× The Deep Dark Woods tour Norway in August with Jenny Berkel as support

The Deep Dark Woods tour Norway in August with Jenny Berkel as support

11-05-2022

Originally from Saskatchewan and now based on the east coast of Canada, The Deep Dark Woods take up a deep tradition of forlorn storytelling, drawing lines from Celtic folksongs to country blues, John Fahey to Shirley Collins. Lush and devastating, Boldt’s gothic surrealism is stark in detail and full of emotion, a murder balladeer for our time.

The air in the house is different now,” says Ryan Boldt, the creative force behind The Deep Dark Woods . Boldt’s house is now full of pets and plants, and happiness. It’s a house by the ocean, far from the rural prairie landscapes of his childhood and a defining feature of The Deep Dark Woods’ sound and lyrics . The house is also an emotional dwelling, an inner place for processing upheaval, finding new direction and making peace with the past. On Changing Faces, The Deep Dark Woods’ sixth album, Boldt works through the complications, unique to him and recognizable to many, of leaving one place for the next .

Support will be provided by Jenny Berkel who also comes with a new release "These Are The Sounds Left From Leaving" out by the end of the week:

I wrote the album in a tiny apartment, at a time when everything felt big and overwhelming,” says poet and songwriter Jenny Berkel about her new album. She was living in a brownstone walk-up full of radiant light and the ever-present soundscape of a leaky bath faucet. It was a sudden move at the time—a spontaneous departure from touring, bustling city life, being many things to many people—that landed Jenny in a space of self-imposed stillness.

The songs themselves are a study of proximity, bringing big fears into small spaces,” says Jenny, reflecting on the album. “They’re intimate examinations of a world that often overwhelms.” Each song is set in the micro-world of a keen feeling observer, trying to parse a mindful moment in a setting where it feels impossible to drop a truth anchor—a post-Trump, heavily gaslit world where perceptions of reality remain distorted. “Kaleidoscope,” the first single from the album, is a dissonant and poetic consideration of the importance of care and precision in language, both in the broader political landscape and in intimate emotional ways. From the heart-wrenching confusion of interpersonal manipulation, it extrapolates a collectively felt disorientation at the kaleidoscopic swirling of disinformation and misinformation. 

Whether you’re reading Jenny’s poetry—in her debut chapbook Grease Dogs with Baseline Press—or listening to her songs, you’ll experience her drawing layers of far-reaching concern into particular moments, like concentric waves rippling inward toward a lone cast stone. These Are the Sounds Left from Leaving showcases the perspective of a unique storytelling artist, with an evocative practice that hinges powerful narratives on the intricacies of a multifaceted musicality. A songwriter immersed in poetry, a poet immersed in music—her work in all its forms is an invitation into a world of relatable introspection, in which even absences can be sculpted into vividly memorable verse. 

Tour dates:

08/19: Oslo, NO - John Dee*
08/20: Bodø, NO - Parkenfestivalen
08/22: Trondheim, NO - Bar Moskus*
08/23: Ringebu, NO - Arnemoen Gård*
08/24: Kristiandand, NO - Vaktbua*

* support Jenny Berkel

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