THE PRESS RELEASE: “Area Resident is the music of Doug Hempstead, a Canadian based in Ottawa. The multi-instrumentalist is a career journalist who works split shifts and makes his music at home in between those. Currently he’s a radio traffic reporter for the CBC.
The music draws heavily from Hempstead’s adventures as a journalist over the past two decades, but many are deeply personal as well. Heavily influenced by Guided By Voices, Rolling Stones and others, the songs vary in style but are mostly adult alternative pop.
Hempstead doesn’t write the songs before they’re recorded, instead preferring to start with a hook of some sort and build it up and along as he goes. All Area Resident music is produced, mixed and involves overdubs from collaborator Jordon Zadorozny of Blinker The Star — a friend since the pair were in elementary school. The new album Jardinova is Hempstead’s fifth in as many years.”
