Artist: Stan Simon & the Hotel Bible
Hometown: Toronto, Ontario
Album: Ruins
Release Date: May 27
In Their Words: "When I was 12, I remember my father was diagnosed with cancer. I was trying to understand the world around me and get a grasp on my place within it. My father gave me my first guitar a few years prior. It was a classical guitar with no name on the headstock and it had a large body that I could really melt into. Our house had a record player in our basement, and I never spent more time exploring music than when he was sick. It gave me a light, a purpose, and a way to express what I was feeling as I attempted putting the puzzle pieces of mortality together. The records felt like personal friends of mine, comforting me in a dark time and teaching me lessons of creativity. Folk, country, western, blues and rock 'n' roll were the sounds of the night and often what put me to sleep.
There was a night in that basement while playing the classical guitar when the headstock suddenly cracked and fell off onto the floor right in front of the record player. It must have been from old age. I've kept it ever since and have now used it for the front and back cover of my new record, Ruins — a title to represent a relic of those long nights reminding me of my roots and where I was when I first started understanding songwriting and the emotions that go into it, a title to speak to my past and the stories that experience leaves with us, a title that echoes the traditional genres I grew up to admire and soak in, a title I can show to my father while we sit in that basement and take a listen." — Stan Simon
