Devon Sproule

Born in the spring of 1982 in Kingston, Ontario, Canadian singer/songwriter Devon Sproule spent her childhood on a sprawling hippie commune in rural Virginia. Early vocal-harmony sessions with her father led her to his old guitar, where she began picking out her first songs. By age fifteen she was composing original material and performing for local audiences, convinced that music was her sole path and encountering no voices urging otherwise.

A few years afterward she issued her self-titled debut under the name Devon; the intimate power of her voice on that record attracted widespread attention and earned her an opening slot on tour with the Dave Matthews Band. In 2001 she followed with Long Sleeve Story on the Three Word Records label, enlisting drummer Nate Brown, bassist David Saull, trumpeter John D'earth, and bassist-producer Stefan Lessard.

Shortly after the album’s release she relocated from Charlottesville, Virginia, to upstate New York, a shift that reshaped her writing. The 2003 album Upstate Songs stripped away the polished alt-rock surfaces of prior work and returned her to acoustic-guitar-centered folk. Rolling Stone praised it as “perhaps the sweetest and most honest folk pop album recorded this year.” She soon moved back to Virginia and married fellow musician Paul Curreri; their union preceded the 2007 release of the shimmering, country-tinged Keep Your Silver Shined, which further developed her warm, whimsical folk palette.

Over the ensuing years she maintained a brisk release schedule, issuing the charming Don’t Hurry for Heaven! on the U.K. label Tin Angel Records in 2009 and the concert set Live in London the following year. In 2011 she delivered her sixth studio album, I Love You, Go Easy, around the time she and Curreri settled in Berlin. A 2013 collaborative effort with fellow Canadian singer/songwriter Mike O’Neill, Colours, came next. Her travels continued through a move to Austin, Texas; a residency on Fishers Island off the New York coast; recording sessions in Yukon, Ontario, and Nova Scotia; and a return to Virginia, where she completed her eighth studio album, The Gold String, in 2017.