Biography

Founded in 2011 in Montreal, Lakes of Canada is a four piece progressive rock group with gospel and soul vocal harmonies featuring: Jake Smith on lead vocals, guitar, keys, and percussion, Sarah Morasse on vocals, keys, percussion, and organ, Conor O’Neil on drums, vocals, and keys, and Caleb Smith on bass, keys, vocals, guitar, and percussion. Lakes of Canada has held the #2 most pretentious band in the CULT Montreal reader’s poll for 4 years running (we’re coming for you Arcade Fire). They have performed across Canada and been featured at Festivals including: POP Montreal, Canadian Music Week, Festival Folk sur la Canal, M for Montreal, NXNE, and Osheaga. In 2012 they won Best Band of the St-Ambroise Montreal Fringe Festival. “Transgressions” won best Traditional/Roots album at the 2016 GAMIQ awards. Conor O’Neil and Jake Smith also recently won album of the year Juno awards, and Rock Performance of the year Grammy awards for their work on Leonard Cohen’s final record, “You Want it Darker”. Lakes of Canada released their second album, “Transgressions”, inspired by Margaret Atwood’s dystopian novel “The Handmaid’s Tale”, on October 16th, 2015, followed by a tour throughout Eastern Canada. “Transgressions” was produced by Jace Lasek (The Besnard Lakes, Arcade Fire, Patrick Watson, Young Galaxy) at Breakglass Studio in Montreal. They released “Transgressions Acoustic” in the fall of 2016. Their debut album “Toll the Bell” was released in 2012.