This coming Saturday, December 13th, Toronto indie folk group Great Lake Swimmers will close out 2025 when they return to Center City’s premiere rock n’ roll barroom, MilkBoy, a venue frontman and founder Tony Dekker — during a recent chat — tells me he’s a big fan of, despite admitting that Great Lake Swimmers, “are more of a listening band than a party band.” (The show has had a low ticket warning since early October, so get your tickets below ASAP, if you don’t want to miss out.) He also talked with me about the group’s ninth studio album — Caught Light, which dropped in October — and some of the early days of the band, whose sophomore LP, Bodies and Minds, turned 20 this March.
Izzy Cihak: You recently released Caught Light, your ninth studio album. How do you feel like the LP compares to previous releases? Or, for that matter, how do you feel like your approach to writing and recording music has most evolved over the past 20+ years of doing this? I realize that’s kind of two questions…
Tony Dekker: Well, for starters, this was the fastest I’ve ever worked on an album. We recorded the whole thing in three days, with a couple more days of overdubs, so about five days total. I think a big part of doing that was more fully handing over the reins of the project and placing trust in my friend and co-producer, Darcy Yates, who helped to make some quick decisions and assembled an incredibly talented band for the sessions. Working with Jim Bowskill as engineer and multi-instrumentalist was also new and a whirlwind experience. He is a brilliant player and worked with a stunning instinct and efficiency. He left his mark on this record in such a great way through his playing and singing.
The songs were also written in a much shorter timeframe than I would normally devote to an album, which gives it a unifying feel, I think. It is truly a document of a time and place. I think having a couple decades of doing this as a career behind me has brought me to a point where I’m ready to explore a new, more direct approach, celebrating the performances, even if, for example, I felt that a vocal take wasn’t perfect, keeping it in instead of doing a million takes or tinkering with other minor details. I’m really, fully embracing the sound of a group of musicians playing in a room together.
I also have to mention a few other main collaborators on this thing, Steve Marriner, who mixed the record and put his stamp on it in such a wonderful way, and my good friends Joe Lapinski and Bart de Kroon, who helped me work through early demo versions of some of the songs. I guess what I’m saying is that I relied a lot more on a whole team of people this time around, which being a bit of a solitary dude, is really a new thing for me.
One last thing I want to mention about that, is that, aside from a retrospective record we made last year, this record is the polar opposite of the one I made during the pandemic years, which given the long days and nights of that time period, took three years to finish. So, also because of that, I was totally ready to try something different.
Izzy: I dig the whole album, but I especially love “Endless Detours,” which I know you’ve been playing every night. How did that particular track come about?
Tony: Thanks. It started out like a lot of other ones, with a riff that just felt really good to play on guitar, in an alternate tuning and a capo up, but I found I was messing around with the time signature a bit. Sometimes that can lead to a more efficiency and economy of words within a song and I found that was the case with the structure of this one. I think the lyrics are pretty self-explanatory, but I will say that sometimes when we deviate from the path we think we’re on, we can discover beautiful things. I have some artist friends that I hang with sometimes, and we were talking about the creative process as a series of endless detours, which I think is a nice way to put it. This song was one of the ones that I really got ‘the feeling’ about when it started coming together, and it’s a really fun one to play live.
Izzy: I love that you’ve compared “For You To Come Around” to Waiting For Godot, so I’m curious if you’ve had any particularly noteworthy non-musical influences recently? Also, I’m not sure how much of a Beckett fan you are in general, but Krapp’s Last Tape is one of my favorite plays ever and just totally amazing.
Tony: In retrospect I like the way this one has stacks of verses with just the one bridge in the middle – it feels like it goes on in a loop without any real resolution, which really reflects that sense of waiting around for something that’s probably never going to arrive. Big Samuel Beckett fan here. I’ve recently discovered the Consolations books by David Whyte, which I came to via listening to the Rick Rubin podcast, and they have absolutely rocked my world. It’s like new doors and windows into language and words have opened up through the writing, and I felt an instant connection to them. I’ve never read anything quite like it.
Izzy: You’ve been touring Caught Light for more than a month now. How have the shows been going so far? What have been some of the standout moments?
Tony: We’ve been touring the album as a three-piece, and with a smaller live band, we’ve been able to let the songs breathe a lot more, and the focus by default tends to land on the lyrics rather than on big arrangements and instrumentation. The standout moments for me have genuinely been the very quiet and sparse ones. We’ve talked about it as a band after the shows, and there have been some real goose-bump moments during the sets. A performance doesn’t have to be loud and over-the-top to be powerful and intense, and that’s the thing I’m liking most about the shows right now.
Izzy: How have you seen your fans evolve over the course of your career? I’m guessing that, at this point, you have some longtime fans that are bringing their kids out to shows.
Tony: It’s one of the greatest compliments that songs become part of the fabric of peoples’ lives. We are definitely seeing some younger folks coming out to shows who heard the music with their parents when they were kids. So, in a lot of ways, our audience is growing up with us. We’re also a band that has flown under the radar for most of our career, so there are always people who are just finding out about us, and then have 9-plus records to explore. We have hardcore fans that have definitely stuck with us over the years.
Izzy: You’re actually wrapping the tour right here at MilkBoy, which I know you’ve played before. What can be expected of the live show this time around? I think it’s actually one of the smaller rooms on the tour.
Tony: Well, we did an advance listening party online before the record came out, and I chatted with fans and we listened to it together for the first time. One of the comments was something like, “this is music you can close your eyes to.” I love that description and I think it applies to our live set right now. We have our moments, but we are more of a listening band than a party band, if that makes sense. I think people who know us will know what to expect. Also, we love MilkBoy and are really looking forward to being back in Philly again.
Izzy: At the time, you’ll be on the road with Abe Partridge, who also seems super cool. What are your thoughts on him and his music?
Tony: Abe is so awesome. We did a handful shows with him last year and got to know him a little bit. He is leaving a trail of amazing music, drawings, paintings, and general musings on life in his wake. He is the real deal, a great human being and we are proud and excited to have him on the road with us again.
Izzy: I just realized that your sophomore LP, Bodies and Minds, turned 20 this year, which is crazy, so I’m curious to hear your thoughts on that album now, or if you have any particularly vivid memories of writing, recording, or touring that album?
Tony: I could write a chapter of a book on the circumstances surrounding the making and touring of that record. It was a special, fragile, vulnerable, and particularly fertile creative time. It’s hard to believe it’s already 20 years old. I was in my 20’s and living in a basement one-room apartment in Toronto without a TV, computer, internet, or anything. I had a stack of vinyl records, which you could still get for dirt cheap back then, a janky stereo system and turntable, a chair and a table and a beat-up old guitar and not a nickel to my name.
We made that record in a church, which has since been torn down, in my old hometown in the Niagara region of Ontario with the brilliant Andy Magoffin, who is still a good friend to this day. I was just talking to someone the other day about how we captured the acoustics of the church and hall that we set up as a studio. I had invited a friend with a film camera to come out to one of the sessions, and they ended up shooting while we were tracking the last song on the album. You can literally hear the camera shutter clicking throughout the track, which gives you a sense of the liveness of the room. I haven’t listened to it in a long time, but I distinctly remember that. Like, absorbing the sound of the space and everything that was happening around us.
Izzy: Seeing as 2025 is coming to an end, I’m curious if you’ve had any favorite music of the year, in addition to Caught Light? Have there been any releases that have been in heavy rotation or any live sets that you’ve seen that were especially impressive?
Tony: I’ve been borderline obsessed with the new album by The Deep Dark Woods. I’ve been a fan for many years and the new one has been glued to my turntable. We also just got off the road on a tour with Justin Wells, and his live sets are highly compelling. We all really loved seeing him play every night.
Izzy: Aside from Folk Alliance International, you have a few months between your dates this year and your spring dates in Canada. How are you hoping and planning to spend that time, whether relating to music or just rest and relaxation? Anything big planned for the holidays?
Tony: I’ll be spending time with my young family and catching up on life, but I also plan to focus a bit more closely on writing when all the commotion settles down a bit. We also just announced a Europe/UK tour this spring, so there’ll be some prepping involved for that too. I’ve moved back to a small town in the country in recent years, so I’m also looking forward to reconnecting with nature in a meaningful way, which has been a source of refuge and inspiration to me, and keeps my battery charged in the right way.
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