About
Justin Ruppel is a Toronto-based musician, writer, lab rat, and former Simpsons trivia champion. He has performed or recorded drums with many artists including George Massenburg, Pete Anderson, The Great Lake Swimmers, Watchhouse, Cat Clyde, Jeremie Albino, Blood Ceremony, Charlotte Cornfield, The Queen Priyanka, Iskwé, Dwayne Gretzky, and Al Tuck. Performance highlights include The WayHome Festival, SXSW, Hillside Folk Festival, Edmonton Folk Festival, Desertfest Berlin, and the New Orleans French Quarter Festival. As a touring musician, he has travelled around the world opening for Uncle Acid and the Deadbeats, The Decemberists, The Proclaimers, Sam Roberts, Bahamas, Dallas Smith, Natalie McMaster, and Sylvia Tyson. He has collaborated on a number of theatre and film soundtracks as a composer, earning a Dora Nomination for sound design on theThe Italian Mime Suicide. A fairweathered friend to the clawhammer banjo, Justin's drop thumbing can be heard on the latest album by The Boxcar Boys and has been featured on CBC, BBC, and Canadian college radio stations.
He also works as a writer and researcher at the University of Toronto and has published scientific articles in a number of journals including Brain and Cognition and Scientific Reports. His fiction has been published in Grain Magazine, Vallum, Sundog Lit (USA) and presented at Toronto Art Bar Series, The Robert Gill Theatre in Toronto, and Poet’s House in New York City. He has recently completed his debut collection of short stories, It’s Really Coming Down, for which he received a literary grant from the Ontario Arts Council.