Artist Spotlight: Kevin Quain

Canada's Weird Talent-To-Streams Ratio

Being a Canadian music fan is sometimes a little weird, because so many of our best artists never make any noise in the USA and so end up weirdly under-represented in this Brave New Digital World of ours, despite being right next door to it all. For example, I used to love a band called Crash Vegas, who got their start at a place called the Cameron House in Toronto. They did this shockingly good version of Neil Young’s “Pocahontas”, and I was a huge fan of their last album. That album? Not even on a streaming service, despite the fact that they toured it relentlessly around Canada. Not even on Youtube. Another great band was The Killjoys, absolute masters of the 90s pop-punk-rock thing, and you can’t find their stuff on any of the platforms. A lot of us used to listen to Kashtin, this incredible First Nations folk-rock group; they don’t even exist on Spotify or Tidal or Apple Music, and they were putting out music in digital form, remember.

But nothing could prepare me for the shock of seeing that masterful balladeer, pianist, jazzman and overall force of nature Kevin Quain—who has been cranking out albums and doing performances for over twenty years—appears to have something like 50,000 total Spotify streams for six albums. That is an extremely small number. He has to have one of the highest talent-to-streams ratio of any living musician. It’s insane.

(Who has the lowest, I wonder? The guys who did “Island Boy?”)

When I was first getting into the celtic-punk scene, Finny from the Mahones told me about Kevin. His band had just covered what is possibly Quain’s masterpiece, “Market Song (The Devil You Know)”, and he also highly recommended “Mr. Valentine’s Dead,” which funnily enough was getting covered around Canada by a few celtic pub-folk bands.

And ever since it’s just been me and the weirdly small number of people I know, geeking out about this guy.

When I was first courting an old girlfriend of mine, we made each other Mix CDs (yes, it was that long ago), and I put Quain’s “Hangover Square” on hers. She told me that it was her favourite track of all the ones I’d put on the disc, and now we are married and have a child. So yeah, hot tip for you zoomer kids, if you’re making a mix CD for someone you like, put Kevin Quain on it. You’ll be changing diapers together in no time.

Now, just to get this out of the way, a lot of you might be thinking that he sounds a lot like Tom Waits. Which is true, he does, in many ways he’s a lot like a Canadian Tom Waits. But first, as someone who has tried and failed to sound like Tom Waits, I can tell you that it is no insult to say that someone has even managed this extremely difficult feat.

Second, unlike countless pretenders over the years, Quain actually has the songs to back it up, he doesn’t just smoke too much and sing “yo ho ho and a bottle of children’s feet.” His older material is sweet, unbelievably catchy, and actually quite distinct once you dive into it. The accordions and pianos and guitars swell and dance and swirl and his distinctive gritty voice just sits in that cocktail and slowly stirs it all.

The newer stuff is better produced but still has that infectious songwriting skill behind it, and he even manages to bring back a kind of 90s alt-rock feel in without sounding dated or forced, like certain 90s bands do when they try to recreate that lost magic (i.e. literally all of them).

Quain is still a fixture at that same Cameron House I mentioned all those words ago, so if you’re in Toronto definitely see if he’s there. And if you’re not, he often does livestreams from what he calls “Stately Quain Manor” that were literally the only ones I watched during the pandemic, not in the least because he is downright hilarious, and has that rare gift of being able to intersperse soulful and meaningful material with goofy, deadpan humor.

Anyway, for the love of god, would you all please give this man a “like” or a “follow” or whatever it takes to get the algorithms to perk up their stupid wiry little heads and pay attention? kthx

Also, on an unrelated note, I’m willing to make anyone a personalized mix CD for the low low price of $78 plus shipping.