When Jeremie Albino was a teenager, he started working as a street musician in Toronto.
along the boardwalk or on a street corner downtown, wherever he thought
a few passers-by. "Usually no one listened," he says, "but occasionally one or two
People who told me it sounded good. They had something else to do, but they
but they would stop and listen for a while. That kind of interaction felt very special to me,
and that's when I realized that I really like performing. That's when I realized that I had the interest
the interest of the audience and to give something back to them."
This experience set Albino on his path and showed him how much joy there is in
has to do with a listener, whether it's a whole audience or just one
Person in that crowd. Since then, he has honed a vibrant and idiosyncratic blend of styles and sounds
and sounds that are rooted in tradition but reaching for the future: his songs are classic country music driven by the rhythms of old-school R&B
Old-school R&B, played with the wild abandon of early rock 'n' roll and sung with the deep feeling of Southern soul
deep feeling of southern soul. Thanks to his sweat-inducing, rousing concerts, he has
his audiences from a few passers-by to packed houses in Canada and the USA.
Our Time In The Sun, his soulful fourth solo album, sounds like the
like the culmination of what he started on the street corners of Toronto.
The title track showcases his remarkable range - emotionally, vocally and stylistically.
Anchored by a Stax rhythm section and underscored by dramatic horns, it's a dusty
Country-soul number about good love turning into bad love, but there's no romantic
romantic recriminations that infect so many breakup songs. Rather, Albino conveys both in his performance
Albino a warm generosity towards someone who has tried as hard as he has
as he has tried to make it work. He is the rare singer who is always in the moment and doesn't change
takes nothing about the song, the melody or the lyrics for granted. And he takes the listener
directly into the moment. "I try to put my heart into everything," he says. "There is
There's really no other way for me to do it. If I don't put everything into the song, why
why would I sing it at all?"
As much as he loves performing and winning over his audience, Albino says he has
By his own admission, Albino has never felt the same connection to songwriting, but
Breakthrough on Our Time in the Sun. In collaboration with producer Dan Auerbach
Producer Dan Auerbach, he emerges as an astute, observant songwriter who can express himself quickly and cleverly and
and open to the emotional nuances of the stories he tells in "I Don't Mind Waiting" and the raw
the raw "Struggling With The Bottle". "I used to struggle with writing. Okay, I used to
hate it. Whenever I had to write new songs, I'd sit and slave away for months.
off." However, when he signed to Auerbach's label Easy Eye Sound, they spent
They spent hours and hours bouncing ideas off each other, and their sessions became a masterclass
on how to write a good, solid song.
"It clicked immediately," says Albino, "and we ended up writing 4 or 5 songs a day
Songs a day. Before that, it took me half a year to write 4 or 5 songs."