The Weather Holds is the latest project and supergroup formed by Montreal-based producer and composer Devon Bate. The debut LP ‘You Couldn’t Ask For a More Beautiful Day’ is a precarious return to his folk roots with the electroacoustic influences of his musical training: a nostalgic remembrance of busking in Winnipeg, the careful curation of CDs on bus rides, and fog-ridden memories that sound like experimental country but smell like forest fire smoke.
Devon’s career is rife with secret contributions to contemporary Canadian music, theatre, and dance, as the producer behind Juno and Polaris prize winning albums, and award-winning dance and theatre productions. The Weather Holds includes the work of Common Holly, Jean-Michel Blais, Jeremy Dutcher, and composer Beatrice Ferreira.
Through the years of lifting up others to success, Devon has built friendships and relationships that have shaped his compositional voice. The Weather Holds is fundamentally about recognizing those connections, bringing disparate worlds of Canadian indie and contemporary classical music together, grounded in prairie soil and nourished with a Montrealaise spirit of experimentation. Collaboration and highlighting the best parts of people is Devon’s producing superpower – it’s what turns songs with the lyrics “I wrote a song” into such monstrously emotional journeys, glimmering with the relationships and singular talents that make the work individual in its expression.
