Oh My Darling performs on Stage 5 at the Vancouver Folk Music Festival, Saturday, July 19, 6:40 p.m. For more info go to thefestival.bc.ca.
Classic Country, Appalachian Old Time, Kentucky bluegrass and Francophone Métis, are all traditional influences of the quartet Oh My Darling, but there may be more lingering within their eclectic music.
"The rest of them I'm going to let the audience decide because there's an uncategorized sound that we have that sort of makes it its own I think," says Vanessa Kuzina, guitarist.
The band, including Kuzina, Allison De Groot, Hannah Read and Natalie Bohrn, is bringing their signature style to the Vancouver Folk Music Festival from July 18 to 20 at Jericho Beach Park, weaving together the sounds of guitar, claw-hammer banjo, which is a particular style of strumming used in American old-time music, fiddle and upright bass, respectively. Bohrn is filling in for the band's regular upright bass player, Marie-Josée Dandeneau for the festival. The band also works regularly with fiddler Rachel Baiman.
"It's funny we kind of joke about all of our different musical influences and how it's kind of surprising in some ways that we came together and formed a band," says Kuzina. "And it did take us a little while to find that balance
between everybody's inspirations and to make something, a sound that we all really loved and that made sense and that's really resonated with each of us as well as our fan base."
The band, whose name originates from the American western folk ballad, 'Oh My Darling, Clementine,'-"we wanted a name that spoke to our genre and influenced as well as being female without saying 'the something girls or ladies or sisters,' " says Kuzina - found their writing groove starting on their previous album, released in 2011.
"The writing on the Sweet Nostalgia album was one that happened," says Kuzina. "It was like we found this balance between our love of old time and traditional music, as well as our keen interests and love for writing new material. So that's sort of when that happened."
Kuzina says that although she started off as the main songwriter, the band has evolved over the years and now everyone writes, "which is a really great thing for the group."
Oh My Darling's most recent album, Venez Danser, released in 2012, was done completely in French, expanding on the band's previous French material.
"We always had some French material in our repertoire from our very first show," says Kuzina, of their performance at Festival du Voyageur, a local winter festival in Winnipeg that celebrates both the Francophone and Métis cultures. "So there's always been an audience for us for that and then we also found that there was a lot of traditional music in French that really just blended so beautifully with the other sounds that we love, so like traditional Cajun and Acadian sounds all of a sudden kind of worked with everything we were doing."
But the band's main inspiration for an all-French album was their Francophone fan base, she says.
"We wanted to give something back to them for all of the support that we've had from our French community in Winnipeg as
well as across Canada and even overseas in France, so it's been wonderful."
Kuzina says some of the music on the album is traditional while some of it is original and the response they have received has been great, despite some hurdles.
"Quebec is kind of notoriously a difficult market to crack into, particularly being French from outside of Quebec, for some reason, is a difficult thing. There's a really strong culture there and strong musical culture there, so it takes a little while for people to warm up to what's happening elsewhere, which is okay it just means that we had to try a little harder," says Kuzina laughing. "So we spent a little more time in Quebec and got to know some great players there and learn some of the traditional Quebecois music as well. And then in France it was the same sort of thing, they really found it intriguing the dialect that we speak from Manitoba and the accent that we have from Manitoba and the stories that we have, the French stories. It's been a really nice way to share that tradition."
Despite having a fan base that ranges from Winnipeg to France, performing at the Canada Day celebrations at Trafalgar Square in London, England and opening for acts such as Blue Rodeo and Tegan and Sara, the band remains humble.
"I feel like we have a lot to be grateful for and the experiences we've had have surpassed our wildest dreams in a lot of ways," says Kuzina. "I think there's no reason to not be humble for what we have, it's a really beautiful thing to be able to play music and have people come and share that with you. I really think its that interaction with the people
that makes it just the best thing ever."
Connecting with the audience and sharing their music with people is also the best part of performing, says Kuzina.
"It makes me emotional even just to talk about it. Sometimes we get the opportunity to talk with people afterwards and they'll share a story with you on how a song or your performance affected them and sometimes you just get to feel that vibe from them," she says. "I would say that's my favorite part of performing is that interaction that you get with other people."
The band is looking forward to playing at the Vancouver Folk Music Festival, says Kuzina, a venue they have never played before but have only heard great things about.
Every venue for them has been very different from the next, she says, whether it's a little bar in small town Alberta or Trafalgar Square. But music festivals have their own unique quality that seems to resonate with the band.
"The festivals in particular all have their own charm to them. I think it differs in a way that there's of course the natural element to it that you're outside, you're not only interacting with the people and with each other onstage, but also with the elements that are around you and kind of that vibe that you get," says Kuzina. "Everybody's so happy at festivals and so are all the performers, so it's a really joyful experience to play festivals. I think Vancouver will be a good example of that."
The band is also playing at the Summer Kick Festival in Golden, B.C. on Aug. 13, as well as the Salmon Arm Roots and Blues Festival, Aug. 15 and 17. After that, Kuzina says the band is "going to take a bit of a breather."
"Allison is studying at the Berklee College of Music, so she'll be back at school in Boston in the fall," she says. "And we all have other little projects and things on the go too so I think we're going to take a little breather, do some writing and see what unfolds after that."
