Author: Chrissy Steinbock

Feb 14, 2023: An Anti-Valentine’s Day Show/Get Together

If you find Valentine’s Day to be a) icky b) annoying c) a scam or d) all of the above, you’re welcome to come join us for an Anti-Valentine’s Day Show/Get Together this year.

We share your aversion to this rather weird holiday where you’re supposed to prove your love by buying stuff and where the “love” that’s idealized is a really specific, exclusive kind. It’s not that we don’t believe in love; it’s just that there’s so much more than one kind of emotional attachment or one relational ideal to celebrate. If you feel skeptical or excluded by V-Day, consider this an antidote, a show/get together featuring music from us and Libby & Cal.

Wychwood, the world’s first blackgrass band are excited to play a bunch of old songs about rejecting or escaping conventional romance (sometimes tragically but more often happily). 

Libby & Cal, purveyors of jangly strings and smooth harmonies, will play songs about alternative love. In response to popular lyrics about self-sacrifice and unrealistic devotion, their new album proposes something different: a step off the relationship escalator. There are many roads to Happy Ever After and marriage is only one possibility. You can listen to Libby & Cal’s album “If You’ve Given Up on Love then Let’s Call it Something Else” on Bandcamp, 

When: Tuesday February 14, 2023
When exactly:  Doors 7:30pm~ Show 8pm
Where: Avant-Garde Bar ~ 135 Besserer St.

Tickets: $20 in advance on eventbrite or at the door
$15 in advance if paying direct via e-transfer to info@wychwood.xyz

No one turned away. In other words, Pay-what-you-can options are available (send an email to info@wychwood.xyz or direct message us on socials to arrange a PWYC ticket)

 

20.11.2022: You’re invited to the release party for Blackgrass Harvest

There’s a party coming up to celebrate the release of Wychwood’s first “proper” album and you’re invited. Come celebrate our new Blackgrass Harvest album with a combination concert and listening party. We’ll be playing songs from the album with an assortment of guest musicians including Oddeline, David Jackson (Day of Niagara, IMOO), Haley Wolk (Rubber Roses), Justin Dickie (Daipth, Obsidian Will) and Jack Pyl.

There will also be some trippy videos and at least one game to keep things interesting. It should be a good time.

(And just imagine – if you come, you’ll be able to tell your grandchildren “I went to the album release for the first proper blackgrass album ever made!”)

When: Sunday November 20

What time though?: Doors 7:30pm, start 8pm

Where: Spark Beer – 702 Somerset St. W. It’s cute, comfy, and conveniently located in Chinatown

Tickets: $15 in advance, $20 at the door
(Pay-what-you-can at the door or in advance by sending an email to info@wychwood.xyz or direct message us on socials.)

Accessibility note
There’s one 6-inch step to get into Spark (and our attempts to borrow a stopgap ramp haven’t paid off, sorry) and a couple doors that aren’t automatic. The bathroom also isn’t accessible.

Covid note
As much as well want to pretend that the pandemic’s over, there are more people in the hospital in Ottawa with covid than any other autumn. If you want to come to this and haven’t got your booster yet, please do so! Not to be melodramatic but we don’t want anyone to die or be debilitated because of a fun time celebrating a little Bandcamp album. Let’s take reasonable precautions, look out for our neighbours, and have fun living life.

About Blackgrass Harvest

Although we have a soft spot for the raw live recordings and demos we’ve shared to date, Blackgrass Harvest is truly a milestone. It’s the first well-recorded album we’ve put out, in many ways our first real album, and the first fully realized demonstration of this “blackgrass” idea that’s motivated Wychwood from the beginning. 

Blackgrass Harvest is an album of mostly dark traditional folk songs played mostly acoustically, but blending in some black metal, ambient, drone and noise music, samples, and other experiments. It was recorded in Tim’s bedroom between the 2nd and 7th wave of the pandemic.

Blackgrass Harvest is out on Bandcamp on 20.11.2022
Have a listen at wychwood.bandcamp.com (samples before that date and the full thing after).

We look forward to sharing these sounds and sharing the evening with you!