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Field Guide (
Dylan MacDonald) makes music at his home in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. Usually he writes songs in his kitchen, sometimes in the studio upstairs with the help of a drum machine, and occasionally they are beamed down to a hotel room somewhere in America when there is a day off to be had on the road.
Kris Ulrich is a frequent collaborator, the two have recorded a lot of music together at Kris’s home studio in Saint Boniface, as well as at Ditch Lake, which is just outside of Riding Mountain National Park. Field Guide moved to Toronto for a while in 2019/2020, and there he met
Georgia Harmer and
Julian Psihogios, with whom he and Kris formed the band
Dweller; they put out an EP of music in fall of 2023. In the spring of 2020, Field Guide released his sophomore breakout EP
You Were followed by several collections of music throughout the pandemic. With touring finally being back on the table, he was fortunate to support some heroes and new friends including
Leif Vollebekk,
Bahamas,
SYML,
Penny & Sparrow, and
Wild Rivers on tour in Canada, the US, and Europe. In the spring of 2023, Field Guide embarked on his first North American headline tour, which included 36 shows in Canada and the US.
Over the past year, Field Guide has been busy working on his upcoming album
Rootin’ for Ya. This album feels a little different than past efforts. Several of the songs were recorded entirely by Dylan at home with no collaborators, and though every Field Guide record has been recorded at least partly in solitude, this was new territory. These songs were built from the ground up with drum machines, janky 80s Yamaha synthesizers, and bourbon-steeped vocals; their creation was a practice in trusting your gut, immersing yourself deeply in your own taste, and an understanding that limitations can often result in something special.
After fully recording and mixing an album’s worth of material in this largely solitary way, Field Guide began to feel as though some of the songs were yearning for the fiery energy of fast paced collaboration and live-off-the-floor tracking. This led to revisiting a handful of the songs with friends and frequent collaborators Kris Ulrich and Julian Psihogios. The three tracked 4 songs completely live off the floor in a little cabin in Manitoba. This revisited material gave life to a beautiful juxtaposing album of songs. Some of them masterminded in solitude, and others born of the magic that can only exist when musical minds work together in pursuit of a shared goal.
Field Guide’s young, but deep catalogue of music has been streamed more than 35 million times, featured on dozens of taste-making playlists and has been lauded in the press. Most importantly, Field Guide’s music has found a home resonating deeply in the hearts of fans the world over. Anecdotally, his songs have soundtracked new love, raw heartbreak, euphoric road trips, and contemplative walks through cities and forests, headphones on, lost in thought – accompanying you like a good friend.