The men who used to tend the cows in Kingston’s prison farms have produced Canada’s first record from behind bars.

The album of folk, rock, R&B and gospel songs was recorded in a prison chapel in a breakthrough program linking musicians with inmates, called Pros and Cons.

Founded by Canadian musician/producer Hugh (Chris) Brown, Pros and Cons seeks to provide job skills and create opportunities for empathy and achievement for prisoners.

After social activists lost the battle to keep the prison farms open in 2010, Brown sought “to fill that void and find something positive.”

Postcards from the County, recorded in the Pittsburgh Institution outside Kingston, has just been released free online and includes songs written by Brown, Sarah Harmer, Sarah McDermott and Paul Simon.

“I started to cry when I heard them singing,” says McDermott, whose “Love in Time” is on the album. “I had written it as an environmental song but they gave it a whole other meaning.

“The emotion they portrayed, the intent and focus the men had on the music, it was heartbreaking.”

Listening to the final product, McDermott says, “I love it. I hope it is heard and people see how important it is to have arts in the system.”

She was part of the mentoring team Brown brought into the project and sings with the inmates on “How Deep in the Valley.”

Its author, Sarah Harmer, also mentored the men during the two-year project, spending an evening “just passing the guitar around.”

She realized how much working on the record meant to the men.

“I love it when I have a project on the go, I chip away at it and work at it,” Harmer says.

“How Deep in the Valley” was written “as a song that anyone can sing, there’s a lot of emotion. Just belt it out,” she says. To her, the album “is a beautiful thing.”

Singer/songwriter Kate Fenner sings the Paul Simon song “Silent Eyes,” in which the male chorus starts as a low rumble then bursts into a full-fledged choir.

“The hair on my arms stood on end,” says Fenner, acknowledging that a lot of the power of the music is that it is being sung by criminals. “I think it is that we know who they are.

“And the song is about redemption — that’s the one that gets to you.”

The song used on the album was only the second take, Fenner says. “They had worked really hard and were totally ready when I got there.”

Coincidentally, she had worn an orange dress for the taping. “They said thanks for dressing for the occasion.”

She says she’s “ashamed” to admit she was worried about feeling awkward at the recording session.

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“They were so welcoming, and ready to work. And they were also really funny.”

The Canadian, who collaborates with Brown when he is New York, says she readily agreed to fly to Kingston to participate in the project.

“I believe with Chris, if you treat people inhumanely, what does that say about you? To go and be human together was wonderful.”

The way the music was transformed by the inmates’ experience and setting “is what music is all about,” she says. “It changes when you change the context.”

The federal government argued that the prison farms weren’t training the men for future jobs as few left for agriculture, Brown says, but missed the point on the joy of achievement and learning empathy by caring for vulnerable animals.

He played “Amazing Grace” in the rain, accompanied by a bagpiper, during the battle to save the farms. It’s a scene in Til the Cows Come Home, a film about the battle to save the farms that has just been completed.

Director Lenny Epstein will be rolling out the film cross-country by mid-November.

While Brown wasn’t sure what to expect when he began the project, he got a pleasant surprise on his second visit.

“I was shocked at how much they had applied themselves.”

By singing, recording, songwriting, playing instruments and being part of a musical project the prisoners “were completely unencumbered by this dominant identity of criminal. Now, they were seeing what else is possible,” says Brown.

The cover photo for the album is a painting by Leonardo da Vinci of St. Jerome and a lion in a cave. Brown was struck by the photo on a trip to the Louvre and his research revealed that St. Jerome took a thorn out of the fierce beast’s paw because he saw it was in pain.

“They achieved equanimity and peace,” says Brown, “The men liked that. It became the central image of the project.”