Monica Walsh Monica Walsh is an actor, writer and singer from St. John’s. Monica has been singing since she was a child, raised in the Newfoundland folk song tradition. In 2016, Monica began to participate in the RPM challenge, an international song writing and recording challenge that now has its roots in NL. She has created RPM records every year since then, and is currently recording her first EP. She mixes her background of folk singing with her passion for songwriting and creates sweet songs. Monica is currently collecting folk songs when she can and learning the art of audio recording and editing.
Jordan Young – aka GreyJay – (he/him) – Producer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist session musician and band leader – Jordan has performed live with over 30 groups and appeared on dozens of Canadian recordings. Young’s most recent release of original compositions, GreyJay – Homesalt, is an album of intricate fingerstyle acoustic guitar music. The collection features cowrites, “Homesalt” with Kelsey Arsenault and “Super!Pink!Moon!” with Adam Baxter. In 2022, Jordan produced Evelyn Jess’s debut album, Bare Bones and the follow-up companion live album and concert video, Bare Bones LIVE. Evelyn Jess and band went on to be 3 x nominated MusicNL Folk Artist of the Year in 2022, 2023 & 2024. In 2025, Young will begin work on a new solo record, GreyJay – There Are No Words, a full-length studio album of instrumental duets with some of Newfoundland’s favourite fiddlers, pickers and pianists.
For 50 years Morgan Davis has been playing the blues, travelling across Canada, the U.S. and Europe. His performances draw from a lifelong study of the rich tradition of country blues, re-interpreting songs of the 1920s and 30s on electric instruments. His original compositions are infused with wit and a good dose of humor.
Originally from Detroit MI, Morgan Davis grew up listening to a rich variety of rhythm and blues, rock and roll, and the emergence of the Motown sound. The music of Jimmy Reed, Ike and Tina Turner, Chuck Berry and Fats Domino was in the air, emanating from car radios and jukeboxes. In 1962 his family relocated to southern California, where Davis found the preponderance of surf music unappealing. He discovered Bob Dylan, whose music introduced him to Woody Guthrie, Leadbelly, Pete Seeger and Blind Lemon Jefferson. The psychedelic era ushered in bands like Jimi Hendrix and Cream, he attended concerts by the Doors, Grateful Dead, Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, Buffalo Springfield, Mothers of Invention and the Electric Flag. Davis began to play guitar at 16 years of age.
Graduating from high school in 1965, Davis enrolled in Long Beach State College, where he became active in the campus anti-war movement as well as SDS. Being of draft age and refusing his 2-S student deferment, he made the choice to remove himself from the U.S. war machine and move to Canada. He settled in Toronto, which he happily found to be a city on the circuit of the great Chicago blues bands, and a rich musical education began by watching Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, Buddy Guy and Junior Wells. Davis also had the opportunity to see and meet many great country blues players – John Hammond, Son House, Booker White, and Johnny Shines.
After a brief stint teaching junior high school, Davis began his musical career while residing at Rochdale College, Toronto’s high rise mecca for artists . Opportunities to jam with other players were frequent, and Davis happily immersed himself in music until he began to get the occaisional gig, and he soon found himself in a band called the Rhythm Rockets, which played a variety of vintage rock and roll, country and blues. He began touring, eventually forming his own blues band, the Knights of the Mystic Sea.
Over his five decade career Davis has opened the show for Willie Dixon, Albert King, John Hammond, John Lee Hooker and Albert Collins. He has jammed with Muddy Waters, James Cotton and Johnny Shines. He has backed up Sunnyland Slim, Snooky Pryor, Hubert Sumlin, Willie “Big Eyes” Smith and Dr. John.
Davis has released two 45 RPM records, two LPs, and nine CDs. His songwriting talent received wide recognition when Colin James covered his searing ballad, “Why’d You Lie?”
For the past 20 years he has made his home in Lunenburg County, Nova Scotia. Davis performs solo, playing traditional and original blues on electric guitars and his three string cigar-box guitar. Still a road-addicted touring musician, Davis averaged 200 days a year on the road…..until the sudden intrusion of the worldwide Coronavirus pandemic.
…he hopes to be playing the blues until he drops.
On their fifth studio album, From Nowhere, Mo Kenney embraces the textures of ambiguity and the rich blur of being, failing, and becoming. As they shift through lush arrangements that touch on dreamy folk, sparse alt-country, and warm, hazed-out lo-fi pop, everything is up for interpretation and nothing is fixed. In their lyrics, Kenney opts instead to defy definition, making room for non-linear and fragmentary sentiments that challenge their own feelings about personal growth, acknowledge the slippery and shadowy nature of memory, and build love songs that conjure the bonds of friendship just as much as they hint at romance.
They evade easiness right from the start in the glowing chorus of opening track “Bad Times,” admitting, over sparse piano and despite TK years of sobriety: “I know it ain’t right, but I miss the bad times sometimes.”
“I sort of thought that getting sober was going to fix all my problems with relationships, and then I would just be fine,” Kenney laughs. “Drinking was causing all the issues I was having, but it was just the tip of the iceberg; quitting made all my problems more clear but didn’t resolve any of them.”
Kenney’s subsequent investigations into the root causes of their interpersonal dramas obscured nearly as much as they revealed, encouraging acceptance but also emphasizing the frequently frustrating uncertainty and temporality of things. From Nowhere occupies that liminal and trepidatious time when one is compelled to move but unsure where they might be headed. The driving “Evening Dream” has all the hallmarks of a post-summer come-down as Kenney reminisces about the nebulous feelings of flings: “Bathing in the pale green light, no thought of what goes on outside,” they sing. “No thought of what it all might mean, it doesn’t have to meet a thing.” On the darker sounding “Signs of Life,” they address an unbearable and obscure fissure; with the title track, they recall a loss of innocence in idyllic rural Nova Scotia, mixing sun-kissed organ with cryptic, unsettling choruses.
With the stark and devastating pairing of “Honey Come Home” and “Self Doubt,” Kenney makes it clear that there’s no glory or revelation in sitting with your feelings. While the former distills the loneliness and alienation of a partner’s absence, the latter finds Kenney struggling with the crippling second-guessing that can accompany certain acute kinds of clarity as they barely raise their voice above a whisper in what sounds like the saddest honky-tonk on Earth. Through the hazy atmospheres of “That’s Not Me,” they conjure a slow motion crawl through a dim club and question their identity. And the similarly unhurried “With You” delivers a crushing post-mortem about a relationship that, despite its sweetness, just didn’t work.
From Nowhere’s intimate subject matter was handled with deft hands by some of Keney’s nearest and dearest collaborators—Joel Plaskett, Rose Cousins, Victoria Cameron, Siobhan Martin, and Jordan Murphy—and recorded, mixed, and engineered by Thomas Stajcer at Plaskett’s Fang Studios in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia.
In contrast to its heavy predecessors, the airy “Love You Better” offers a featherweight finale to From Nowhere; in earthy reverie, Kenney acknowledges their past failures and that they’re not always going to get it right, but resolves to do the only thing they can: keep trying. “Staring at the ceiling, trying to find the meaning,” they sing over eddying acoustic guitar. “Put it all together; I will love you better.”
Monica Walsh is an actor, writer, producer and singer. She has appeared in over 20 films, 15 theatre productions, and teaches theatre regularly. Monica is artistic director of Kanutu Theatre, which she founded in 2011 to produce an annual festival of Anton Chekhov’s comedies (2011-2014) She holds a BA in English Drama/ Russian Literature from Memorial University, as well as a diploma in Performance and Communications Media. In 2015, Monica founded “Scene, and Blurred” an open mic performance series for writers, actors and performance artists. These open mics have taken her on the road to Ontario, Alberta and Quebec. Monica has been published in the Newfoundland Quarterly and The Newfoundland Herald, and in 2017 she wrote and starred in the film Lamenting Pluto, soon to be screened at select film festivals.
Mick Davis is a Canadian singer-songwriter & founder of The Novaks. A twenty-five year veteran of performing, record-making, & touring, Mick’s music trek boasts of alliances with Steve Van Zandt & opening dates with KISS. Mick is the recipient of numerous MusicNL & ECMA awards. He lives in St. John’s, NL.
Mick’s solo outfit, Thin Love, features singer-songwriter Jill Porter, bassist Craig Follett (The Once), and percussionist Allan Brake (Ennis Sisters). They are the recipients of MusicNL’s Rock Artist of the Year Award, 2018.
The band’s latest album, Garbage Street, arrives May 2024.
Maryna Krut is the world’s first soul bandurist artist, which combines incredible vocals with the traditional Ukrainian folk instrument, the bandura.
Maryna was a finalist in the national selection for Eurovision in 2020 and 2023, and also a finalist in TV shows such as The Voice and X-Factor. She has performed at a variety of events, from official receptions such as the Edinburgh International Culture Summit, to bomb shelters to uplift Ukrainian citizens, hospitals, and frontline cities to support Ukrainian soldiers by playing traditional Ukrainian folk songs.
When Matt Andersen steps on stage, he brings a lifetime of music to every note he plays. His latest album, The Hammer & The Rose, is a veritable garden of heart; a (mostly) delicate collection of tender folk and stirring soul numbers that find the New Brunswick-born songwriter thoughtfully tending to the most important things in life. Andersen’s stage presence is informed by decades of cutting his teeth in dusty clubs, dim-lit bars, and grand theatres all over the world, delivering moving performances that run the gamut from intimate to wall-shaking. In the studio, he’s always brought the same attention to detail and commitment to craft as he has to his live show, and the result – a multi-faceted and poignant body of work – has led him to amass over 33 million streams on Spotify and 30 million views on YouTube.
In addition to headlining major festivals, clubs and theatres throughout North America, Europe, and Australia, he has shared the stage and toured with Marcus King, Beth Hart, Marty Stuart, Greg Allman, Tedeschi Trucks Band, Randy Bachman, Serena Ryder, Tab Benoit, and more.
Andersen nabbed the 2013 and 2016 European Blues Awards for Best Solo/Acoustic Act, was the first ever Canadian to take home top honours in the solo category at the 2010 International Blues Challenge in Memphis, won the CIMA Road Gold award in 2015, and has won multiple Maple Blues Awards. Matt Andersen & The Big Bottle of Joy was nominated for a Juno Award in 2024.
Since releasing his debut album Ballads in 2010, Matthew Byrne has established himself as one of Canada’s foremost traditional singers. His rich and powerful vocals, refined guitar style, and compelling interpretations of unique traditional songs have made him a favourite of folk audiences at home in Newfoundland and abroad. After a long hiatus from the studio and the road, Byrne releases his 4th studio album, Stealing Time. This project brought Byrne to Yellow Arch Studios in Sheffield, UK, where he teamed up with folk legend Martin Simpson as producer. The album features instrumentation from some of the finest musicians on the English folk scene, including Nancy Kerr, Andy Cutting, and Liz Hanks.
Violinist and fiddler Maria Cherwick enjoys a diverse career, from symphony orchestras, to touring internationally with her Ukrainian speed-folk band, The Kubasonics. Twice named MusicNL “Side Musician of the Year” as well as “Celtic/Traditional Artist of the Year”, Maria maintains a busy performing schedule, dividing her time between several country, folk and bluegrass bands, and is highly sought after as a session musician.
In the winter of 2023, Maria assembled her band Jockey Special, a “supergroup” of some of Newfoundland’s finest musicians, including Duane Andrews (Swinging Belles), Aaron Collis (Rum Ragged/Dardanelles), Josh Ward (Hey Rosetta!), Andrew Dale (The Once) and Darren Browne (The Burning Hell/Kubasonics). Combining elements of Newfoundland, Ukrainian, and classical music with Maria’s original tunes, Jockey Special gathered to record their self-titled album live off the floor. The unparalleled level of musicianship in this group brings a fresh and unique sound to traditional music!
