Greetings from Wyntr HQ. Boy are we ever excited! You might already know we just released our latest single The Ballad of Richard Guy and we couldn’t be happier with how it turned out. Don’t let the title’s tongue-in-cheek reference to our well-endowed mascot fool you; this is a love song. It says so right in the chorus. It’s available on your favourite platform right now, including Spotify and Apple Music. Check it out!
And what’s the point of a new track if we can’t play it for you! Looks like we’ll have lots of opportunities with a nice batch of shows lined up over the summer. Take a peek…
We’d love to see you at one (or more!) of these! You’re the best part of this and we really appreciate it. Thanks or the support, love you all and see you at a gig real soon!
We wrote Bleed back in 2021 for our first album Amps & Lamps. It’s one of our favourites and has become a staple of our live show. The kind of song you don’t mess with because it’s perfect as it is. Except…
Some time in the summer of 2022 we had the idea of trying something new – mixing an element of rap into one of our songs as an experiment. We talked about it a lot, trying to figure out how we were going to do this. Should we write a brand new song specifically for this? Or re-purpose an existing song? And who would do the rap?After a lot of back and forth we decided on Bleed as having a perfect backdrop for someone to rap over. Except for the small detail that none of us can rap. So we searched high and low for someone who could, and who would be down to do this experiment with us, and we finally hooked up with our good friend Renaissance from the band Ornate, who was more than willing and able to take up the challenge. And boy did he ever! After a couple of rehearsals – and one surprise live performance at Avant-Grade Bar in Ottawa – we had it. Bleed: The Remix was an actual thing. We booked some studio time with our producer Cam Dunn at Hillside Audio to record it and we had such a fun time we decided to make the video for the song using phone video we took while we were there . We think it turned out pretty good! Tell us if you agree!
But that’s not the only thing we did at Hillside that weekend. We recently wrote a brand new tune and recorded that one as well. It’s called The Ballad of Richard Guy and should be release for April 1st. Sit tight, we’re in the middle of planning the video for it and we’re pretty sure you won’t be disappointed.
We played our last show of 2022 at Lasso Live in Pembroke on November 26th and we’re already jonesing for the next one. And what a show it was! We got to join our friends in Black Water Brigade and Beyond Driven for an evening of shenanigans that, if you were there, you know what we’re talking about. We’re definitely doing that again.
Our next show will also be our first of 2023, on January 7th at Avant-Garde Bar in downtown Ottawa with Carissa, supported by Social Suicide and Pale Black Eyes. This one is special, all proceeds are being donated to Amethyst Ottawa Women’s Addiction Center. Please take minute or ten to check out their website and learn about the important work they’re doing. And as an added bonus we have a special surprise for you all that you do NOT want to miss! But you have to be at the show to see it…
To keep ourselves out of trouble between shows we’ve been keeping ourselves busy writing new music that we’ll be recording at the end of January with our main producer dude Cameron Dunn over at Hillside Audio. We can’t wait to be able to share that with you in the new year.
We also had the pleasure of working with the one and only Laura Collins for a photo shoot a couple of weeks ago. That was a ton of fun and the early sample pics we’ve seen so far look AMAZING! Like this one…
Photo: Laura Collins
Look for more here and on our socials soon!
We hope you all have a fantastic holiday and a kick-ass New Years and we look forward to seeing you all in 2023. It’s going to be a phenomenal year and we really want you all along for the ride. Umm, we mean Ryde.
Well that was something! We took a plunge in September and hit the road with our friends in Vinyl Hero, and man oh man what a road trip it was! We kicked things off in Ottawa on September 2 at Cafe Dekcuf where we were joined by Eve of Uprise. Then on September 9th we hit The Atria in Oshawa with Toronto’s Queens & Kings The following night we were at our home away from home – Overtime Sports Bar in Kingston with Versatile Rock. After that was done we came back home to Ottawa to headline a show at The Brass Monkey on the 24th with Innuendo, Scarecrowz, and The Dreaded Rebels. Here’s a few pics to the shenanigans!
📸: Virginia Maria Meeks📸: Virginia Maria Meeks📸: Virginia Maria Meeks📸: Virginia Maria MeeksPhoto: Christie Whitney
A week after that Ryan and Bob made their way to the Dawg & Gus Podcast studio in downtown Ottawa for an interview. Listen RIGHT HERE for a chat about our new mascot Dick Guy, the Ottawa live music scene, and all things Wyntr. That was a ton o’ fun!
Photo: Louise Senecal
But by far the coolest thing we did recently was to attend SuperKyle’s sledge hockey game in Ottawa this past weekend. SuperKyle is a member of Rock n Roll Road Trips Crew, that crazy gang from Ottawa that shows unwavering support to independent bands – to the point of jumping into their cars and following a few around on tour! We were honoured to have the road crew follow us to Oshawa and Kingston last month – you know you’re doing something right when the RTC follows you to your shows! It was awesome to hang out with them along with bits and pieces of Taming Sari, Sunday Riot Club, and Late Night Trouble. This may well become a regular thing. SuperKyle is an inspiration.
Hey everyone! We found this nice surprise from Mike Graham in our inbox the other day and we are absolutely thrilled to be able to share it here. “Steeples” LIVE from our first set at Summerdaze 2022. Check it!
Catch the shenanigans for yourself – there’s lot’s to choose from in September!
First off, we want to thank you all for the wonderful response to our Amps & Lamps CD. Huge hugs to everyone that came out to the CD release party at Cafe Dekcuf on June 25th, and much gratitude to everyone who bought a CD. YOU ALL FREAKING ROCK!!
Well, the dog days are upon us. It’s hot and sweaty and just perfect for an outdoor rock festival. There’s always plenty to choose from this time of year, because rock festivals go with the dog days like mustard with hot dogs and smiles with cotton candy. It’s just the way of things and it’s proper as f**k
We’re thrilled to be playing at our first outdoor festival on August 6 when we’ll be taking the stage at the White Water Rocks Summerdaze Festival in Westmeath, ON. Can you say stoked? Because we’re definitely stoked.
But the fun doesn’t end there! We teamed up with our friends in Vinyl Hero to play three dates for what we’re calling the 2022 Mini-Tour!
Amps & Lamps, our first full length CD, is just a little more than a month away from release. The songs are recorded and mixed. The album artwork is done. The release party is booked. Just the final spit and polish left to do and it’s a done deal. It’s a wonderful time and we couldn’t be more excited.
We’re looking at a June 3rd release on all the online stores and we’ll have the physical CDs shortly thereafter, just in time for our string of summer shows! It sure took a long time to get here. If we’d have had it our way the album would have been done and released much sooner but as everyone knows the last two years have been very consistent in smashing everyone’s plans.
The songs on the CD were recorded at Hillside Audio in Ottawa in the span of just over a year, with the first studio sessions going back to January 2021. We went back in during April 2021 and were finally able to finish up in March of this year. Engineered, mixed, and produced by the most excellent human Cameron Dunn, the album is a victory lap for us. It’s a concrete, tangible sign that we made it through the last two years with something constructive to show for it. Something that will last. Something to be proud of. And boy are we ever!
The songs capture a lot of the frustrations we all experienced over the last 24 months, but yet still have an element of hope, almost like we were craning our necks looking for the light at the end of the tunnel the whole time. We think you can feel it in the music. We hope you’ll agree!
We can’t wait to play these songs live for you. We’ll be back on stage in June, starting on the 18th in Kingston at one of our favourite spots on the planet, Overtime Sports Bar. The following week on June 25th we’re having the release party at Cafe Dekcuf in downtown Ottawa. We’ll be joined by our friends in Hot Jupiter, Trenchfoot, and Black Water Brigade.
We’ll also be playing at the White Water Rocks ‘Summerdaze’festival in Westmeath, Ontario in August and it’s a sure bet we’ll be adding more shows so stay tuned!
As many of you know, last week the Wyntr Facebook page was hacked and we lost all access to it. Even more disturbing is that it happened to a few Ottawa-based bands within a very short period on the same evening. It really felt…targeted. Needless to say we began navigating the process of trying to get it back but, sadly, we were unsuccessful. We do want to send a MASSIVE shoutout to our brothers in Rockin’ Engine (who themselves were one of these scammers’ victims that night) for going out of their way to try and find ways to help us out. We were thrilled when we learned they had regained control of their page with no damage done. They are amazing humans and you should all pause your reading here and go show them some love. It’s OK, we’ll refill our coffees in the meantime…
[…coffee machine gurgling noises over a background of the theme from Jeopardy…]
Cool, thanks for doing that, those guys deserve all the love. So, as we were saying, we ended up having to start over and make a brand new page. We paid WAY more attention to the security aspects this time. Of course it’s 2022 and you might be thinking we should have known better, and you’d be right. But in our defense the idea that a small-ish local rock band’s Facebook page would be considered an enticing target to steal never even crossed our minds. Lesson learned.
We’ll be adding back some of the old content to the page as we dig it up on our hard drives, along with our usual shenanigans just like we used to so be sure to go give it a like and follow!
PRO TIP: if it doesn’t say Wyntr – Hard Rock from Ottawa it isn’t us! If you see anything from a page that looks like ours but doesn’t have the ‘Hard Rock from Ottawa’ in the name, it’s the old page and you should take the opportunity to unlike it and unfollow it as it’s being run by scammers.
Now, in some more music-related news, in just a couple of weeks we’ll be back at Hillside Audio recording the last bits of our first full-length album. The new songs are off the scale good if we do say so ourselves – including another surprise cover. The plan is to release the album sometime during the summer and with a little luck get some shows in to support it. We all understand that’s not a guarantee but we’re staying positive…we’ll see how it goes.
Whatever ends up happening you know we’re going to want to tell you about it and this monthly blog is a great way to stay up to date on a lot of what we’re up to behind the scenes. We hope you come back and visit often so as not to miss anything!
Thanks for your continued support, we truly appreciate it and love you all. We’ll see you again, somewhere near, somewhen soon.
Helloooo all you wacky wonderful Wyntry wazoo-kickers! (and if ‘wazoo-kickers’ wasn’t an alternate expression of ‘ass-kickers’ before, it is now. We needed a ‘w’ word.)
We hope you’re having a safe and happy holiday. We know it sure isn’t easy under the circumstances but we hope you can make the best of it. We’re taking a little holiday time off ourselves, we figure it’s better to play it safe and not risk ruining anyone’s family gatherings. There will be plenty to do when the new year rolls around. And yes, we’re optimistic that it will be a GREAT year!
Looking back on 2021 (pandemic aside, of course) turns up some pretty cool milestones! Despite Covid restrictions and lockdowns, and a near total ban on live music for a good chunk of the year, we still managed to find creative ways to keep busy and productive. We hit the ground running in January with the release of our single Fool on all the platforms, and followed that up in February with Beautiful Disaster before dragging the gear to Hillside Audio to record three new tracks in March for the next batch of releases. (Incidentally, Beautiful Disaster was featured on Live 88.5’s Big Money Shot Spotlight and we got our very first airplay on local radio!)
Come April we had the new songs ready to go and we did something a little unusual by releasing the video for Door before releasing the actual single itself in early May. The month of May also saw another video release – the infamous Suicidal Squirrel video! That one even got an on-air mention at Rebel 101.7! It is rather funny, you really should go watch it you haven’t seen it yet. Or even if you have hehehe…
Jumping ahead to July, we released our cover of the Tragically Hip classic Blow at High Dough on Canada Day. Gord Downie was a passionate advocate for indigenous rights, and given the horrific discoveries of children buried in mass graves at several former residential schools we wanted to call attention to the Every Child Matters movement that was gathering momentum at the time. We have the song available on our Bandcamp and will donate every penny it makes to the Downie & Wenjack Foundation for Indigenous Reconciliation. Find out more about the foundation at downiewenjack.ca
By this time all the songs and videos we were able to release had been released, and live venue restrictions began to ease a little so it was time to go out and play all this material for people! Our first show back from the 2021 edition of the lockdowns was on August 13th at the Brass Monkey with Innerpiece and Black Water Brigade. On October 23rd we headed down to Kingston where we joined God Thorn and Vinyl Hero at Overtime Sports Bar, and we were thrilled to see a few familiar faces that had made the trip to Kingston to see us play. You know who you are and we can’t thank you enough. What a memorable show that was!
On November 12th we hooked up with our pals in Innerpiece again, along with long-time Ottawa faves Enforcer, for a raucous evening at Mavericks in downtown Ottawa**.** We played our last show of 2021 on November 26th a few blocks away at Avant-Garde Bar with Toronto’s Napoleon as well as Bristol Mines and Mod Unit from right here in Ottawa.
All in all it was actually a pretty good year! We got to play a few shows with some amazing bands and released a few songs we’re really happy with. Looking ahead to 2022, we’re going back to the studio in February. We’ll be working with our main dude Cameron Dunn at Hillside Audio again to record some new material and hopefully package it all up in our first full-length album sometime in the summer. Fingers crossed.
We want to thank all of you for your support and encouragement as we navigated the pandemic minefield. Thank you for coming to the shows, thank you for watching the videos, and for adding us to your playlists, thank you for buying the merch. It means the world to us and motivates us to continue bringing you the most kickass – umm, we mean kickwazoo music we know how to make. We wish each of you and your loved ones the best for the holidays and we look forward to seeing your screaming faces from up on a stage sometime in the new year!
Wyntr - Hard Rock from Ottawa 