August 8, 2017
By Sue Dickens, Trent Hills Independent
Warkworth — The John Cleats Band CD release party invites everyone to bring their dancing shoes or cleats to celebrate and raise money for Ah! Arts and Heritage Centre.
“The music is about identity, gender and LGBTQ issues,” said singer-songwriter Dimitri Papatheodorou. Orlando, the first track on the album, is about the 2016 massacre at a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida.
The John Cleats Band members include Papatheodorou, Stephen Rapos, Ron Masil, Jonah Allen-McLean, Olivia Rapos and Ruth Shaw; all music personalities the village knows well.
The album was recorded at Wheatland Records and mixed and mastered by Stephen Rapos at Crooked House Studios in Warkworth. Wheatland Records is named after the historic stone farmhouse in Warkworth, Wheatland Farm. “Jamie and I moved here four years ago. The house has a small performance space that seats about 45 people,” Papatheodorou explained.
The band had its debut performance at Karlfest in June in Warkworth.
The name of the band is a play on the Monty Python actor John Cleese, and the album cover depicts a pair of rugby cleats covered in jewels, representing gender and orientation fluidity and ambiguity.
The photography for the cover is done by Pascal Aresenau and Mark Ridout.
