The Heartaches Stringband

Well, what can we say friends? We had a couple of months break planned in early 2020 and ummm, you know. COVID. Pandemic. Lockdown.

We really hope you’ve been ok. Us Heartaches are hanging in, although we actually haven’t all been in the same room since the Before Times. Probably just like your life, everything for us is looking a little different these days (or A LOT different).

We (Martin & Amanda Lynn) have done a few fun live shows on our Heartaches Facebook page, and James (JamAnt) has done some live-streaming from his page too. We also were honoured to play in the Home County 46.5 workshops last summer. As he can, Uncle Dan has continued to play live shows at the venerable Richmond Tavern.

We’re coming out of our forced hibernation, though, to tell you we have something SUPER fun to share. Amanda Lynn, Martin & James recorded a set last week for The Aeolian’s Phoenix Sessions, and the show will be available on Friday, April 2nd by subscription. This historic hall is producing beautiful weekly shows (with no audience) and we are thrilled to be included in their important work, keeping us connected and supporting the arts in a very hard time.

You can find out how to subscribe at the link above. We had SUCH a great time being back in the old beauty; just walking in the door and seeing the familiar (masked!) faces of the sound crew was so good. You should know that Aeolian has a brand new sound system and we can’t say enough about how great it sounded. If you can, we encourage you to support all local arts organizations – we need them to be there for us when we can gather again!

Hoping to see you down the line!

Hello friends! It seems like only the other day that we had the pleasure of playing the Home County 2019 festival, but – wait? What’s that? Snow!?! Summer’s long gone now. But we’re back.

On November 20th, Martin and Amanda will be playing and singing their hearts out at the wonderful Acoustic Spotlight house concert series. This weekly series has been running for an incredible 11 years at the home of Christine Kelsey and John Broeze, 6 St. Patrick Street, London. Come on out and join us at this warm, welcoming place. We’re delighted that The Backseat Girls https://bit.ly/2NG8LPW will be playing an opening set at 8pm. We’ll be on at 9pm. PWYC.

Looking ahead to when the grass begins to grow again, The Heartaches are thrilled to be the special guests for a concert by the Karen Schuessler Singers (KSS) on May 30, 2020. We’ll be together for an evening of fabulous down-home music. KSS is one of London’s premier choirs – you don’t want to miss this one! For all the details, check out kssingers.com

Stay tuned for more shows in the meantime – and see you on down the trail!

Well, it seems Fall is slipping by us, and we’re entering into the season of holidays, sweet treats, frenzy and Christmas! We hope you might have time to join us this Saturday, when we will be playing at the Grand Opening of the Blackfriar’s Bridge.  For 143 years, this bridge has connected the lovely Blackfriars neighbourhood to downtown London – we are honoured to get to play music to celebrate the bridge reopening after being rebuilt!

There will be a gathering on the Blackfriars side of the bridge then a walk across the bridge to the downtown (east) side, where we’ll be set up and playing some fine tunes and songs. We will be playing around 12noon, and folks will start gathering about 10:30am. You can find more details here and here.

AND, we’re very excited to tell you that we’re returning to The Harvest Table in Melbourne, Ontario for a repeat engagement. on Friday, January 11th. You can’t find a better place for some delicious home-cooked food, or a more beautiful spot – we hope you’ll join us. Stay tuned for details about how to pre-order tickets. In the meantime you can read about the venue here . Here’s a photo of our last time at The Harvest Table, taken by our friend Donna Currie:

Hey friends, thanks for the support and kind messages after our CD release! We’re thrilled you enjoyed the release party. AND we’re thrilled to tell you our record Mrs. Johnson and Mr. Brown is charting at several campus radio stations across Canada! Thanks to our friends at Radio Western, we’ve sent our CD out for distribution to campus and community radio stations, and oh my gosh, Mrs. Johnson and Mr. Brown is charting on CJSR in Edmonton and CFUV in Victoria, as well as here in London on 94.9 Radio Western.

It’s hard to find words for the thrill this gives us, but you can check out the charts for yourself here. What an honour to be in such great musical company.

So we’ve got lots coming up! This weekend The Heartaches are playing an opening set for The Rizdales Roots Round-Up,  an important fundraiser. Come support a beautiful little boy who needs help from all of us.  More info here.

And on November 10th, Martin and Amanda will make a repeat appearance at The Local Pub in Toronto! Come see us if you can, and let your friends know about it too. This warm pub is a home-base for some of Toronto’s finest acoustic roots musicians, and it’s an honour to get to play there!  Details for that show are on Facebook.

And stay tuned, on November 16th, Amanda Lynn and Martin are thrilled to be opening for Jim Bryson, songwriter extraordinaire and star Canadian producer! Details on that show are here.

There’s a whole lot going on pals.  At a time of so much darkness in our world, we hope you can find some lightness for yourself! We’re working on doing the same.

Full-on Heartaches at the St. Regis Tavern

Wistful James

Uncle Dan gettin’ serious

Lovin’ that steampunk mic …

Heartaches friends:  Thank you, thank you, thank you!!   The October 13 launch party for our album, Mrs. Johnson & Mr. Brown, was everything we had hoped it would be and more.   The St. Regis Tavern was packed with friends old and new.  We played our hearts out as people laughed, sang along, drank, danced.

Every time it seemed that things would quiet down, more people would pile in and the fun would wind up again … and so we played, and played, and played.  It was so good to back where it all started, in London’s friendliest neighborhood honky-tonk bar.

The very talented Gerard Creces from London Fuse  took some great action shots which you see here.

We’re so grateful to all of you who came out to share this milestone with us, and all of you who’ve supported us over the past four years.

We all had a good sleep-in after our launch party, but we’re not resting too long.  We’re delighted to say that on Saturday November 3, we will be joining The Rizdales  for their annual Roots Roundup at the  Richmond Tavern!   This is a very special fundraiser that the Rizdales have been hosting for 11 years now.  Each year, all proceeds from the event go to support a family affected by cancer.  We’re delighted that the Rizdales asked us to be part of this!!  All the details you need to know are here.

Wow, it has been a long time since we’ve said hello. The Heartaches have enjoyed lots of summer sun and outdoor music the past couple of months. We hope you all have too!

We are thrilled to say that our first CD, “Mrs. Johnson & Mr. Brown”, is being released on October 13th!  We’ve been working on this project for some time, and we’re so excited to share it with you!  We’ve packed it with some of our favorite tunes, from old-time to honky-tonk to vintage Canadiana.

We’re having a grand old CD release party the evening of October 13th (9pm – midnight, pay-what-you-can) at the St. Regis Tavern, the place where we played our very first show as a band almost four years ago (and many more since then!).  A $15 donation will get you your very own copy of the CD!

Check out the invite here for more details, and if you’d like to come to the show, click and let us know. If you’re not a Facebook user, we salute you! Feel free to drop us an email if you’d like more information, at info AT theheartachesmusic.com.

If you can’t wait until October, we’re having a special pre-release performance at Wesley Knox United Church, where we recorded the record. That happens on Sunday, September 23rd at 2pm – stay tuned for more details on it.

But you don’t have to wait at all, to hear some Heartaches tunes at home!  The whole album is available on Bandcamp (click here) but here’s a song to whet your appetite:

Well friends, the Home County Music and Art Festival is upon us, and for a lot of folks it is like a homecoming weekend, or even church! The fellowship, the friendship, the great music- Home County has all of that.  This is Home County’s 45th year and we are thrilled to be kicking off the Home County Festival with a very special launch party with Sudbury’s own Murder Murder.  There’s no better spot for this double bill than London’s the venerable Richmond Tavern, and details are here.

Come join us for an opening set at 6pm and stick to hear Murder Murder’s wild, bluegrassy show.  If you’ve been anxiously awaiting a Heartaches recording, we just might have a surprise for you!

You can find the whole Home County schedule here – Jim Cuddy, Rose Cousins, Harrow Fair – it’s going to be amazing! Amanda Lynn is playing the “Banjos and Bagpipes” workshop on Sunday at 4:30pm, and Uncle Dan will likely be joining our pal Allison Brown on the Sunday gospel workshop and the Saturday afternoon tribute to Willie P. Bennett.  It’s going to be an  amazing time and we’d love to see you!