Skydiggers are a Canadian
roots rock
Roots rock is a genre of rock music that looks back to rock's origins in folk, blues and country music. It is particularly associated with the creation of hybrid subgenres from the later 1960s, including blues rock, country rock, Southern roc ...
band from
Toronto
Toronto ( ; or ) is the capital city of the Provinces and territories of Canada, Canadian province of Ontario. With a recorded population of 2,794,356 in 2021, it is the List of the largest municipalities in Canada by population, most pop ...
formed by Andy Maize and Josh Finlayson. Since 1990, they have released 19 albums/EPs and have had a number of singles that have appeared on the Canadian charts. Their most successful album is ''Restless'', released in 1992. With a presence spanning decades, the band has appeared under a variety of different record labels and with many changes in members that form the group. The current group of six members released their most recent recording in 2017.
Biography
The band was originally formed by singer Andy Maize, previously of Direktive 17, and lead guitarist Josh Finlayson, formerly of The Ramblers, as a duo called West Montrose. The band later added rhythm guitarist and singer-songwriter
Peter Cash
Peter Cash is a Canadian singer-songwriter.
He was a member of Skydiggers from 1987 to 1996. After leaving that band, he began to write and record music with his brother, singer-songwriter Andrew Cash, which was released as The Cash Brothers
...
, drummer Wayne Stokes and bassist Ron Macey to their lineup after becoming regular performers at Acoustic Meltdown, a weekly concert series at
Toronto
Toronto ( ; or ) is the capital city of the Provinces and territories of Canada, Canadian province of Ontario. With a recorded population of 2,794,356 in 2021, it is the List of the largest municipalities in Canada by population, most pop ...
's
Spadina Hotel organized by Cash's brother, singer-songwriter
Andrew Cash.
[Michael Barclay, Ian A.D. Jack and Jason Schneider, '' Have Not Been the Same: The Can-Rock Renaissance 1985-1995''. ]ECW Press
ECW Press is a Canadian book publisher located in Toronto, Ontario. It was founded by Jack David and Robert Lecker in 1974 as a Canadian literary magazine named ''Essays on Canadian Writing''. They started publishing trade and scholarly books ...
. . The expanded line up settled on the name Skydiggers, a name which Andrew Cash had previously considered for his own band.
In 1989, the band became the first Canadian signing to
Enigma Records
Enigma Records (also known as Enigma Entertainment Corporation) was a popular rock and alternative American record label in the 1980s.
History
Enigma Records launched as a division of Greenworld Distribution, an independent music importer/d ...
, who released their self-titled debut album the following year. It spawned the singles "Monday Morning" and "I Will Give You Everything". However, the label soon went bankrupt, and the album was never properly promoted.
Some of Enigma's Canadian staff created
FRE Records in 1992, and released the band's second (and most popular) album, ''Restless'', that year. At the same time, Stokes left the band. Drummers Mike Sloski and Steve Pitkin filled in on drums until the band recruited Joel Anderson as its new permanent drummer. "A Penny More", the lead single from ''Restless'', became the band's biggest hit, produced by John Oliveira and the band at Hamilton's Grant Avenue Studios.
Capitol Records
Capitol Records, LLC (known legally as Capitol Records, Inc. until 2007) is an American record label distributed by Universal Music Group through its Capitol Music Group imprint. It was founded as the first West Coast-based record label of note ...
, the distributor for both Enigma and FRE, also rereleased the band's debut album that year.
In 1993, the band's third album, ''Just Over This Mountain'', was released. It consolidated the band's status by winning a number of music awards, including the
Juno Award
The Juno Awards, more popularly known as the JUNOS, are awards presented annually to Canadian musical artists and bands to acknowledge their artistic and technical achievements in all aspects of music. New members of the Canadian Music Hall o ...
for Most Promising Group. Following that album, Anderson left the band and was replaced by Peter von Althen.
In 1995, the band signed to
Warner Canada and released ''Road Radio''. However, at this time, FRE went bankrupt, meaning that the band's earlier albums were no longer widely available. After the tour to support that album, Cash left the band. He was replaced by
Paul MacLeod. The band subsequently left Warner, after which von Althen also left the band.
Since the band's sound had largely been defined by Maize and Cash's vocal harmonies, the band revised their sound somewhat for 1997's ''Desmond's Hip City'', released on
DROG Records. The title track had an almost
trip hop
Trip hop (sometimes used synonymously with " downtempo") is a musical genre that originated in the early 1990s in the United Kingdom, especially Bristol. It has been described as a psychedelic fusion of hip hop and electronica with slow temp ...
feel, and some other songs (notably "November in Ontario" and "The Shape of Things to Come") were closer to
hard rock than anything the band had previously recorded.
In 1999, the band performed at the 1999 Stardust Picnic festival at Historic Fort York, Toronto. With ''Restless'', their most popular album, still unavailable in stores due to legal uncertainties around FRE's bankruptcy, they decided that their next studio project would be to assemble a new version of that album using old rehearsal recordings. ''Still Restless: The Lost Tapes'' was released that year.
In 2000, the band released the live album ''There and Back Again'', followed in 2003 by ''Bittersweet Harmony''.
In 2006, they teamed up with
The Cash Brothers (former Skydigger Peter Cash and his brother Andrew) to release, ''
Skydiggers/Cash Brothers'', an acoustic album. In 2008 they released ''City of Sirens'', followed by the compilation''The Truth About Us'' in 2009.
The band returned in 2012 when they released ''Northern Shore'' through MapleMusic Recordings. In 2013, the band released ''No. 1 Northern'', an album of
cover version
In popular music, a cover version, cover song, remake, revival, or simply cover, is a new performance or recording by a musician other than the original performer or composer of the song. Originally, it referred to a version of a song relea ...
s of songs by Canadian songwriters, including
Neil Young
Neil Percival Young (born November 12, 1945) is a Canadian-American singer and songwriter. After embarking on a music career in Winnipeg in the 1960s, Young moved to Los Angeles, joining Buffalo Springfield with Stephen Stills, Richie Fu ...
,
Gordon Lightfoot
Gordon Meredith Lightfoot Jr. (born November 17, 1938) is a Canadian singer-songwriter and guitarist who achieved international success in folk, folk-rock, and country music. He is credited with helping to define the folk-pop sound of the 19 ...
,
Ron Sexsmith
Ronald Eldon Sexsmith (born January 8, 1964) is a Canadian singer-songwriter from St. Catharines, Ontario. He was the songwriter of the year at the 2005 Juno Awards. He began releasing recordings of his own material in 1985 at age 21, and has s ...
,
Gene MacLellan
Gene MacLellan (February 2, 1938 – January 19, 1995) was a Canadian singer-songwriter from Prince Edward Island. Among his compositions were "Snowbird", made famous by Anne Murray, " Put Your Hand in the Hand", " The Call", "Pages of Time ...
,
Linda McRae,
Charlie Angus
Charles Joseph Angus (born November 14, 1962) is a Canadian author, journalist, broadcaster, musician and politician. A member of the New Democratic Party (NDP), Angus has been the federal Member of Parliament for the riding of Timmins—Jam ...
and Andrew Cash. They also released the album ''She Comes Into The Room''.
In 2013, the band released the five-track EP ''Angels'' for the holiday season. A year later, this was expanded to 11 songs and released as a full album. The band are currently signed to Latent Recordings.
On January 1, 2017, Skydiggers were part of CBC's The Strombo Show's Hip 30, where Canadian bands covered songs from
The Tragically Hip
The Tragically Hip, often referred to simply as the Hip, were a Canadian rock band formed in Kingston, Ontario in 1984, consisting of vocalist Gord Downie, guitarist Paul Langlois, guitarist Rob Baker (known as Bobby Baker until 1994), bassi ...
to commemorate the Hip's 30th anniversary. The band covered the song "The Depression Suite: The Rock". 2017 also saw the release of the Skydiggers latest LP "Warmth of the Sun".
The band is a member of the Canadian charity Artists Against Racism.
Finlayson/Maize
Josh Finlayson and Andy Maize of the Skydiggers have collaborated on a side project of their own named Finlayson/Maize. The duo released their album ''Dark Hollow'' under the project name.
Discography
Albums
Singles
Non-album tracks
* "One Day I Walk" (''
Kick at the Darkness
''Kick at the Darkness'' is a tribute album to Canadian singer-songwriter Bruce Cockburn, released in 1991. The title comes from a line in the song "Lovers in a Dangerous Time": "gotta kick at the darkness 'til it bleeds daylight". The album w ...
'', 1991)
* "Mr. Soul" (''
Borrowed Tunes: A Tribute to Neil Young'', 1994)
* "St. Dunstan's One Request" (''Pine Ridge: An Open Letter To Allan Rock/Songs For Leonard Peltier'', 1996)
* "All of Our Dreaming" ("Shape of Things to Come" CD single, 1997)
* "Mini-Bar Superstar" ("Shape of Things to Come" CD single, 1997)
* "When You're Down" (''Have Not Been the Same: The CanRock Renaissance 1985-1995'', 2012)
References
External links
*
CanConRox bio*
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Skydiggers
Musical groups established in 1987
Musical groups from Toronto
Canadian folk rock groups
Juno Award for Breakthrough Group of the Year winners
MapleMusic Recordings artists
1987 establishments in Ontario