I�m Gonna Die (One Sunny Day)'. Dark? Arguably. However it is just this sort of writing that has allowed Rutledge to share the stage with such acts as Dolly Parton, Martha Wainwright, Patty Griffin, and Blue Rodeo, to name a few. On The Devil On A Bench In Stanley Park, Justin Rutledge has written ten new songs that pilot the listener through the areas of the heart and mind where shadows tend to reside, where memories are neon, and where quiet men take quiet stands.