St. John’s, Newfoundland-based multiple Music NL award-winning Americana Folk duo Rube & Rake have been keeping relatively busy, or at least relatively productive, in the time of COVID. They’ve traded their long hauls on the road into something a lot closer to home via Home Routes and turned that time into songcraft. They’re releasing the first new material since their 2017 debut album, Back and Forth. On the heels of two previously released singles, “Fleeting Moment” and “What Will” comes “Somewhere,” a song about knowing where to rest your head.
In the case of Rube & Rake, that “somewhere” isn’t exactly static location, with songwriter Joshua Sandu spanning the country between his hometown of Prince George, BC and his adopted home of Newfoundland.
“Alberta in the fall to keep me fed / Winter in the east to wet my lips.”
It’s not an uncommon theme for Atlantic Canadians, musicians or otherwise, especially those seeking work out west. But for Sandu, it’s created something of a role reversal along with an uneasy sense of restlessness, tempered by the burden of responsibility.
“My partner and I bought a house, and the first song written in it was about leaving,” says Sandu. “After moving from one coast to the other, I found myself finally settling down. Still, Canada’s eastern shore hasn’t brought the peace that it was thought to provide. Though I will remain in Newfoundland, my heart will always yearn to be back home.”
The sound is rounded out by Maria Cherwick on fiddle, Josh Ward on bass, and Andrew Sneddon on dobro, providing a warm richness to the relative austerity of Sandu’s lyrics: “Somewhere, somewhere, somewhere there’s a place to lay my head / Oh lover will this burden be unshed / There has to be a place to lay my head.”