Justin Rutledge is every small town boy who shares his cigarettes and his flask with the paperboy’s parents on quiet evenings while waiting for the mail in a neighbourhood where Walt Whitman lives next door. He is the writer of lost hymns never bound in any book. Instead, he offers them up as the salt of the earth surrounding some old one-room cabin where he sits on the porch with his last pack of smokes, his banjo and a bottle of gin, staring at the leafless tree in the yard.

At just 26, Justin Rutledge has already come to understand the punk rockers and the classic country balladeers, the mailmen and the crossing guards of the quaint tree lined streets. He knows how to hold his guitar so that all the minor chords echo the same way his father used to play them when he used to strum out Gram Parsons songs. His music seems to be drawn out of the life of a well-traveled, wise old man who still retains the gentleness and romance that belongs only to the young and pure of heart.

His debut album, No Never Alone, is a collection of vignettes, beautifully rendered traditional songs and sensitive, impacting ballads, which seem to have come from a dozen unsent love letters. Canadian greats like Mary Margaret O’Hara and Dan Whiteley masterfully add to producer Glen Salley’s expert hand on keeping No Never Alone’s sound simple and clean, with Rutledge’s vocals in the forefront.

With his soft, sometimes quivering voice, Justin Rutledge delivers all the promises of a seasoned performer whether solo or when accompanied by the likes of David Baxter and Bazil Donovan (Blue Rodeo). And when he lets out that anguished cry in such songs as “The Suffering of Pepe O’Mally? and “Special,” your whole body tingles and your heart lurches, with the understanding that you are witnessing something truly incredible and unique.

His second album, The Devil On A Bench In Stanley Park, is a masterfully conceived, elegantly constructed tour de force: a transporting sequence of haunted and haunting songs elevated by the inspired musicianship of bassist Bazil Donovan (as well as other Blue Rodeo alumni, including Jim Cuddy, Greg Keelor and Oh Susanna), pedal and lap steel guitarist Burke Carroll, drummer Blake Manning, pianist and Hammond organist Bob Packwood, violinist John Showman, accordionist Tim Vesely, and Baxter, whose guitar work infuses this recording with grace, and a quiet and eloquent sadness.

Now magazine recently bestowed Rutledge with the title of toronto's Best Song Writer, exclaiming that "... All classic country songs spin a story that sticks with you, and man, does Justin Rutledge know how to tell 'em. The fast-rising singer/songwriter really hit his stride with this year's The Devil On A Bench In Stanley Park (Six Shooter), a collection of incredibly vivid character snapshots full of precise and resonant details."