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!
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.
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!
Geez it’s been so long since we did one of these we almost forgot the password to the WordPress account! Last time we spoke we were just about to release our cover of The Tragically Hip’s Blow At High Dough, which dropped on Spotify, AppleMusic and all the other platforms including our Bandcamp on the first of July. We’re thrilled with how it came out and we think it was pretty well-received but you can go have a listen for yourself if you haven’t already and let us know!
We want to thank everyone who came out to see us at the Brass Monkey on August 13th when we played with Black Water Brigade and Innerpiece, that was a hella good time! It was awesome to see so many faces we hadn’t seen in so long! We’ll be playing with Innerpiece again along with Enforcer and Inire at Mavericks on November 12th. Come on out and make some noise with us!
Let’s see, what else? More recently we headed down the 401 to the Overtime Sports Bar in Kingston on October 23rd where we joined Montreal’s Vinyl Hero to help celebrate Kingston doom metal band God Thorn’s CD release. It was our first time playing there and we had an absolute blast. What a cool venue, they literally have a UFC octagon flipped over on its side as a drum cage! We hope we can get back there soon. (We have some videos we’ll be posting here so check the Videos page often for updates!)
We also payed a new song in Kingston for the first time called Chaotique. We’re planning to book some time at Hillside Audio soon to record that and a couple of other tracks so be on the lookout for some new Wyntr in the not too distant future.
And that pretty much catches us up! Hope to see you all at Mavericks on November 12th and who knows where else after that – you all know how unpredictable Wyntr can be 😉
How the heck is everyone? Who’s looking forward to putting the parkas and boots away? Can we get a HELL YEAH!
Looks like we’re in the homestretch with the cold weather and warmer days are finally just around the proverbial corner. But even though spring is in the air, that doesn’t mean Wyntr’s going away anytime soon. With two Covid-safe shows – fingers crossed! – and some time in the studio coming up you might even say it’s a blizzard of activity! (See what we did there? ‘blizzard’ of activity? hehehe…)
So, to kick things off we’ll be recording some new songs – and one surprise – at Hillside Audio this week. It feels like forever since we last recorded and it’s going to be so much fun working with Cam Dunn again in his brand new digs. Did you know he even lets us bring our lamps? Not everyone gets to bring their own lamps, but he makes an exception for us because he just ‘gets’ us like that. If it all goes the way we think it will we should have some new music to show you before summertime hits.
We want to underline that these are Covid-safe shows. Covid safety protocols will be in place, with limited attendance, social distancing, and sanitization norms recommended by Ottawa Public Health in effect. There’s a light at the end of the tunnel but we recognize that we’re not quite there yet and we want everyone to feel safe, healthy and happy. If you can’t make it out, check out the events pages for these shows on our Facebook for live-streaming details.
We really can’t wait to get loud with you all again, and we will. Stay the course. Keep doing the things. Stay safe. Brighter days are coming, and in all the ways that matter.
We had just written this one the last time we were at Hillside Audio. We had plans to release it in conjunction with a gig at some point. When the pandemic made that impossible we just put it aside for what we thought would be a short time until we could get back to playing live gigs. Now that that’s on the horizon, we decided we would just release the song now rather than tie it to a show that may or may not get cancelled due to events out of everyone’s control.
It was inevitable that the events of the past year would play heavily on the themes of the music we were writing, as it was, we think, for most artists. This music is definitely a product of its time. Get it at your favorite platform right now!
We hope you enjoy the song. Please help us spread it around by sharing it on your socials and telling all your friends. We can’t wait to be able to play this one for you real soon!
Wyntr live at Mavericks Bar, downtown Ottawa, September 11, 2020
Hey! How the hell are ya’s!
We finally got a chance to hit a stage again back on September 11th and it felt fantastic! We got the call from our buds at PandaMonium Promotions to join Scepter, Eve of Uprise, and Feed After Midnitefor the very first show at the newly renovated Mavericks Bar in downtown Ottawa and we jumped at the chance. There were some interesting challenges to deal with regarding Ottawa Public Health COVID restrictions but Brad Lake and his team worked overtime with the new management at Mavericks and got it all sorted out.
The show went incredibly well and we had an absolute blast! Huge thanks to everyone that came out, you made the evening a total success. We even got bragging rights for being the very first band to play in the re-opened venue – our sound-check was the first live music to flow through the new PA. It’s the little things…
The show was recorded by Cameron Dunn at Hillside Audio, and the recordings sound SO damn good! (It’s Cam, so of course they do). Stay tuned, we might even release a few live tracks from it, just because 🙂
Speaking of recordings, we’ve also been busy with Cam at his Hillside Audio studio recording the bed tracks for our next EP. These are killer tracks and we can’t wait to share them with you. We expect to finish up the vocals over the next few weeks and hopefully have a release ready for the holidays…fingers crossed!
On a side note, our recent single Bleed (available now on Spotify and Apple Music) will be on that EP, and we’ve sent a copy of it to the local radio station that says they support local bands, but so far we’re just getting crickets. SOOO… we have a big ask: we need you all to remind them of their mission, so to speak. Text, email, or phone in your requests for Bleed by Wyntr! We’re not naming names but you all know exactly what to do hehehe…..
Oh…one more thing: We’re ecstatic to be back at the Brass Monkey on October 23rd with our pals in Hard Labour, Feed After Midnite, and Finely Tuned Elephant for PandaMonium Promotions’ COVID SHOW #4. TIckets are available online – just head over to the PandaMonium’s COVID SHOW #4 event page on Facebook and have at it! There is limited seating available due to COVID restrictions so get yours quick! The event will also be live streamed and we’ll have more details on that soon on our Facebook and Instagram pages.
That’s it for now. See you on the 23rd at the Brass Monkey!
It’s 2020, and in order to get noticed in today’s busy digital world, you have to go high-tech. It isn’t always easy and not everyone just ‘gets’ this stuff, so we’re here to help. Check out this cool video where Bob explains some of the technology behind our new single ‘Bleed’ – available on all the digital platforms on August 13th!
It’s been a long road. Way back in March of 2018 we made our way to Hillside Audio in Ottawa to record some tracks. It was a bit of an uncertain time for us. We were excited to start working on our debut EP but we didn’t have a vocalist at the time, so the recordings would have to remain as instrumental bed tracks until we found one.
Enter Will Andrade. Will came on board that summer and started working on putting vocals down on the tracks. Through the fall and winter of 2018 we had a busy gig and rehearsal schedule and the project was temporarily put on the back burner. We finally got back to recording in the summer of 2019, getting Will’s vocals down on a few tracks, but we ended up parting ways with Will in the fall of 2019 so the EP project was back on hold yet again while we figured out how to move forward.
That’s when Ryan Conway decided (with some friendly urging) that he’d step up to the plate and took on the task of vocals on top of his guitar duties. It was a perfect fit. We spent the November and December of 2019 re-recording all the vocals – with the exception of Ryde. We felt that Will was big part of the band during a period of growth for us and it was important to us that we acknowledge that. As a result the version of Ryde that appears on the EP is the original vocal that Will recorded back in 2018.
We spent January mixing and mastering the EP and we can FINALLY say….IT’S DONE! Check out the tracks on the Music page (they’re all there!). The EP is making its way to the major online stores and should be available on Spotify, Apple Music/iTunes, Google Play and all the others shortly.
We hope you enjoy the music, it’s been a long time coming! There will be a limited run of physical CDs available in the near future as well…stay tuned!
Wyntr - Hard Rock from Ottawa 