Stan Carew and the Magpies live in Halifax, Nova Scotia on Canada’s east coast. They joke that, collectively, they’ve been playing music for two hundred years. The band leader, Stan Carew, is a popular host on CBC radio. He started writing songs in his twenties, although he didn’t make his first recording until 2008. It was a collaboration with Breeze & Wilson from the U.K., whose fine CD’s Oh Nova Scotia and Retrospective are also available from Zoeydog.

The Magpies released their first album Circle The Wagons later in 2008, a set of ten songs

that traversed a musical landscape of R & B, Blues, Rock and Roll, and Country. There’s even a hint of cajun spice and a western swing duet, featuring the talented Vancouver singer Jill Barber, who was making a name for herself in Halifax at the time. The ballads “Elvis and Marilyn” and “I Still Think of You” round out the album.

The Magpies new recording is The Head of Security, released in November 2011.

"Graham Breeze and Toby Wilson are an acoustic duo that favours the roots end of American Country music alongside their own compositions. They play guitars, dobro and sing in harmony with a sublime sense of taste and discrimination. These guys are real players. They have touch. They have judgement. They have talent. With a wonderful sense of timing, their voices beautifully blended. If there is a better duo doing this sort of roots country music then I haven’t heard it. Exquisite music, Exquisitely played."

Neil Dalton The Real Music Club & Maverick

Magazine

     Perhaps it was inevitable when Stan Carew played a Breeze and Wilson song on his popular Canadian public radio program that a friendship would develop. Breeze and Wilson told Stan that if any of his listeners wanted a free cd, they’d be happy to send one. They sent more than 300 to Canada, which led to a weekend showcase of concerts in Halifax, Nova Scotia in July of 2007. Stan and his band the Magpies opened the shows, which sold out. 

     Discovering they had similar tastes in music, Stan, Toby and Graham began working on an album transatlantically which came out in 2008. They did an eight day tour to promote it, with an appearance at the Stan Rogers Folk Festival in Canso, Nova Scotia. They subsequently made their second album Christmas the same way. The first pressing sold out, but it is now available again here at Zoeydog.

“a seasonal treasure...there isn’t a track on this CD that won’t make the Christmas season a little bit brighter. Carew recounts a personal Santa Claus story that will have the most skeptical humbugger putting up a Christmas stocking and listening for reindeer on the roof”.

Doug Gallant, The Guardian

Stan Carew & the Magpies

               Breeze & Wilson

                Carew, Breeze & Wilson

        Breeze and Wilson  have been playing together for more than a decade and have developed a loyal following in the Midlands of England as well as the Maritime provinces on the east coast of Canada, where they have toured five times. Their first album on Zoeydog was Oh Nova Scotia - “I got friends in Nova Scotia, only ever heard one song”, written to thank the people in New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island, Nova Scotia and Cape Breton Island who had become fans of their music.

         In 2010 Graham and Toby released Retrospective, a re-mixed, re-mastered and in some cases re-recorded version of two e.p.‘s produced at Shine recording, their studio in the UK, which were their calling cards to Canada. They are currently at work on a new recording, coming out 2012. Click on the player to the right to hear a version of “Foolish Heart”.