Bruce Peninsula brings talents to the Avalon

It's all beaming smiles and laughter for members of the eclectic-gospel band Bruce Peninsula. The 10-member group is touring its new highly anticipated album "Open Flames," and celebrating the return of frontman Neil Haverty, who's in remission from a recent bout with leukemia.

"I'm more or less back to normal. Occasionally I've had aches, but so far it hasn't gotten in the way at all and its been fun to start playing again," Haverty said.

Ontario's Bruce Peninsula is made up of a five-person band and an accompanying choir.

The band first learned about Haverty's turn of fate last year, the morning after a party for the then newly finished "Open Flames." The band decided to hold the album's release date, and once they knew his condition was improving, decided to focus energy on a new project labelled "Bruce Trail Fire Sale" - a collection of songs that were in various stages of completion, but hadn't been part of the record.

"Neil made the videos for them online, that was all part of while he was getting better," Matt Cully said about the material, available through the band's website.

Bruce Peninsula also collaborated with the online music site Southern Souls to produce several videos of band members performing solo cover songs.

"In our mind that made it something very special, and purely and directly for the fans," Cully said.

The Southern Souls project brought to the surface creative possibilities for how the large group could perform and continue to explore their musical talents.

They're now "doing some shows where we swap songs and we play on each others songs - we're just opening up the idea of Bruce Peninsula a little bit more," Haverty said.

Complete with a new choir, "Open Flames" is a booming 10-track follow-up to group's "A Mountain is a Mouth" album that received international praise. Bruce Peninsula's weaving of influences creates music outside the scope of any label or genre.

"We don't want it to be reduced to any particular sound," said Cully. "Making modern music, you have the ability with the Internet and (other) resources to take from all kinds of sonic pallets and formats and put it into one song."

Haverty said he was pleased with the pace in which "Open Flames" came together last year.

"We were musically communicating very fluidly," he said.

Bruce Peninsula also placed more emphasis on planning and pre-production to improve on small details that stuck out in the 2009 album.

"There was a lot of cymbal wash on 'A Mountain is a Mouth' and so Steve miraculously learned to play all the drum parts without the cymbals," Haverty said. "We found by having the cymbal wash we couldn't get a booming snare drum and tom and this time it's separated."

Bruce Peninsula recorded separate takes to showcase the choir section, whereas with the last album it had all be done over two days in a church. The change has created more depth to each song, making it all that much more impressive to listeners.

The debut single off the "Open Flames" album is the second track "Into Your Light." The song features a steady rock style beat, mixed with the choir's smooth vocals and Haverty's signature raspy voice.

Bruce Peninsula has four stops across Newfoundland this month, starting in Corner Brook next Wednesday and including a double-bill at The Ship in St. John's Oct. 14-15.