Brookfield North

Last year Fredrick, Caroline, and Sue Passmore spent a lot of time secretly putting together a compilation of songs that I sang on three of our records. On my birthday, November 16 (2025), I could tell by the looks on…

This week’s entry is A Thousand Miles, written for my wife Joy and her mother, whose life was threatened by cancer. She survived. This song is about the bonding between Mother and Child the inexplicable connection that stands the test…

This week’s entry is Clear Lake, one of our oldest band tunes. The song was written after a canoe trip, most of it on Clear Lake in northern Ontario. A simple text that portrays the stillness and the wildness of…

This weeks entry is an instrumental, The River. I wrote this piece sitting on a rock near a beautiful falls on the Magnetawan River. We recorded it in our little studio and gradually added some colour. I can still feel…

This week’s entry, In The Morning is a preview cut from our next album, Acoustic Roots. This song brings to life the journey of Krystyna Skarbek aka Christine Granville a WWII - spy for Britain. A remarkable hero whose time…

This week’s entry is Wee Mary based on an Irish legend turned myth of Wee Mary, a young girl who falls into a medieval dream protected by an Angel as she disappears into fate’s whim. 

Recorded long ago when my…

This week’s entry, Twinkle Twinkle, is from long ago when our kids were very young. We recorded this off the floor, guitar first then one take on the vocals at my good friend Mel Kay’s studio. I arranged it in…

This week’s entry is track five from our Evening From Hillcrest album. This Lonesome Dark deals with a sensitive issue we often skirt around - depression, and where one is so lost they take their own lives. 

This week’s poem…

This week's entry is Song for Fred written by Caroline Marie Brooks for her first solo album, Everything at the Same Time.
Caroline brought her guitar part over and we sat in my living room and wrote what ended up…

No Townie Girl Was I came to life after a trip to Newfoundland. There is nothing better for a writer than to hear the tales of the land and the people. This song is Kay's story who left her small…

I started writing this song in New Orleans. Our band was attending a music conference and we also got a club date, which was very cool. I wrote about two dozen verses, some on the airplane home and these are…

Relationships in fiction can be as powerful and tragic as those in real life — take Tolstoy's Anna Karenina and Count Vronsky, whose sad tale of mistrust and rejection still resonates with readers today. The pair are the inspiration for…

It’s hard to believe this atrocity continues. We released In The Silence just after the beginning of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine - hopefully there’s a chance this unlawful conflict will end soon.
Like so many of us who’ve been watching…

Ordinary Day is about finding your way back from heartache to true love. It celebrates the distance between a couple, where love survives without binding. It defines commitment, attraction and love without failure. 

This week's poem is from my collection…

One July a number of summers ago, our little town was in the midst of a heat wave. You could see the heat haze on the streets, people became short tempered, there was violence in my neighbourhood. One afternoon I…

Each and Everyday is track three from our Medicine Lands album. It was one of my first open tuning songs, giving the piece a wider stereo pallet if you listen carefully. It’s all about the mystery of love - it…

My Little Boat is a true story of how a refugee named Assef left his home due to war and prejudice. Assef’s story traces a journey over land and sea, his rejection of citizenship everywhere he turned, and finally, his…

I Must Go was a standard in the early days of Brookfield (North). It was a fun song about moving from traditional folk and exploring other styes. This recording is from the The Brook’s Sister’s album, The Carport Sessions, I…

Immigrant’s Son is the last cut from our first album Medicine Lands. It deals directly with loss of my dear friend Enzo. I reminisce throughout the song; the here and now, the memories, the power of  his faith, the sparkle…

This song is track seven from our Leave This Blue album, 2025.

My Heart Belongs To You was written for Joy. The verses trace where we are now, our history in the early years, and what lies before us. The…