In the beginning, Jonah and Avery sang only for protest marches and basements where rent parties ruled. They called themselves Black Lantern. They wrote songs that detonated.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
They had rules.
No major labels.
No radio edits.
No singing on camera.
No chords that felt too safe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
They dressed in denim and declarations, but underneath it all, they were terrified of being irrelevant. Outside a G7 summit in Halifax, Jonah sang through a bullhorn while Avery played a banjo with a missing string. The police clapped after the second verse and didn\u2019t realize it was about them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
They slept on couches and said no to everything that smelled like compromise. Then one winter Calvin Rousseau, director of Bionic Advertising, emailed them.
\u201cI love your raw sound,\u201d he wrote. \u201cWould you be interested in licensing a track for a national campaign? It\u2019s organic crackers.\u201d Jonah laughed. Avery didn\u2019t.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A week later, they were on set, wearing silk shirts and singing a rewritten version of No Gods, No Masters with the chorus changed to Crunch Free or Die. The commercial aired during the Super Bowl and won awards.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
By spring, Black Lantern had been renamed Northern Flame, and their new album was described as \u201cspiritually agnostic lifestyle music for urban moods.\u201d The bass was soft. The songs were longer. The edges had been professionally sanded. When asked about their past, they smiled, \u201cThat was another phase of the journey.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
They bought homes. They gave TEDx talks on \u201cthe transformation of purpose.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
More offers came. A car ad. A banking campaign (Rebel Without a Rewards Card). A feel-good anthem for a telecommunications company\u2019s attempt to reach the youth market. \u201cWe\u2019re reaching more people now than we ever did in the basements,\u201d Jonah said during an interview on CBC\u2019s q. \u201cIt\u2019s still activism just through better channels.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
They headlined music festivals sponsored by A & W Rootbeer. Their old fans stopped coming, but new ones wore merch with slogans like: Disrupt This. They wrote a musical. It flopped and they blamed a culture of anti-visionary thinking.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
They launched a podcast.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Years passed. Jonah bought property in Prince Edward County and started a residency program that was mostly Airbnb bookings. Avery released a line of artisanal guitar picks made from reclaimed protest signs. The picks came in a hemp pouch stamped with the phrase: Radical Tone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Occasionally, someone on the internet would post a grainy video of them playing at a protest in 2007.
The comments said things like:
Damn, they used to mean it.
Wild what money does.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
They didn\u2019t notice. Together they began working on a memoir titled Echo Chamber: How We Stayed Loud. They still believed they were shaking the system.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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