While the temperatures may be creeping lower by the day, Thursday night should bring a warm nostalgic breeze into town, as Kingston’s Glorious Sons bring their Glory tour to TD Place. Much like their festival highlight set at last year’s CityFolk, they’ll again have The Blue Stones sharing the stage, bringing back memories of that idyllic late summer night of great music and great company out on the Great Lawn.
The boys are a far cry from their early Mavericks days of a decade ago, and their latest album Glory perfectly captures a band that survived a pandemic and came out of it with a reenergized sense of purpose and focus. The isolation songs that kept singer Brett Emmons (and frankly, many of us) sane through those dark days gave way to a burst of emotion on the new album, backed by the band at arguably its finest and tightest, while conveying the energy generated from finally being able to record together once again.
We caught up with guitarist Jay Emmons on the road as the band makes their way through the final few shows of the 2023 tour.
Apt613: Having seen you at CityFolk in 2022, you guys have been quite busy since you’ve been able to get back on the road, with over 50 shows last year and already over 40 this year.
Jay Emmons: Yeah, we’ve had a busy year between recording the record and that tour, and then all the summer festivals. It’s been a crazy couple years actually. It’s all kind of a blur, to be honest. But we’re definitely due for a little break here now, which is going to be nice.
I’m sure at the beginning, it must have been great to be back on the road after being cooped up for so long. But now that it’s been a couple of years, has the second wind worn off yet?
There’s always this thing with touring where you’re just constantly tired all the time. There’s kind of no way around it when you’re traveling as quickly and as much as we are.
“We’ve actually been back in the studio, working on some other new stuff … so there’s probably 40 some odd songs, maybe more.”—Jay Emmons, Glorious Sons
You get maybe one sleep in a normal bed per week and the rest of the time you’re just trying to figure out how to survive on the bus. So it’s all just figuring out how you’ve got one more night in you and you always figure that out somehow. Come showtime, you’re always feeling alright.
You have The Blue Stones with you on the road for this tour. They also played CityFolk with you. Had you guys played together before or was that the first time you shared a stage?
The Blue Stones and us actually go way back. We played in HITZ FM Rock Search together back in 2013 or 2014. So yeah, we’ve been playing with them for a very long time. We’ve known the guys for a while now, and it’s great to have them out on the road with us on this tour. They’re a great band.
In terms of the new album, it’s a tight 10 songs, and clearly there’s no filler. I’m wondering how much more material you guys actually have ready to go that you just decided, “we’re sticking with these 10”, and how tough was that?
We do have a ton of material backlogged and even since then, we’ve actually been back in the studio, working on some other new stuff. So yeah, over the pandemic and the year after that, we were really kind of hustling in the studio, so there’s probably 40 some odd songs, maybe more. And then Brett’s got however many in his head that still have yet to be recorded.
But for Glory, I think that was just like a weight Brett needed to get off his chest. Once those songs started coming, he knew that they were the right ones for this record and we just followed that path. And we brought in our long-time producer and good pal Fred (Frederik Thaae) to come in, and he kickstarted that inspiration with Brett and gave him that spark that he needed.
After all the trials and tribulations that had gone into trying to arrive at this album, we ended up recording it in about three weeks once we finally got in a groove and went with it.
You guys have a tendency of just dropping singles here and there that you can tell sonically don’t fit whatever album you’ve been working on, but it was still a good song and you just had to get it out there.
We’re going through that right now, trying to figure out what the next move is, and it’ll probably be one of those singles like you just described. There are a couple tunes that we’re really excited about, and we’ve had mixed and mastered for a couple years. We’ve just had to sit on because that wasn’t the right time or wasn’t what Brett was feeling was right for the record. It’s a good problem to have though.
The Glorious Sons bring their Glory tour to TD Place on Thursday, December 14. Doors open at 7pm, show time at 8pm with The Blue Stones. Tickets available here.
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