Status/Non-Status have releases a collection of songs held back from their terrific 2023 album sessions Surely Travel, entitled the January 3rd EP. “While each song is deeply personal, at the time it felt as though they pushed the album further into the rural-folk spectrum than we envisioned for ourselves, but together now make for a sentimental journey that sounds just right on the cold winds of winter,” says songwriter Adam Sturgeon. Sturgeon joined Zoon’s Daniel Monkman to form OMBIIGIZI whose debut album, Sewn Together, was shortlisted for the 2022 Polaris Music Prize.

The EP’s title track, “January 3rd” is a song of reflection, “a call to a more natural way of existing but trapped within the busy people, streets and lights of a broken city,” says Sturgeon. “I wrote this while living in Flint, Michigan and it was the first song we recorded for Surely Travel, where in a song we are all just trying to be free.”

“Johnny’s Song” could be about “any kid, anywhere,” Sturgeon continues. “In this case a specific kid – Johnny, who was trying his best to persevere despite a harsh reality at home, each day bringing a new challenge but finding hope within the cold terrain of the Arctic tundra and being on the land.”

And the EP concludes with “Glide”, “a dedication to our dear mother, mentor and friend who slipped into the ice and never came home,” says Sturgeon. “Emotions got the better of me through tracking so I walked away from the song and left it unfinished. Still can’t listen to it to this day.”

What’s revealed when you archive the quiet moments during time spent on the road? For Adam Sturgeon, the result is a crystalline glimpse into the unseen — and gratifying — moments of personal renovation we rarely pay attention to; where a blown out tire incites calm rather than rage, and moments of frustration invite grace instead of judgement. This is the vantage of Surely Travel, the newest album by Status/Non-Status, the evolving musical project of the Anishinaabe artist and community worker, and a close-knit group of collaborators.

Recorded over 10 days at Deadpan Studios in Sudbury, the goal was to chisel things down down to the bone. Where past records built atmosphere out of heavy swaths of sound, overlaid with harmonies, the band opted for a single vocal take, a Wurlitzer, and ran a $100 classical guitar through an amp. Written in the company of others, whether from the back of a van, or with a baby on the other side of the door, Sturgeon wrote sections of the record in near silence — whispered lyrics and muted bass riffs that started as lullabies, only to be blown out later. It interlaces the album’s material composition with its central inspiration: the allure of touring from coast to coast, and the reality of over-indexing on time spent in an unreliable, stuffy van; the wrenching sacrifice of time away from loved ones, in favour of only seeing a gas station and vacant roads for hours on end.

Status/Non-Status
January 3rd EP
Tracklist

01 January 3rd
02 Johnny’s Song
03 Glide