Cam Penner doesn’t so much sing songs as summon them up like a medium calling up spirits. His gentle growl can become a Delta howl, as if he is the conduit, a mere medium articulating the blues of a whole continent, emanating from a bottomless well of shared everyman experience. His remarkably sympathetic foil and musical cohort, electric guitar and lap steel sound sculptor Jon Wood, conjures up sound and colour, building spaces where ghosts dwell and shadows beckon. The distinctive flow, the masterful musical bonding and the overall atmosphere they create is both endearing and humbling. They make you want to listen closely to every word and each hand-crafted note. Their unrivaled attention-demanding presence marks this duo apart from other acts. The symphony of sound and lyricism showcase the inevitable evolution of this duo. The live show is as fragile as it is grand. Like watching a tight rope walker or a trapeze artist at work. It’s folk. It’s rock n’ roll. It’s Cam Penner and Jon Wood breathing fire into every note and lyric.
Cam Penner & Jon Wood have been moving audiences for the last eighteen years. They have toured their traveling show extensively through Canada and Europe . Cam's music has been featured on NPR’s, All Music Considered, BBC’s mini-series Stonemouth, has charted on the Folk Billboard Chart’s Top Twenty and made its way onto the college campus and radio charts across Canada.
‘Together they are unstoppable.’ - Americana UK
‘There’s mystery and menace, love and humility, savage blues and tender romances, sounds one can imagine primitive man heard, allied with tribal ritual and chain gang hollers, delta moans and sylvan murmurs. All summoned up by these two Canadians armed with two guitars, a drum kit and tape loops.’ - Blabbern'Smoke
‘There is an understated glory to their music: enthralling, haunting, comforting, arresting and altogether deliciously spellbinding.’ - Celtic Connections Festival Live Review
‘Penner's soulful voice carries the weight of a world at the edge of redemption and revival. With songs about love, exploration, and change, he has found a way to both calm and ignite the spirit simultaneously.’ - Vancouver Weekly
‘...the show went on, fragments of abstract songs flowing into a place where folk meets electronica, or,if you like, a meeting of Woody Guthrie and Brian Eno.....to sum up tonight's performance: magical, charming, ethereal and unique but even those do not do it justice.’ - Fatea Magazine UK
‘If music had a quota system, then the category of singer-songwriter would be closed due to overcrowding. Thankfully there isn't, because Cam Penner and his emotional songs of lives lived and experiences endured and enjoyed deserve to be heard in all their stoical splendour.’ - Irish Times
‘In a world of lonesome, troubled troubadours, Cam Penner should be king.’ - Americana UK
‘...crackles with the intensity of creation as a need, art without artifice, and expression in its most purest, fiercest form.’ - Calgary Herald
‘...had the emotional heft and strength of ancient spirituals, Penner showing why some folk have described his music as shamanistic.’ - Maverick Magazine, Live Review