Nico Paulo, Summer 2022
Nico Paulo is a Portuguese singer-songwriter, performer, and visual artist. After graduating from Design School in Lisbon she called Toronto home for seven years and is now based in St. John’s, NL.
Amongst the visual arts, Nico has been a singer since she can remember. She sang for multiple musical projects growing up in Portugal and it wasn’t until she moved to Canada in 2014 at age 21 that she picked up the guitar and started paying close attention to English folk music. Four years later, she gave up her full-time Design job at IKEA and began writing down original music, experimenting with her singing layered with light strumming.
Her music is eclectic and mostly derivative from alternative influences weaved into her Portuguese roots and the melancholy of the ocean. A tender and dreamy Indie folk, distinct by her singing melodies and harmonies that pierce through the heart. She performs her solo project and is the backup singer and percussionist for Tim Baker’s and the All Hands band that tours across Canada, the USA, and Europe since 2019.
Nico released a single “Please Don’t Forget” in 2019 as well as her debut EP ‘Wave Call’ in 2020 with accompanying music videos. The EP featured Toronto musicians Brava Kilo, Evan J. Cartwright, Kwame Appiah-Kubi, and St. John’s Musician Tim Baker, produced and engineered by David Gavan Baxter. She presented the EP to Europe, starting in Portugal followed by the UK, Ireland, France, and Germany. The latest releases, the EP “Live at First Light” recorded for Lawnya Vawnya Artist Residency and the Portuguese cover of the folk song “O Cavaleiro e o Anjo” by Jose Afonso, were both recorded in Newfoundland.
Nico is currently preparing a new release – his time an LP – produced by Josh Van Tassel and Tim Baker, to be announced soon.
Rube & Rake, Summer 2021
The St. John’s based folk duo Rube & Rake have been selected as the inaugural recipients of the MusicNL Music Residency program. They plan to use their residency at Kent Cottage for song writing for their next full-length album, creating and refining new material which will build on the success of their most recent release (2020), Leaving with Nothing. A short video of Rube & Rake’s performance at St. Georges may be found here.
Jake Nicoll, Summer 2019
Jake is a multi-instrumentalist songwriter, producer and recording sound engineer. His compositions and performances have been featured in several independent short films, theatre performances and many albums. He and his partner Kira Sheppard performed at the Brigus Blueberry Festival as his community outreach project.
https://jakenicoll.bandcamp.com/
Kelly McMichael & Maria Peddle, Summer 2018
Kelly McMichael and Maria Peddle of the band RENDERS were chosen by NL Folk Arts Society as the first musicians-in-residence at Landfall. Kelly McMichael, a keyboard/vocalist originally from Peterborough Ontario and Maria Peddle, a multi-instrumentalist and traditional fiddler well known in the St. John’s folk music community, are inspired to create music together. Their local performance took place at the Newfoundland Distillery in Clarkes Beach.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/newfoundland-labrador/kelly-mcmichael-waves-first-listen-1.6026550
Landfall Trust 