Don't miss FONTINE and ZOON live at the Artesian on Friday, December 5th!Show Details:
FONTINE + ZOON
Date: Friday, December 5th, 2025
Doors: 7:00PM
Show: 8:00PM
Tickets: $25.00 in advance online or in person at Paper Umbrella (2724 13th Avenue), or $30.00 at the door. Tickets go on sale Friday, October 3rd at 10:00 AM.
*Advance tickets close at 5:00 PM day-of-show. Additional tickets will be available at the door unless it is officially labelled SOLD OUT*
The Artesian is wheelchair accessible, all-ages, and a proud supporter of positive spaces initiatives with a zero-tolerance policy towards hate, harassment, and/or discrimination. We reserve the right to remove any patron creating an unsafe environment. The accessible entrance is available via a lift, Please ask staff for help if necessary.
About FONTINE:
About FONTINE:
“Good Buddy” is CB Radio code for gay, so it’s a fitting title for FONTINE’s first full-length album. Like a truck driver on the radio, she is a road warrior logging shows all year with her own project or as a collaborator with Boy Golden, Kris Ulrich, Begonia, Georgia Harmer and so many others. And while that trucker-hat-wearing, big-rig-wielding archetype might not usually be associated with soft sensitivity, that middle zone is exactly where FONTINE and this album live. It's a rock record with a mushy middle. It's beautiful and energizing. There's pain and there's catharsis.
FONTINE is Indigenous, queer and a self-proclaimed “real goofy guy.” These things all inform her art. She is the life of the party, her magnanimous laugh and smile filling up any room. But there's also a lot of struggle behind all that. Navigating through relationships beginning and ending, identity exploration, self-doubt, activist frustration, people pleasing and friendship – all rooted in a real sense of place. This is what the album is all about.
Good Buddy is a departure from FONTINE’s breakout Yarrow Lover EP, which leaned into cleaner, folkier singer-songwriter tones. This record finds her back with her trademark powerhouse voice and disarmingly vulnerable approach, but this time housed in a grittier shell. FONTINE always wanted to be a rock star growing up, listening to rock radio and singing along full tilt. This album is a step towards that dream. Recorded live to tape, the intention was to be as raw and scrappy as possible, with her band in the room feeding off the energy they’d gathered from hundreds of shows on the road. All to allow the beautiful, raw songwriting to shine through.
“Body Double” is a fan favourite singalong at live shows with its half-time, harmony-stacked chorus. It explores the idea of sharing space with others to help you focus on the task at hand and more broadly, about physically manifesting the support of your friends and loved ones in hard times. “Night Hours” channels Neil Young’s guitar-driven, lip-bitten grit trying to get over a now gone lover. “Current” is a life-preserver – a landing spot to put all the sadness you feel like you didn’t want to bother anyone with, because it’s just too damn sad.
And then there is "Home Right Here," an exploration of the places FONTINE is rooted to, along with associated core memories that formed who she is. Between rich choruses she takes us somewhere new with each verse – the family farm on Cowessess First Nation, an escape to a tiny Vancouver apartment, and Jimmy's place on Braemar – a makeshift garage hang spot during the height of pandemic lockdowns where her Winnipeg musician pals would gather to drink and write and dream.
Up until now, on the strength of just one EP, FONTINE has garnered over 800,000 streams, a loyal online following, glowing press from CBC, Country Queer, Exclaim!, RANGE and more, radio charting success, plus support slots with folks like William Prince, The Paper Kites, and Helena Deland. Good Buddy plants her next route marker on the side of the road. It peels back the layers and puts her heart and her grit centre stage. It poises her to expand her reach, carve out new highways, and fully put her behind the wheel.
About ZOON:
In the Ojibway language, the word Zoongide’ewin means “bravery, courage, the Bear Spirit.” It’s no wonder Daniel Monkman adopted Zoon as their musical moniker. The Hamilton-based musician has spent the better part of their 28 years finding and channelling their strength to overcome such adversities as racism, poverty and addiction.
Music saved Monkman’s life. And, on Zoon’s debut album, Bleached Wavves, they paint a message of hope and fortitude, lessons they learned studying the Seven Grandfather teachings after experiencing the lowest point of their life.
Born and raised in Selkirk, Manitoba, a small prison town outside of Winnipeg they describe as “one of the roughest places,” Monkman constantly faced an uphill battle. In their teens they were victimized for their First Nations heritage, which led them to abusing drugs and alcohol as a coping mechanism. Their best friend died of an overdose; they nearly followed him on multiple occasions. But with the spiritual guidance they learned from 12-step therapy, Monkman got clean and began to follow a passion for music they discovered from a young age growing up within the Brokenhead Ojibway Nation.
Bleached Wavves is the first true document of what has been dubbed “moccasin-gaze,” a tongue-in-cheek nickname for the amalgamation of Monkman’s shoegaze influences with traditional First Nations music. Like My Bloody Valentine’s Loveless, a record that changed everything for them, Zoon pushes forward that famously quixotic, effects-laden sound with a distinctive, new approach.
A song like “Help Me Understand,” which mixes traditional hand drumming with gliding waves of droning guitar, feels like new ground has been broken for shoegaze fanatics to obsess over. As they got more into this mindset of mixing cultures, Monkman went even further with their trials, emerging with their most radical vision, the trance-inducing “Was & Always Will Be.”
Like most things in their life, making the album didn’t come easy for Monkman. Their gear was stolen, leaving them with virtually nothing and forcing them to get creative. They recorded the songs in their bedroom and jam space, using only a Fender Deville guitar, a DigiTech delay pedal and - channelling their hero Kevin Shields - some “reverse engineering.”
Once it was finished, they got the music into the hands of the late publicist Darryl Weeks, who quickly became a fan of what he heard. With Weeks’ guidance and industry knowledge, Monkman found an ally willing to help out. They also found a label: Weeks passed on the record to fellow shoegaze enthusiast Trevor Larocque at Paper Bag Records, who offered to give Zoon a home.
While there is a healthy population of nu-gazers creating beautiful noise all over the world, Zoon’s debut stands out from all the others. Bleached Wavves is notable not just for its breathtakingly inimitable sounds and giving birth to a newfangled subgenre (see “moccasin-gaze”), but also for its modest, resourceful creation, the sign of a true sonic genius-in-the-making.
Event Venue
2627 13th Avenue, Regina, SK, Canada, Saskatchewan S4T 1N2
Tickets
