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ON STAGE
What: Ocie Elliott with Ashleigh Ball
Where: McPherson Playhouse, 3 Centennial Sq.
When: Saturday, Nov. 6, 7 p.m.
Tickets: Sold-out
Few artists can say they flourished during the pandemic, with venue closures, safety concerns and general malaise among the many factors working against the performing arts community.
Ocie Elliott is rare in that regard. The Victoria duo, real-life couple Jon Middleton and Sierra Lundy, have released music at a torrid pace during the past 18 months, beginning with the seven songs from their EP, In That Room. The album was released on March 20, 2020, just days into the inaugural provincial lockdown.
Middleton and Lundy had tour dates lined up to promote In That Room, but those were cancelled, in accordance with provincial health protocols. A European tour was also cancelled. With no concerts on the horizon, they began promoting singles from the album through their social media channels, eventually returning to the studio to record yet more new material.
Middleton said the band has released a new song every six weeks for the better part of the past two years, due in part to the positive working relationship with their label, Vancouver’s Nettwerk Records.
“We managed to maintain our writing and recording. In a way, that is what sustained during this time. Not being able to play shows has been rough, but we feel like we were still able to move forward musically. We had something to look forward to.”
Ocie Elliott will play its first show in more than five months Saturday, with a sold-out date at the McPherson Playhouse. The duo (who will be joined on several songs by bassist Esme John, who also plays in Middleton’s other project, Jon and Roy) has taken several weeks off from and writing recording, so the return to the stage will be a much-needed artistic reboot, according to Middleton.
“We had all these new songs, and we never had a chance to take them on the road.”
The couple has not played a concert since their six-show run at the Breakwater Cafe & Bistro in June, one of the few socially distanced venues that remained open and active through the pandemic. Being both a real-life couple and artistic entity meant they could move more freely than most groups, in terms of playing shows — though the make-up of the group was pandemic-friendly from its inception.
Lundy and Middleton came together as a unit in 2017, and quickly amassed a following online with a unique series of live music video shot from inside of their vehicle, a 2001 Honda CR-V. The couple has continued to release live-to-video clips in unique spaces, mostly outside and in natural settings.
It has now become the couple’s preferred way of working, Middleton said. “When the pandemic hit, and everyone turned to livestreaming, we felt like we already had our thing — so we just did that. It wasn’t a transition for us, particularly.”
In That Room not seeing a proper release wasn’t as disappointing as it would have been had Ocie Elliott not been so active on the writing front, Middleton said. All told, the couple wrote and released four EPs of music between March 2020 and August 2021.
“We just kept going, knowing that we weren’t going to be able to play shows. Things have changed so much now with the Internet, we still felt like [the music] was getting out there. It wasn’t a huge letdown.”
The success of their upcoming shows has quelled any concerns they had over lost momentum. In addition to Saturday night's sold-out performance, Ocie Elliott has several ÎÚÑ»´«Ã½ and Alberta shows on the books in November, culminating with a performance at Vancouver’s Hollywood Theatre on Nov. 28, which is expected to be sold-out come showtime.
They will hit the East Coast in February and have been added as support to singer-songwriter Joshua Radin’s gigs in Philadelphia and New York in March.
“We’ve had a couple of months to see other bands go out on the road, and we’vce been following what has been happening [with concerts] in the U.K., Europe, and the U.S. With all of that already happening, it doesn’t feel like we’re braving any new territory. I think it’s going to feel pretty normal, once we get back into it. I thought it was going to feel super weird, and it was for a little bit, but that’s how it is now.”
