MOONTRICKS

Moontricks is one of more than 40 acts playing at the Vancouver Folk Music Festival in July

• PLAYLISTS On Spotify and YouTube
• ONE SONG (VIDEO) Forest of My Soul
• POEM All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace by Richard Brautigan
• ABOUT FESTIVAL 47

Based in BC’s West Kootenays Sean Rodman and Nathan Gurley formed Moontricks 12 years ago

MOONTRICKS

Innovative electro-folk duo mix strings and wires

Weaving acoustic folk and electronic sounds together, Kootenay, BC-based duo Moontricks evoke unofficial hippie poet laureate Richard Brautigan and his 1967 poem All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace. He imagined “a cybernetic forest filled with pines and electronics where deer stroll peacefully past computers as if they were flowers with spinning blossoms.”

Sean Rodman and Nathan Gurley have a similar vision but with a musical slant. Both fed their creativity growing up in the nature and forests of the Kootenays and remain rooted there. Rodman studied acoustic guitar and banjo at Selkirk College while Gurley produced EDM and did deejaying.

Gurley’s musical aha moment came when he asked, “What if I just play harmonica on top of all this? That was kind of the turning point for my entire creative outlook, ” he told CBC Radio Vibin’ show host Rohit Joseph in January. The Moontricks duo met a dozen years ago at the Shambhala Festival a four-day event which features electronica acts on a farm near Salmo, BC. It wasn’t long before they started making music together.

At first Rodman was unsure how their idiosyncratic blend of electro-folk would be received. But after more than a decade, “All of those elements have kind of come to a place now where I think they’re more widely accepted,” Rodman told the Nelson Star. “We’re getting booked at all these big folk fests whereas I think when we started there was probably no way that we would have gotten booked at a festival like that with the music we’re doing.”

The group’s first album, the 11-song Currents, was made during the pandemic and released in the fall of 2022. The collection is beautifully varied and paced. Moontricks can tear it up with searing blues rock riffs, boot stomping beats while adding washes of electronica. They interlace the sound with straight-up banjo and harmonica topped with earnest and easy vocals. It makes for superb listening.

The band has continued touring behind the disc and just completed their Technicolour Campfire Tour through Canada and the U.S. which started in January.

“A real life moon trick”

THE BAND WAS ON TOUR APRIL 8 DURING THE SOLAR ECLIPSE. THEY WROTE ON INSTAGRAM:

“We just watched the full solar eclipse in Texas in the path of totality! This was one of the most mind blowing experiences we’ve ever witnessed. Mother Nature in all her glory. At the climax of the eclipse it got completely dark like night even though it was 1 in the afternoon. The clouds parted and we were able to see a ring of fire around the moon from the sun behind it. All the birds and animals started going crazy and everyone in the park we were at was cheering and hollering.

A real life moon trick if we ever seen one. The sun gives us all our life on this planet and for it to disappear completely in the middle of the day even for a short time is a very emotionally moving sight to see.”