Crown & Press series puts a spotlight on songs

Songs in the Round, led by Hamilton musician Elias Dummer (aka Frank Fiction), is an intimate experience with songwriters that is inspired by Nashville’s famed Bluebird Cafe.

Ottawa Street’s Crown & Press is shining a light on the art of songwriting with its Songs in the Round music series led by Hamilton-born singer-songwriter Elias Dummer.

After spending close to a decade in Nashville, touring as the frontman of worship band The City Harmonic and writing songs for other artists, Dummer is back in his hometown and aims to recreate the magic found at the famous Bluebird Cafe in Music City.

With Songs in the Round launched this year, Dummer says the experience is invaluable to a songwriter.

“So as a songwriter, especially somebody kind of looking at the second phase of my life and second phase of my career, I'm writing a lot of songs that are reflective,” says Dummer. “It's been really amazing to have a sold-out room of people leaning over their whiskey and they're leaning in on the lyrics.”

The goal of Songs in the Round is to make the art of songwriting accessible, intimate, and immediate. At Crown & Press, the audience of 80 are seated at tables that surround the stage where the musicians face each other to talk, explore, and jam.  

“So it is, from the start, a conversation. It's a dialogue,” says Dummer. “So it’s that kind of spirit of what it’s like to be in the writers room, not just to hear the presentation of the song, but in a way that's still emotional and meaningful and grounds us. It's been really special.”

Dummer leads the sessions as his songwriting persona Frank Fiction.

Somewhere out of the blend of Brit rock from Elton, alternative rock a la Radiohead, John Prine’s country folk, and the Americana of Jason Isbell emerges Frank Fiction.   

“If I was still in Nashville, I would have done this the opposite way. I would not have started playing live without recordings to a room of people that pay to be there. Not a chance, that's a Hamilton thing. That's the thing that works here, but it's been a gift for me to be able to play these songs and have people say what's mattered to them, you know?”

Past Songs in the Round performers include fellow Hamiltonians Jacob Moon and Joel Parisien, Sandra Bouza from Toronto, and Nolan Gibson of Norfolk County. The May 21 show will feature Hamilton’s Jon Harvey, formerly of Monster Truck and now with The Wild High.

“The joke on our poster is, somewhere between the Bluebird and [NPR’s] Tiny Desk. It's a little more grassroots than both, in the sense that it’s a little impromptu, and we're facing each other. So it's a mix of those two things, and maybe [Nashville’s] The Listening Room, too.”

“We hope that, like we are an art gallery, that we can make the art of songwriting front and centre for a small group of people that night and make fans that'll live with [the songwriters] forever.”

To line up the shows, Dummer calls on his connections and invites songwriters recommended to him, too. 

The Thursday night shows have proven popular, typically selling out. The hope with the weekday approach is that local songwriters will be available and that artists coming into the city to play a Friday or Saturday show, could appear, too. 

Songs in the Round fills a need because songwriters struggle to find places to get feedback on new songs, says Dummer, who has 40 unreleased songs under his solo stage name of Frank Fiction. He knows which ones he likes, but not which ones will resonate with audiences. 

“When you’re on tour, how many places can you really try that many new songs? Maybe you can sneak one in, maybe,” he says. “The comedy world has this down really well, you know. David Spade can pop into The Comedy Cellar and try 15 minutes of new material on the secret, unannounced show, and leave, and it's good for him. It's good for the crowd. He gets the feedback loop, right? That's what I'm hoping for here … That kind of thing is an incredible gift as a songwriter.”

Dummer, who has amassed more than 100 million streams, toured the world, and earned a JUNO Award, grew up blocks away from Hamilton’s football stadium. He and his wife moved to Nashville in 2013 for his music career, where Dummer was part of Universal Music Group's Christian division.

But as his five kids – ranging in age from 19 to 10 – got older, and the opportunity to launch Crown & Press arrived, Dummer felt it was time to come home. Dummer, who has run a marketing agency for 20 years, is chief marketing officer at Crown & Press. 

Opened in June 2023, it’s part art gallery, part café, and part live venue, and led by Dummer’s aunt, artist Julia Veenstra. Music was always part of the equation in the idea to renovate and occupy what was once a Woolworths in a thriving textile district.

“It was always in the back of our minds: What does it mean for a space like this to be a place where music for adults can thrive and live, and people can come and feel something?” says Dummer. “You know, art decorates space, music decorates time, right? That whole thing.”

Dummer’s first musical experience was in a Hamilton ska band called The Westies in the 1990s. They played the old Transit Union Hall on Wilson Street, and a bunch of other little clubs.

“We had a great little scene. It was rambunctious and crazy.”

From there, Dummer shifted to Christian music.  

A video of Dummer surprising his wife with a song he wrote at their wedding wound up in the hands of Steven Prendergast, manager of Sixpence None the Richer, and a former executive at Live Nation Studios.

“He got really excited about [the song] and he sort of gave me this Matrix red pill, blue pill moment of like, what do you want to do? And at the time, I was like, I'm going to do Christian music. It's what I was focused on.” 

Dummer started travelling back and forth to Nashville and from there, The City Harmonic formed and a record deal and touring followed right away. There was plenty of success but eventually Dummer felt he had “worn out what I thought I had to say in the lane I was in, and to be perfectly honest, I felt increasingly alienated within that space.”

As right-wing-driven evangelicalism has overtaken much of the Christian space, Dummer decided that genre was no longer for him. “It was never anything that was our heart. We were always sort of odd creatures in that space,” he says.

“I'm in my early 40s, and, frankly, too old to start over in music in a way, but you know what, I have a lot to say and a lot of truth to tell.”

Each session of Songs in the Round has been filmed and recorded, with the idea of eventually launching a YouTube channel. Dummer says Songs in the Round is about exploring the mystery and magic of songwriting.

His phone is constantly jammed with lyric notes and voice memos of melodies and for him, songwriting is about “not putting pressure on the song to deliver that day.” Some songs come together in minutes or hours; others take weeks, even months.

“So I think it's like any good journalist or good writer, it's just being observant, enjoying people-watching, you know, and Hamilton's great for that.”

The city is a complex, complicated place with a lot of division and many issues to figure out, says Dummer. But music, experienced in a shared moment, really can bring people together.

“There is a guy who is a regular here and when he came to Songs in the Round, he came up to me after and said, ‘Look, I’ve never been to church, but if I had to guess, I'd think it's like this.’ He had this sense of community, this sense of belonging. And music at its best does that, and church at its best does that … I'm hoping that what we're doing here can help people feel human and like they belong somewhere.”