Kalle Mattson (born Kalle Mattson Wainio, September 21, 1990, in Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario) is a Canadian singer-songwriter based in Ottawa, Ontario.[1] He has performed both as a solo artist and as the leader of an eponymous band.
History
Wainio was a high school student at Sir James Dunn Collegiate and Vocational School in Sault Ste. Marie, when he began writing songs under the pseudonym Kalle Mattson to deal with his grief after his mother, Anne Gilmour, who died of cancer when he was 16.[2] In 2008 he released a 6-song EP Telescope, limited to 150 copies, he self-recorded the EP with childhood friend Rory Lewis.[3]
He released his first full-length album Whisper Bee in 2009.[4] It featured Lewis, local musician Frank Deresti and was recorded at the Sir James Dunn Collegiate and Vocational School music studio and was produced by teacher Mark Gough.[5]
By 2011 Kalle Mattson had grown into a full-band featuring Lewis, and fellow Sault-ites Thean Slabbert and Jimmie Chiverelli.[2] The band released the album Anchors in 2011.[6] The video for the song "Thick As Thieves", a "stop motion history of the world" created by animator Kevin Parry, attracted the band's first widespread media attention;[2] as a result, the band signed to the independent record label Parliament of Trees, which reissued Anchors in late 2011.[7]
In 2012, they released the EP Lives in Between.[8] The EP was supported by the single "Water Falls", whose video was again animated by Parry as a portrait of San Francisco.[9]
In 2014 Mattson released the full-length album Someday, the Moon Will Be Gold.[10] The album was produced by Gavin Gardiner from The Wooden Sky and featured Jeremy Fisher, members of Cuff The Duke along with contributions from Lewis, Slabbert, JF Beauchamp and Kyle Woods.[11] The album's cover was a painting by Mattson's mother, and the lyrical themes addressed Mattson coming to terms with the deaths of his mother and grandmother.[12] The album was supported by concert tours in Europe[13] and Canada,[14] and was longlisted for the 2014 Polaris Music Prize.[15] Mattson won Best Songwriter and Best Album by a Solo Artist at the 2015 Northern Ontario Music & Film Awards.[16]
^"Kalle Mattson's gussied-up folk tunes". Here, May 12, 2011.
^"Canadian musicians to watch in 2012; Postmedia music critics consider which Canadian artists are poised for a breakout this year". Ottawa Citizen, January 5, 2012.
^"Like Neil Young – but with strings; Kalle Mattson fuses folk jams and rock 'n' roll". Here, May 17, 2012.
