Davis Hall & The Green Lanterns – Five Questions With

Jenna Melanson·September 11, 2023

Sophomore Album Canboro Canborough is out Now

2022 Maple Blues Award Drummer of the Year, Jim Casson (Downchild, The Maple Blues Band, The Hogtown Allstars, Dark Orchard) releases the second album from his musical adventure Davis Hall & The Green Lanterns.

While the recording of the first album searched for an identifying sound, this album focuses on the core group of Casson on drums, N. Jay Burr on tuba, Wayne DeAdder on guitar, Mike Branton on slide guitar, and a guest appearance by Mark Lalama (Sisters Euclid, Dizzy & Fay) on keyboards. The sound is funky, rootsy, quirky and fun.

As was the case on the first album, these songs were built from the ground up, starting with drum improvisations and then creating bass lines, and chord structures to fit those initial drum parts. Once Casson had edited those parts into song structures, the soloists and melody players were added to the funky gumbo.

“Canboro Canborough puts the brass in the bass, the grit in the guitar, and the fun in funky”, says Casson. “There is a lot of laughter on this album.”

The song titles on this album once again pay tribute to Casson’s home of the Niagara Peninsula in Ontario, Canada, with the names of historical villages that he found on a 1907 military topographical map that hangs in his office. The title track “Canboro Canborough” is a reference to the street that Casson grew up on.

Listen to Canboro Canborough below and learn more about the band via our Five Questions With segment.

Care to introduce yourself to our readers?

My name is Jim Casson. I’ve been a professional musician for close to 40 years. I’ve played on over 100 albums. I’ve toured throughout North America and Europe. I was named “Drummer of the Year” for the 2022 Maple Blues Awards. I live on a farm 20km from Niagara Falls.

Tell us a bit about your most recent release.

This is the second album from my funky project Davis Hall & The Green Lanterns. The album is called “Canboro Canborough”. Mostly drums, tuba, guitar, and slide guitar with a little bit of keyboards added as well as a few other surprises. The sound is funky, rootsy, quirky and fun. There is a lot of laughter on this album. Band members are N. Jay Burr, Wayne DeAdder, Mike Branton, a guest appearance by Mark Lalama, and myself.

Where do you tend to pull inspiration from when writing?

I get inspired by sounds. If I come across a new sound I chase it down a rabbit hole and see where it leads me. Watching films also tends to send me to the studio and create something.