CROWN LANDS
Live on Main Stage @ BOND|ST Event Centre
NEW YEARS EVE BASH
+19
44 Bond St E, Oshawa
Crown Lands are born storytellers, with eyes on this world and others. Painters of strange,
absorbing universes. Advocates for the LGBTQ+ and indigenous communities. Counterculturalists for the 21st century, informed by a cocktail of old-world thinking, science-fiction, and musical narrators from Rush to Paul Simon, Led Zeppelin to John Prine. It’s prog rock, but not as you know it – or as you thought it could be.
Though still in their twenties, Crown Lands have profound ties to history. The enigmatic
brainchild of singer/drummer Cody Bowles and guitarist/keyboardist Kevin Comeau, the
band channels ancient spirits into fantastical stories. All of it tempered with current issues,
and all of it as a duo.
“I think the wow factor of Cody and I pulling this shit off, as two people, is something we
have to maintain in the live show,” Comeau reasons. “We can still pull a lot of this shit off
live with no tracks, no trickery and no additional members.”
Since meeting in 2015 at a band audition – where they bonded over a love of prog icons
Rush – the leonine-haired pair have thrived on a diverse mix of ideas and activity. Sprawling
conversations over walks in the woods. Urgent odes to the mistreatment of their country’s
Indigenous peoples (captured in 2020 single “End Of The Road”). Slapstick jokes over
movies and Indian food. Cultural touchstones that include the worlds of J.R.R. Tolkien,
Dune author Frank Herbert, Buddhist meditation master Chögyam Trungpa and the Flash
Gordon and Terminator soundtracks. All the while, heaps of riffs were amassed.
“We don't really do a lot in solitude for this band,” Comeau says. “When I'm alone and
making music, it's synth music, kind of like Vangelis or Tangerine Dream or John Carpenter.
And when Cody's on their own, Cody's playing all these amazing flutes these days, and
that's a whole other world. But when we come together, it's like, what would Pink Floyd do if
they jammed with Rush? It's a different kind of headspace.”
