The first thing to know about Providence, Rhode Island’s Deer Tick, who are playing the Calgary Folk Music Festival July 25 to 28, is they have fond memories of their last time through Calgary and and were “psyched” when they signed the contract to appear.
The second is despite Deer Tick being known for unpredictable live shows that go wherever the heck the band wants (same with their albums come to think of it), they are folk fest friendly. After all, they’ve played the fabled Newport fest several times.
The third thing to know is that after 20 years of albums and live shows, this band that wobbles from sparse, hit-home folk to fangs-bared punk and beyond delivers the goods and is sure to collect a swack of new fans while making a pair of appearances at Prince’s Island.
“Say it’s a Sunday and [the audience] wants to hear a chill Deer Tick record; that exists,” says guitarist Ian O’Neil from his home in Cranston just outside Providence. O’Neil joined Deer Tick in 2009 for the band’s third album, The Black Dirt Sessions. “If it’s a Friday night, there’s a record for that, too. There’s a record for being in your mid-thirties; we just put it out. I feel like we can cover all the bases if you let us and we like to do that.”
Starting back with their 2011 album Divine Providence, Deer Tick wandered beyond the folk label earned with their first three albums into beloved punk territory. This earned them rebukes that echoed Bob Dyan’s “sellout” when he chose to play rock in 1965, albeit on a smaller scale. Since then they’ve done whatever they wanted, each album more slippery to label than the last.
“Everyone in the band grew up on noise music and punk music and a pretty strong sense of the underground punk scene here in Providence and where I grew up in western Massachusetts,” says O’Neil. “So, it wasn’t too far-fetched for us to do something, especially in your early twenties, that’s sort of contrarian, that wasn’t what’s sort of expected of you by the recent press about you.”
In fact, O’Neil and lead singer and key songwriter John McCauley were living together in Providence and listening to a lot of Replacements while recording the folky Black Dirt Sessions. “You kind of exist in a vacuum and your own bubble when you’re in a band and you don’t know it’s weird until your label or the press says it’s weird. You think it’s just still songwriting.”
The band is riding high on their eighth studio album, 2023’s Emotional Contracts, which received enthusiastic critical reaction. It features songs from McCauley but also spotlights three songs written or co-written by O’Neil, including the beautiful, universal A Light Can Go Out in the Heart.
The band’s upcoming EP, Contractual Obligations, features tracks from the same sessions. “The EP we’re about to put out is probably a lot louder than the last record. It might have been some of the heavier songs that were left off Emotional Contract.”
While McCauley makes the set lists with the band leaning mentally over his shoulder, the tendency is to put their best foot forward when playing for large festivals or opening for someone like Jason Isbel. “We take at least one song from every record we put out. … it’s not a greatest hits, that would be the wrong way to put it, but we find the best corner of every record… Our instinct is to not play our folk songs if that makes sense. Just to be ourselves and give people a full platter of what Deer Tick is….As long as we’re up front and honest about how eclectic our catalogue is we get the right fans who have an appetite for that kind of band.”
Deer Tick perform on both Saturday and Sunday at the Calgary Folk Music Festival, which runs July 25 to 28 at Prince’s Island Park. For information, visit calgaryfolkfest.com
