A New Ground embark on Canadian tour

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A New Ground visits Saskatchewan on Canadian tour/Courtesy of A New Ground

Celtic folk duo to perform at All Folk’d Up

A New Ground, a two-person group made up of Ryan Dugal and Claryssa Webb, is soon to be performing as part of the 10th anniversary edition of All Folk’d Up, a music festival that takes place every summer in Montmarte, Saskatchewan. Described as a Celtic-folk duo by their publicist, A New Ground is currently on a Canada-wide tour.

In an interview earlier this summer Dugal said that the origins of the band make for an “interesting story.”

“I was running an open jam in downtown Kitchener. I was the drummer in the band, the band would back up solo artists and one of the most unique artists who’d come by was Klarissa. She would come by with her fiddle and just capture the crowd and just get everyone stomping their feet and, well, it didn’t take long for us to start playing music together after that.”

The two mix what Dugal calls Claryssa’s “traditional fiddle roots” and his “more pop perspective.” They initially began playing together as a band in 2016.

Their Canadian tour starts on June 29 in Northern Ontario, before moving to Regina on July 3 at The Bushwackker Brew Pub.

In terms of musical influences, Webb said that they revolve around her traditional tranining.

“Mostly I would say classical. Growing up I had a lot of training and played with a lot of different people and, other than that, I did also play with my family band and through that we did a bit more traditional stuff.” The “folk-side” as Webb calls it, comes from playing traditional fiddle music.

“A lot of my improv and playing along comes from that experience.”

The band has a new EP entitled Forge the sky that was released in the summer of 2018 and Dugan said that it has “quite the mix.”

“Essentially [it’s] a mix of folk songs interwoven with fiddle tunes, it’s all original music, and while that’s how we’d write if it was just the two of us, but we’re both multi-instrumentalists so I play all the rhythm sections, Claryssa plays all the strings and so we decided to just go all out with it and imagine if we could clone ourselves and give ourselves a full-piece band.”

“What we get is us times a million.”

Webb pointed to the band’s want to explore different territory.

“We both like to learn new things, so experimenting we usually come up with new stuff.”

This year’s edition of All Folk’d Up will also feature Chilliwack, Jeffery Straker, among many others.. The line up also includes five artists that were chosen by fans of the festival, as described on the website, alongside a blurb about the history of the festival.

“The All Folk’d Up Music Festival is proud to present 5 new artists to grace our stage in 2019. All of these artists participated in our open-mic events that take place in the months leading up to AFU and were chosen by the audience to be apart of the festival lineup for this year. Congratulations to all these winners and we are so excited to be apart of your musical journeys!”

“Now as the festival is going into its 10th year of production, the number of performances has increased to over 15 that span various musical genres and styles. The Festival Committee plans on selling over 1000 tickets this year and strives to find innovative ways to promote the wonders of rural Saskatchewan and the incredible talent pool that they have lined up this year.”

All Folk’d Up runs from July 5-7 with tickets available on their website, www.allfolkedup.net. You can find A New Ground’s music on bandcamp at anewground.bandcamp.com if you can’t make it in person.

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