Bahamas

Barrie, a borrowed Strat and a cabin

Afie Jurvanen was born in Toronto on 28 April 1981 and grew up in Barrie, Ontario. He is the son of a Finnish immigrant, holds Finnish citizenship and speaks the language fluently — a detail that has stayed at the edge of the songwriting and, on the 2025 record, moved to the centre of it. He taught himself guitar and made his living for years as a hired hand rather than a frontman, playing behind Feist and working with The Lumineers, Jack Johnson and City and Colour. That apprenticeship shows: the guitar parts in Bahamas songs are built to hold a room rather than to win an argument.

The solo project began quietly. Jurvanen recorded his debut in a cabin in rural Ontario in 2008 and released it as Pink Strat in 2009 under the name Bahamas. It earned a nomination for Roots & Traditional Album of the Year – Solo at the 2010 Junos, which set the pattern for everything that followed: modest scale, disproportionate reach.

The records that built the audience

Barchords arrived on 7 February 2012 and was nominated for Adult Alternative Album of the Year at the 2013 Junos. It also produced the song that still pays the rent. "Lost in the Light" has been certified double platinum in Canada and gold in the United States, and by late 2025 its streaming total was approaching 230 million — a number that dwarfs the album's original commercial profile and explains why a songwriter working at this volume can fill theatres.

Bahamas Is Afie, released 19 August 2014, was the breakthrough at home. It won Adult Alternative Album of the Year at the 2015 Junos, and Jurvanen took Songwriter of the Year the same night for "All the Time", "Bitter Memories" and "Stronger Than That". "All the Time" went platinum in the United States. Earthtones followed on 19 January 2018, leaning harder on rhythm section and soul phrasing, and Sad Hunk (2020) won the Adult Alternative Album Juno in 2021. Bootcut, in 2023, was the outlier: an openly country-influenced record that sent him out with pedal steel and a different band.

Leaving Toronto

In December 2018 Jurvanen moved out of Toronto's Junction neighbourhood to Nova Scotia with his wife and children, after roughly two decades in the city. He now has three children and has described planning his working life only about six months ahead. The relocation was not presented as a retreat from music, but it reshaped how the music gets made — away from session players on call and studio bookings, towards whoever happens to live nearby.

That is the practical background to the seventh album. Rather than assemble a band and a budget, Jurvanen stayed home and recorded songs with no fixed plan alongside co-producer and multi-instrumentalist Joshua Van Tassel, in Van Tassel's DreamDate Studio — a backyard shed with barely enough room for the equipment and the two of them. The pair played every instrument on the record. What carries over into the mixes is the size of the space: roomy drums, close vocal takes, no gloss.

A title that hedges

My Second Last Album was released on 24 October 2025 on Brushfire Records through Republic, ten tracks long. The working title had been My Second Best Album; the change was deliberate and Jurvanen has been unhelpful about what it means, warning against taking him too seriously while also declining to rule anything out. His clearest statement on it is that after more than fifteen years as Bahamas, "I just feel like I'm getting towards the end of something. I don't know what that is."

He is less equivocal about the record itself, calling it "the best one by far" and crediting age with removing the self-consciousness: "I just don't care anymore… I'm not as precious about it, and I think that frees you up to make music that's more honest." One consequence is that the guitar playing is back. Having spent several albums subordinating the instrument to the song, he lets himself solo again.

The songs deal with fatherhood, marriage, spiritual freedom and being an immigrant's son. "In Country" is a direct address to the Finnish side of the family, built as a slow accumulation. "The Bridge" is flute-inflected, gospel-tinged funk sitting in a deep pocket. "Dearborn" uses fuzz-tone guitar and falsetto hooks and carries an edge of satire that is rare for him. "Feels So Good" is the mid-tempo centre of gravity. Reviews treated it as a consolidation rather than a departure: restraint, groove, and a refusal to oversell. Rolling Stone praised its plainness and No Depression placed it among the year's best releases.

Where he stands in autumn 2026

The album brought Jurvanen his tenth Juno nomination, for Adult Alternative Album of the Year, and he won it — his sixth Juno, at the 55th edition of the awards in Hamilton, where the bulk of the categories were handed out at the gala on 28 March 2026 ahead of the broadcast from TD Coliseum on 29 March.

The touring plan behind it has been unusually long. A spring 2026 club leg took in rooms like Off Broadway in St Louis on 5 May and The Basement East in Nashville on 6 May. On 10 March the larger run was announced under the name the Industrial Sport & Sound Tour, with a presale on 11 March and general sale on 13 March. It opened at the Royal Theatre in Victoria on 18 September, played Malkin Bowl in Vancouver on 19 September, the Burton Cummings Theatre in Winnipeg on 25 September and the Fine Line in Minneapolis on 26 September, reached El Club in Detroit on 30 September, and returns to Canada for an Ontario stretch that culminates at Massey Hall in Toronto on 8 October. From there it runs down the west coast and through Denver, Kansas City and points south, finishing at Emo's in Austin on 21 November. Mariel Buckley, Boy Golden and Sister Ray are opening on selected dates.

What the room gets

The current show runs a full evening rather than a support-length set, and it is structured to move between the two halves of his catalogue: the fingerpicked early material and the soul-inflected, groove-led songs that have taken over since Earthtones. Recent setlists draw heavily on the new album — "Feels So Good", "The Bridge", "Dearborn", "Trick to Happy", "Own Alone" — and then reach back for "Waves", "Caught Me Thinkin'", "Half Your Love", "Stronger Than That", "Can't Take You With Me" and "I'm Still". "Lost in the Light" and "All the Time" are still the two songs the room is waiting for, and both are placed late.

The band is a small one and the arrangements stay porous, which leaves space for the between-song talk that has always done as much work as the songs. Covers appear without ceremony — "No Depression" and "No Expectations" have both turned up this year — and the harmony singing is close enough to carry unaccompanied.