On the Squamish Constellation fest stage or in their car, Ocie Elliott’s gentle harmonies soothe the soul
The Victoria duo who first connected at a Salt Spring Island café reach listeners from front seat of their Honda
Jon Middleton and Sierra Lundy are Ocie Elliott.
Ocie Elliott plays the Squamish Constellation Festival on July 24.
COUNTERINTUITIVE THOUGH it might seem, we’ve recently found a pair of folksingers who are ready to protest the unpaving of paradise—if only because their parking lot is gone.
Meet Jon Middleton and Sierra Lundy, who’ve recently found personal and professional bliss as the duo Ocie Elliott. Nature lovers whose music videos routinely feature pristine forests, sparkling rivers, and blue coastal vistas, they’re not really all that worried about the rewilding of a small part of their native Victoria—but it has thrown a monkey wrench into their plans.
Doing an end run around the perils of the modern music business, the two have found a modicum of fame with a series of online postings that find them performing in their car—a venue, Lundy says, that has beautifully intimate acoustics. And if there are any architectural deficiencies to their 2001 Honda, they’ve been careful to compensate for those with location, location, location—most commonly Victoria’s scenic Clover Point, a rugged granite headland that juts into the Strait of Juan de Fuca just south of the city centre.
“In our videos we try to choose nice locations,” Middleton explains. “There were a couple of locations we’d go to a lot down by Clover Point, but they ended up changing the layout down there and started getting rid of all the parking spots, to our chagrin. So now we have to hunt for them, which can be challenging, because we need somewhere where there’s not a lot of people, and it’s kind of quiet…”
“Somewhere away from traffic,” Lundy jumps in. “Also somewhere you can park your car!”
Although the two started posting Ocie Elliott videos before the pandemic kicked in—and also before they gained professional management and a Nettwerk Records contract—it’s likely that a lot of their current popularity can be traced to the COVID-19 lockdown. Their intimate shoots, which feature a mix of original songs and well-chosen covers—project a kind of comfortable isolation, at a time when most of the world was experiencing the opposite.
“That’s a good point,” Lundy says. “I mean, we lived together and obviously we were able to breathe normally, without masks. That was definitely helpful!”
Also helpful, during these troubled times, is that their music is the aural equivalent of a warm blanket: woolly and enveloping. Gentle harmonies are at the core of Ocie Elliott’s sound, backed by acoustic-guitar strumming, understated percussion, and chiming piano.
“The music we make exudes some form of comfort, in the fact that it’s very mellow, and our voices are very… I don’t know. Non-intrusive, I guess,” Middleton concurs. “I think the vibe we want to create is one of comfort. We’re not trying to rattle any cages.”
“It’s the first time I’ve sort of thought of it that way,” Lundy allows. “Although we do have a lot of people who tell us that it is comforting to them.”
“People often tell us that they find our music soothing,” her partner adds, “and that they use it on their new-born babies.”
Which seems natural enough for these laid-back island musicians. The two met on Salt Spring Island, where Middleton was performing solo at the indoor-outdoor Treehouse Café and Lundy was waiting tables.
“It was kind of an instant spark, in some ways,” Lundy notes, before asking her partner if he agrees.
“Definitely there was an instant spark there, but it took a while for it to turn into anything bigger,” Middleton replies. “Like, two or three years later we finally met again, and we ended up singing together for the first time. And as soon as we sang together it was a pretty instantaneous feeling. Like, ‘It feels really good to sing together.’ In our ears it sounded really nice, and so we just knew that we’d keep doing it!”
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