Mike Edel (Alberta/British Columbia)

From a farming background, Mike Edel moved out west from Calgary to Victoria to pursue

education and his musical career. With an acoustic guitar, a talented backing band, the occasional violin and some friends chiming in for harmonies, he keeps it to simple lowkey folk music when he wants, and builds up an atmosphere when he so chooses. You can hear practically audible handwritten lyrics in his latest release, India, Seattle.

His music is more than a collection of tunes he wrote, it’s a diary of life in a farm in rural Alberta. His music is his experience, family, and community but it’s also the experiences of so many men in small towns from the Rockies to the Appalachians. “There’s a humanity in these discoveries, and listening to India, Seattle feels like watching Edel discover it for himself, and the product is a little bit of each of us,” describes music journalist Tyson Motsenbocker on his CBC Music page.

Sure, some of its abstract singer-songwriter thoughts and questions: should I stay or leave? How do I relate to those I love and who love me? Why is it so hard to grow and mature? But so much isn’t big ideas. So much is just daily life hard work, a big day on a baseball diamond, town news. While Edel’s life has moved and changed with the times some things, like country towns, never do.