Nightwinds ~ Canada ~ Ontario

Nightwinds (1979 / 1991)

Nightwinds were a Canadian prog band from the late 70s who recorded an album but didn't get a chance to release it, and off into the netherworld the group went. Rescued by The Laser's Edge, it would be 12 years (recent by archival standards) before the album made its debut. Ironically its arrival came a bit late for me and my running set of the era. We were all "Genesis'd out" by then. One of us bought the album and we all sampled it, but another band going down the Gabriel-era Genesis road was not what we were looking for at the time. Back then we bought just about every prog album that was released, but I decided against this title. By 1991 I was deep diving all over the world looking for the best prog albums ever made or were being made. Nightwinds wasn't where my dollars were going. Besides I was still mostly an "LP only" guy. Mostly from a financial perspective rather than for audiophile reasons.

It wasn't until 2009 that I finally sat down and heard the album all the way through. By then I was open to hear any good album, as my exhaustive searching for prog nirvana had reached its logical conclusion (not that I had heard everything, just the quest had leveled off). And yea, Nightwinds is really good actually. By that time Nightwinds was years out of print, and copies were selling for top dollar. It's OK, I'll wait.

And here we are 16 years later from that event and I've finally secured the CD at a reasonable price. One of those extremely rare times (these days) where the album arrived in the mail, and I popped it into the changer immediately (and listened to it twice in a row, another anomaly). That's exactly how I used to do it back in 1991. Not stacks of albums that sit waiting for their day on the turntable or in the player. So it's fitting to transport myself back to the era in which this was released.

So what of this music that Nightwinds plays? Would you believe it reminds me of Genesis? Haha. Of course it does. Actually it reminds me most of Florida's Babylon, another band that was ahead of the neo-prog curve by about three years. And that's the storyline here - it's a more compact and accessible form of early Genesis, just as IQ, Pallas, Marillion and the rest of them would bring forward in the 80s. Germany had other like-minded groups operating in similar fashion such as Neuschwanstein, Sirius, Ivory, Touch, and others. Take Wind and Wuthering, add Peter Gabriel back in, and modernize the sound. There's certainly nods to same era Rush and Saga, both hailing from Ontario and no doubt an influence here. But Nightwinds aren't as hard rocking as Rush nor as modern as Saga. Interesting to note that bassist Mike Gingrich came from the excellent Amish, one of my CDRWL staples.

In reflection, the late 80s and early 90s were an exciting time to be a hardcore progressive rock fan, which I most certainly was (and still the case - despite my constant forays into other genres). Back then new bands were sprouting everywhere, and the possibilities seemed endless. Plus I had a paying job (pennies really but happy to have it, and paved the road for the future), was still a single lad in my 20s, and allocated an inordinate amount of money to my hobby. That an album like Nightwinds was met with a yawn indicates the sheer amount of quality new product available to us at the time. Saturation was to come. But not yet.

Ownership: 1991 Laser's Edge (CD). Lyric booklet.

2009 (first listen); 5/5/25 (review / new entry)