Alt-Rocker Digger Jonez releases new single, Treemen

By Brian Wright-McLeod

TORONTO – With the roots derived from the land, Digger Jonez, as he is known, illuminates Indigenous environmental knowledge as rock and roll testimony. His new album, “Shadows and Machines”, recently released independently on his own label, also celebrates the album’s single, “Treemen”.

“We need attention brought to environmental issues such as deforestation,” he said.

Born Lynden Jonez, Digger grew up in Michipicoten First Nation near Wawa, Ont., his roots are close to the natural world as his given name comes from the Linden tree. It’s fitting then that “Treemen” should be the latest lead single from his latest album, ‘Shadows & Machines’.

With its jagged guitars and cathartic rhythm section featuring Cory Aird on drums and Steven Jones on bass, “Treemen” works both as a protest anthem and an invitation to rage against complacency.

Jonez balances urgency with defiance.

“I’m generally engaged in rock music,” he said.

The entire “Shadows and Machines” album is rich with acoustic hip-hop NuMetal stylings. His main influences for this project, in order of importance, include Matthew Good Band, Dave Matthews Band, Our Lady Peace, and Coldplay.

Jonez is as comfortable weaving hip-hop cadences into his guitar-driven rock as he is pulling lines straight from his lived experience. Religious symbolism, ecological urgency, and political fury all converge into a calculated onslaught for those who still believe that roots matter.

“It feels like an anthem and a call to arms for people to take environmental corruption seriously,” he said.

Of the album’s single, “Treemen,” Jonez describes how his song came from an emotional and intellectual perspective: “Do not cut us, protection is a must, do not waste us, money cannot be eaten.” As deforestation and ecology are preeminent in his message, the wild abandon of freedom and choice rings clear in his music.

Jonez graduated University of Toronto’s Environmental Politics program. Very appropriate for his “TreeMen” single, as his music expresses his awareness that is entwined with his music.

U of T was also where he began to hone his musical skills and stage experience with performances at First Nations House, a common venue for performances for First Nations students. His musicality didn’t end there, as in 2022, he was named RBC’s Emerging Artist, with four albums already to his credit.

He now drives forward with his latest project like a force of nature. If “Shadows & Machines” is the storm, “Treemen” is the lightning strike.

His loud musical personality is unrelenting and yet, impossible to ignore; in fact, it demands that listeners not only hear, but act.

Jonez has built an album that inspires action. It becomes a musical force of nature where hope and anger are not opposites but co-conspirators, where survival sounds like distortion and joyride blues. The call will be clear: rage, protect, remember, endure.