THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Talking about traditional country music, Americana and folk makes Bob Sumner a little prickly. His problem isn’t with the music itself, of course — his new sophomore album clearly shows that the Canadian singer-songwriter appreciates the finer points of steel guitar, fiddle, and strong storytelling. Rather, Sumner takes issue with the idea that the only way to honour the genre’s greats is to play the music exactly the way they did.
On Some Place To Rest Easy, countrypolitan strings are deployed with ambient sensibilities, while tasteful synth tracks live alongside dobro and steel guitar. The result is an album that takes as much inspiration from the audio production of Randy Travis as it does the lyrical soul of Big Thief’s Adrienne Lenker — a melding of eras, sounds, concepts, and stylings that’s informed by the past but never bound by it.
As Sumner says, “All of my heroes, all the people that did it so well — whether it be George Jones or Willie, Waylon, whoever — they weren’t these museum pieces. They were always creating something new, something different.”
Raised in White Rock B.C. near Vancouver, Sumner comes by his all-inclusive musical approach honestly. His paternal grandfather was a working jazz guitarist, squeezing in gigs alongside his day job as a janitor. Sumner’s mother grew up in a religious community, learning gospel songs and hymns by ear on piano. But it was Sumner’s brother Brian, with whom he performed as The Sumner Brothers for more than two decades, who may have been his biggest influence.
“My brother was obsessed with pushing boundaries,” Bob says, citing the duo’s eclectic musical catalogue as a master class in experimentation. Along the way, playing with his brother also led Sumner to his own artistic sweet spot.
“I have always been such a lover of ballads and sombre music. I’m just such a sap,” he says with a laugh. Those emotional sensibilities were front and centre on his 2019 solo debut Wasted Love Songs — a conscious choice for Sumner. “I wanted to make a record that you didn’t skip a song on, that could just expand on that sombre mood throughout.” But on Some Place To Rest Easy, he picks up the tempo, balancing a more buoyant, lively feel with the stirring lyrical depth fans have come to expect.
Songs like Don’t We Though explore how the same relationship can be both loving and tumultuous, with smooth instrumentals that underlay a more complicated lyrical landscape. Forty Years On The Floor and Lonesome Sound make ripe soundtracks for country drives. And three songs on the album— Bridges, Motel Room and Is It Really Any Wonder — touch on the loss of multiple loved ones to alcoholism. These losses hold particular weight for Sumner, who left behind his own problematic path with drinking after a serious health diagnosis two years ago. Perhaps that’s why his approach to the topic is so nuanced; neither apologetic nor demonizing, he casts light on the outsized pain and outsized impact those loved ones held while they were here.
In the end, that’s what Sumner’s music has always been about — more than a single sound, influence, instrumental, or clever line. “I always want people to feel something,” Sumner explains. “If I heard that this album helped somebody that was feeling down, even just by feeling some other emotion for a little while, that’s the number one thing for me.”
