IN CONCERT
What: Ocie Elliott with Davers and Fintan
When: Sunday Feb. 10, 8 p.m. (doors at 7)
Where: Upstairs Cabaret, #15 Bastion Sq.
Tickets: $15 at ticketrocket.co, the Ticket Rocket box office (1050 Meares St.), or Lyle’s Place
Jon Middleton and Sierra Lundy were acquainted with each other through mutual friends before a version of Elton John’s Rocket Man finally drew them together as a couple three years ago. Not only did the song open the door to their relationship, it also served as the glue in a musical bond that has grown legs during the past year-and-a-half under the indie folk moniker Ocie Elliott.
“I was working in a café on Salt Spring Island and he came in to play a solo show,” Lundy said of the first time she met Middleton. “I was so mesmerized [by the song] I put a caesar garnish on a mojito by accident.”
Middleton is known to local audiences as one half of Victoria folk-rock favourites Jon and Roy, but he also performs on his own as a singer-songwriter. Shows under his own name have ebbed in the past year-and-a-half, however, leaving room for Ocie Elliott to develop its acoustic alchemy. The project (with Lundy on vocals and Middleton on vocals and guitar) found an audience almost immediately. Following the release of their debut EP last October, the band scored several triumphs both online and onstage. The end result is a recording contract with Nettwerk Records (home to Great Lake Swimmers and Passenger), which released Ocie Elliott’s debut album, We Fall In, today.
The Victoria-based duo has accomplished more in its 18 months together than acts with years of experience could hope to muster, from shows with Mason Jennings, Joshua Hyslop and Current Swell to dates in both Europe and the United States. Though they have been a couple for eight years, the experience of singing with Middleton still feels new for Lundy. “We became friends and started singing together about a year later — after getting peer-pressured by my sister Danica and my good friend Sara into playing a ‘private show’ for them.”
“It kind of felt like a scenario straight out of middle school when your friends pressure you to say hi to your crush for the first time.”
During its infancy, Ocie Elliott found a unique means through which to release its music to listeners: A series of live acoustic videos shot by Middleton and Lundy from the comfort of their vehicle, a 2001 Honda CR-V the couple has since renamed Dad. They tried several approaches, including shooting a video amid the forests of Squamish, but something about the SUV’s interior made for a perfect fit, Lundy said.
“As many musicians living in cities know, it’s very hard to find a place to practice without getting noise complaints or feeling held back. So we took the CR-V to a little spot down by the water and started practising in it, and discovered how magical the acoustics sounded in there.”
Cover songs filmed in the car — ranging from Gillian Welch’s Look at Miss Ohio and Simon & Garfunkel’s The Boxer to Future Islands’s The Great Fire and Elliott Smith’s Between the Bars — introduced the singing talents of Middleton and Lundy to audiences over the Internet. The response was immediate, and Ocie Elliott quickly became a name to watch in the B.C. music community.
Though the couple has more on its plate than ever — including a month-long tour to promote We Fall In — the car videos will continue, Lundy said. “We’ve done other videos elsewhere as well, but nothing has come close to matching the intimacy you get with the CR-V, which I think our music needs [for listeners] to appreciate it fully. The acoustics in the CR-V are so organically well-rounded and self-contained, we can hear each other perfectly and so we tend to cover songs that demand that sort of listening, especially ones that have intricate harmonies.”
Ocie Elliott’s CD-release trek through Western Canada gets underway Friday night (Feb. 8) with the first of two shows at The Maq Hotel in Tofino. The tour stops at Victoria’s Upstairs Cabaret with Fintan O’Briena and Davers Lang of Current Swell on Sunday (Feb. 10), followed by dates through the end of February in Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba.
Lundy loves being on the road, as her in-concert collaborations with Middleton constantly offer new boundaries to push.
“I think each song needs its own approach according to its unique set of needs. Sometimes I barely want to touch a song because Jon’s voice alone with an acoustic guitar can be so hauntingly beautiful. But some songs feel like they need a lot to achieve what we’re after. That could involve playing around with how we lay our voices on top of each other, or maybe it means one of us drops out for a verse or even just for a word or two. In some cases we get two melodies paralleling each other as opposed to a melody with a harmony. It’s like taking film photos with a pinhole camera where you only have one or two settings to work with, so you have to get creative.”
