You're among friends with Janky Bungag. A Filipino-Canadian flatpicker out of Vancouver, Janky Bungag makes alt-country for everyday people. He came up on skateboards and punk rock, works a day job, and turns the real texture of city life: rent and romance, vices and good friends, the heartbreaks and the smoke breaks, into songs anyone can see themselves in, delivered with a picker's hands and a comedian's timing. The sound is bluegrass-fast and outlaw-warm, built on the lineage of Waylon Jennings, Willie Nelson and Merle Haggard and the cosmic country of the Flying Burrito Brothers but charged underneath with the energy of the punk records he grew up on. There are no wagon wheels here. Just honest, funny, lived-in songs about a life that looks a lot like yours. Since picking up a guitar during the pandemic, Janky has signed to Royal Mountain Records, earned early love from Exclaim!, CBC and RANGE, shared stages with Yukon Blonde and the Mary Wallopers, and built a devoted live following from solo sets to full-band shows across Canada. His latest album, Hangin Out & Hangin On (out November 6, 2026), is his most realized work yet: a snapshot of the ups and downs of city living, and a reminder to find the levity in the grind. With every strum a little bluegrass, every note a little country, and every song a good time, Janky Bungag is proof that real music for real people never went anywhere. Pull up a chair. You're among friends.
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Ian James Bain has always been hard to pin down. The son of an air force man, Ian called many places across Canada 'home' for a couple of years before packing up and moving down the road. Maybe that's why he was so drawn to music. Something constant, something to come back to. When he was a teenager living in a small rural Ontario town he found a bunch of like-minded kids putting on DIY shows in church basements and legion halls – the rest just happened naturally. After many years working as a sideman in a range of genres Ian had come to feel most at home with the music that reflected his rural and nomadic upbringing – country. A student of classic country greats like Willie, Waylon, Jones and Merle, Bain's songs allow the essence of country music to filter through a lifetime of musical experience and reference, distilling into a complex creation that is as deeply steeped in tradition and nostalgia as it is unapologetically modern.
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With his thick grey beard and ubiquitous wide-brimmed hat, Harry Lee Follon looks like a man transplanted from a previous century. But that timeless image is the ideal reflection of his music — pure, honest songs that are as emotionally resonant in 2024 as they would have been in 1924. On his EP Uncle’s Lament, Follon bares his soul on five songs, accompanied by pedal steel guitarist Chris Hierlihy and fiddler Ally Corbett, a marked change from his prior work with his band Uncle Harry & the Kickstands. “In 2021, I lost my mom, and there’s no denying she is all over these tunes,” Follon says. “My mother loved music, and she will always be a major influence on me — and my music. These songs are all about love and loss.” While that’s certainly true of the EP’s first single Won’t Say Goodbye, it’s still hard not to be uplifted by Follon’s vocal performances and his natural ease at crafting memorable melodies. The overall feeling while listening to Uncle’s Lament is something close to sitting in a front parlour enjoying good friends playing music together.
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