Workman’s Club, Dublin || 5th Nov 2025

Over 14 years and five albums, Canadian singer/songwriter Afie Jurvanen — a.k.a. Bahamas — has specialized in the sort of tunes that feel as comfortable as your favorite beaten-up pair of jeans: familiar in form, but embedded with a uniquely personal history. His repertoire abounds with the sort of instantly cozy songs — be it folky ballads, breezy yacht-rock jams, or bluesy shitkickers — that you’d swear you know from decades of listening to oldies radio (or, more likely, Spotify, where signature serenades like 2012’s “Lost in the Light” and 2014’s “All the Time” have moved well beyond the 100-million- stream mark). But on closer inspection, his writing teems with quirks that are entirely his own, as he wields a sly, self-deprecating sense of humor to transform relatable observations on domesticity and aging into absurdist Seinfeldian vignettes. As the title of his sixth album makes clear, if Bahamas was indeed a pair of jeans, they’d surely be Bootcut: a modern take on traditional styles, rugged yet refined, tight in execution but loose in vibe. Fittingly, the album was recorded in the spiritual homeland of wholesome, denim-clad songcraft: Nashville.

Recorded at Nashville’s Sound Emporium by Grammy-nominated producer Robbie Lackritz (Feist, Jack Johnson, Alvvays, Peach Pit) and Dan Knobler (Allison Russell, Rodney Crowell), Bootcut sees Jurvanen flanked by a dream team that includes legendary guitarist (and current Eagle) Vince Gill, pedal-steel maestro Russ Pahl (Kenny Rogers, Sturgill Simpson), bassist Dave Roe, harmonica great Mickey Raphael (Emmylou Harris, Sheryl Crow), mandolin master Sam Bush (Dolly Parton, Linda Ronstadt), keyboardist Jen Gunderman (Willie Nelson, The Jayhawks), and drummer Jon Radford (Brendan Benson, Nikki Lane).

Bootcut is the zen state of being on-trend and timeless at the same time. Bootcut is the cumulative wisdom that makes personal statements feel like universal truths. Truly, in this or any other year, you will find a no more pleasing and potent combination of off-the-cuff rock ‘n’ roll, last-call ballads, social commentary, and dad jokes. Bootcut is a slow-burning stack of denim-ite, a truly pant-astic piece of work, and, dare we say, a pure stroke of “jean-ius.”