Riverfest is back again this Monday, with ourselves and transatlantic duo C Joynes (guitar, Cambridge, UK) and Mike Gangloff (fiddle, Southwest Virginia, USA) playing.
Lucky for us, these two compelling sonic explorers are making a stop on their Canadian tour to play Riverfest. Come out to hear some jaunty frolics, improvisation, with touches of drone, psychedelia and other fun stuff in the gorgeous ambience of Pangishimo Park overlooking the river.
PANGISHIMO PARK is a new-ish gem of a lookout point between Chaudière/Akikodjiwan waterfall and the War Museum. Here’s shot of how things can look there:
We’re playing a concert Thursday, February 8, 8pm at House of Targ!
Targ has perogies & pinball, Scrip Issue will bring their shoegaze punk (spotify), Preloved will serve up beautiful homemade dreampop (bandcamp), and bring the blackgrass, of course.
In particular, if you like watching us fight with pedals – and sometimes produce wild and beautiful sounds –this’ll probably be the show for you.
For a couple of years now, we’ve been hosting a community jam/sing-along once a month in Ottawa.
The next one will be Sunday March 23 (2025!) at 7pm at EP Cafe, 139 Bank St, just a few blocks south of Parliament.
This semi-secret hootenanny is informal and not performance-orientated or particularly artsy – we just sing and play songs together as a group. Bring an instrument or just your voice and enthusiasm. You don’t need to consider yourself a musician to come, just someone who enjoys music. We pick songs on the spot out of a songbooklet, which has familiar folk/rock/pop/country and friendly traditional folks songs. You’re also welcome to bring songs to share.
It’s “semi-secret,” in that we don’t usually talk about it on social media or spend a bunch of time promoting it like a regular concert. We just invite friends and pick which week of the month to do it with whoever shows up the month before.
If you’re reading this, you’re now in on the secret – and officially invited to come!
We’ll be playing two sets this weekend on short notice.
First, we’re opening for Benj Rowland at 9pm, this Friday Oct 6 at Irene’s Pub, 885 Bank St.
Tickets are $15 in advance on Ticket Tailor and $20 at the door.
If you’re unfamiliar, Benj has been the main driving force behind the Mayhemingways and has recently released a great album, Community Garden, under his own name. If you like your folk to be a little quirky and to feature offbeat instruments and effects (and if you don’t, why are you signed up for this list?), you’ll enjoy Benj’ live show. He’s been a bit of an inspiration for us, so we’re stocked to have been asked a little last minute to join the bill.
We’re also gonna play a set starting at 11am at the Art Market organized by our pals at the Arlington Five coffeeshop (5 Arlington Ave, just off Bank St) .
Ethan & Maddy will be playing at 1pm, so the music alone – nevermind the art – should be more than enough to guarranttee a good time. If we’re lucky, there will be some crossover between their songs and ours.
If it’s raining, the music will be inside the the Arlington Five coffeeshop.
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)
Christmas music’s weird. In a way, it’s just about the only remaining music in our culture that acts as that musical commons we drone on about. (Nobody really knows or cares who wrote or first recorded any carol or Xmas song, yet we all kind of know them and could probably sing along.) There’s loads of gorgeous and fun carols – and yet somehow Christmas is a season when we’re mostly likely to get subjected to aggressively schmaltz and annoying music. (It’s like commercialism ruins everything good, or something?) Anyways, making these recordings is our tiny “be the change” act, and we hope it brings a little more beauty and a little less schmaltz into your holiday season.
Just like its music, Christmas itself can be an annoying and/or bad time for some folk. If that’s you, we see you and care! However the holiday season goes for you, we wish you festive times in there too, with genuine warmth, peace, and things you love.
In this quiet season of long, cold nights we’re grateful for all you lovely people we’ve met through music and everyone who’s listened and played and sung with us. Here’s to lots more music making in the new year.
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!
We’re going to playing Libby & Cal’s album release this Hallowe’en weekend – October 29 – it’s gonna be great spooky fun. There will be candy, there will be prizes for best costumes… also: music.
All the fun details & tickets magically appear by going to bit.ly/libbycal.
If you wander over to Libby Hortop on Faceborg, she’s been posting about creating an album of alternative, non-prescriptive love songs, the joys and challenges of recording an autoharp, and other genuinely interesting things.
Traditional folksongs and our set will do a good job warning of the dangers of conventional, possessive love – also, how to avoid being misled by a demon lover (look, forewarned is forearmed). Libby & Cal’s set and album will point to more open and diverse ways of loving.
Blackgrass 