Rainwater Whiskey

So right off the top, we'd like to apologize for 2 things... 1) Taking so long to post this and 2) This may be quite a long post. We'd love it if you could hang in there and check out some of our highlights in 2018 as there were alot of them!

We kicked off 2018 with a bang playing an event supporting a trek to Mount Everest’s base camp for Country 94’s Mary Anne Iveson. Proceeds of the fundraiser and Mary Anne's efforts were in support of the Ottawa Senators Foundation. The event was held at Ottawa’s favourite country venue, The Crazy Horse, where we got to follow local favourite, Matt Powell, and open for the one and only, Tebey. We also got Ottawa's own sportscaster, Terry Marcotte up to jam with us for a little Johnny Cash. The whole event was a great success and we were very honoured to be a part of it!

The band was then faced with having to replace our dear friend and original drummer Kent Clingin.  Kent needed to focus on his apprenticeship/career and therefore needed to part ways with the band.  Enter powerhouse drummer extraordinaire, Andrew Lamarche.  Andrew has done and seen it all, touring with our good friends The Rivertown Saints and Tim Hicks among many others.  Andy raised the bar for the band. He made us all step up our game, so he is a very welcome addition to the band and we're just lucky he took a chance on a poor little struggling band like us.

First show with Andy was at the Carp Arena, playing to 1000 ladies for the Wild West Ladies Night Fundraiser.  Welcome aboard Andy and you're welcome?! lol  What an amazing crowd you all were! As if that show wasn't enough of a welcome party for Andy, our next show as another Ladies Night in Almonte with about 800 more, of course always well behaved, ladies. :P

Our summer started off by playing the tailgate party for Jason Blaine’s 5th Annual Celebrity Charity Golf Classic in Pembroke.  What an amazing time playing and hanging out the Jason, JoJo Mason, the River Town Saints, Petric, and the Western Swing Authority.  We had such a blast jamming and hanging out with everyone! So much so, that we're going to do it all again in 2019!  Apologies to the unfortunate staff who had to deal with all of us back at the hotel for the after party and to everyone who had to hear Thomas sing the next day! lol We're only kidding, Thomas is a trooper and is usually always on point regardless of the state he is in. ;) 

Fast forward two days and the band was travelling to St-Agapit, across the border, near Quebec City to play the Festivale Country de Lotbiniere!  We got to reconnect with Canadian superstar Brett Kissel, and also made some new friends, which included Eric Ethridge and Matt Lang.  Another after party at the hotel to apologize for... the ride home was alot of fun... totally worth it though!

We then headed back to the Pembroke Memorial Centre to open up for Gord Bamford!  The event was in support of the Robbie Dean - Family Counselling Centre and it was truly an honour to play this very special event and to meet Robbie’s mom backstage, where she shared her story with the band.  It was a touching moment. The evening was such a great success for a cause that we can really get behind.  Thank you for including us in this show and for the very humbling plaque given to us by the Robbie Dean Center after show.

The most memorable moment of 2018 came next.  Our singer, Thomas, and his wife Alison had their first baby!  On July 20th, the world welcomed the youngest Rainwater Whiskey fan, Linton Watson!!  Congrats you guys! 

After a little break we ramped ‘er right back up opening for Chad Brownlee at the a very sold out Navan Fair!  What a great time, a huge thank you to Chad and the production team.  Louis and Frank you guys kept things running so smooth! Check out a little compilation video we put together from the show:

 

Then it happened...  the Shawville Fair!  What an absolutely wild bunch!  We rocked the insanely energetic crowd along side Ottawa’s own Brea Lawrenson and Meghan Patrick!  We hope to be back soon! Head over to our facebook page to see a little clip from the very end of the night HERE!

Ottawa’s Marvest Festival in support of City Folk was next up, where we played a rare scaled down acoustic show at South St. at TD Place.  Thank you for having us out! (Clip on our Facebook page again - Cover of SOB by Daniel Rateliff)

We were then off to open for the James Barker Band at the Carp Fair.  Sold out, total insanity, and a great time!  Our friends from the River Town Saints came out and hung out with us back stage.  After a few beers we managed to convince them to join us on stage for a cover of Blake Shelton’s Boys Round Here!  Thank you to all, that was a crazy night and security did a great job! You can check out more from this event and some behind the scenes stuff on our Instagram page.

Next up was the Metcalfe Fair, where we headlined the evening and played to an absolutely nuts and packed house!  Thanks to the Riley New Band for warming up the crowd for us!  Always a pleasure to be at the same event as you guys! 

The very next day was Shane McNulty’s Country Night for Hospice at the RCAF in Renfrew.  Shane is a gem and showed us amazing hospitality!  Thank you for the thank you note and shot station on the way to the stage!  Just another reason why this man is truly one of a kind. 

Then Rob and Mark were kidnapped before the next show.  That’s another story and we’re still not sure what really happened to them.  Luckily, Alex and Brad from The Timber Line were able to fill in for them at Roger’s Hometown Hockey event at Algonquin College. The boys even got an opportunity to sit the famous broadcast booth which was a pretty cool experience.

Peppered between all of the events listed above were private events and regular shows at our favourite bar, The Crazy Horse.  We would like to thank everyone that hired us for private events and weddings. The Crazy Horse has been amazing in supporting us and we would like to thank the management, the bar tenders, the serving staff and security for all that you do.  You are all great to work with! 

We would also like to thank our friends at Ottawa Valley Apparel, our clothing sponsor, for all of your support this year!  We absolutely love the OVA clothing lineup so make sure you check them out at www.myottawavalleyapparel.com! 

A very special thanks to the Rainwater Whisketeers (our fan club….what!).  You have completely surprised us with gifts, swag, and even Christmas tree ornaments!!!  We never imagined that kind of support when we started out 6 years ago! 

A giant thank you to our fans, family and friends. You have been an amazing and we sincerely appreciate each and every one of you for the dedication and support!  We would also like to thank the members of the fair boards for trusting us with entertaining your attendees in 2018.  Last but definitely not least, thank you to our media manager Lisa for such an amazing job last year keeping our online presence out there. While she is stepping away for scholastic reasons in 2019, maybe if you all give her enough online pressure she'll return for a couple big shows in 2019. Oh, and congrats on the engagment (finally right? lol).

There are so many images and videos that we'd love to share but we won't blast them all at you in this post. Just stay tuned to our socials as we regularly drop fresh content so you can see what we've been up to!

We can't await to work on some new music for all of you and to announce some of our gigs lined up for 2019. We still have to keep a few secret for a little while longer though, so keep checking our SHOWS page to see where we'll be next and as always, keep Redneck Representin'!

Much love, 

-RWW

It is with heavy hearts that we bring you all the news that Kent will be leaving the band. :(

A lot of the time people don't realize the time commitment it takes to play in a band (especially when you still need a full time job to make ends meet) and so after 5 years of band brotherhood Kent has decided to focus on his longterm career path and education.

We will miss the hell out of playing along side him... we'll miss the good times, the chemistry, the laughs, the inside joke winks and most of all the music, but we will always and forever remain brothers in arms and we wish Kent the absolute best with all of his future endeavours.

NOTE: While Kent is stepping away from RWW and the commitment that this band requires, he has promised us that he will not stop drumming and you may catch him sitting in with other bands from time to time. ;) . We'll do our best to keep you posted.

Thank you for everything buddy, you're a legend!

Thanks to Rob Blanchette from Soundcheck Entertainment for covering one of our Crazy Horse gigs this past February and writing us an awesome review!

Please head over to the Soundcheck blog to read the review:  http://www.soundcheckentertainment.ca/rainwater-whiskey-plays-back-back-shows-crazy-horse-kanata/

We look forward to seeing you guys at the Crazy Horse again in May 2018!

Cheers!

Now that we've had a couple self-imposed weeks off for some much needed R&R, we've had some time to reflect on how absolutely amazing this past year has been!

Since our last blog post there's been just a few highlights worth sharing. ;)

On September 23rd at the Carp Fair we got to play our biggest show yet, opening for probably the nicest guy in country music, Brett Kissel! We had an absolute blast. To stand infront of 1,800 people and play our hearts out was something we will never forget. Thank you to Carp Fair Board for giving us the opportunity, thank you to all the fans who cheered and sang along and thank you to Brett's stage manager, Kevin, for allowing us to surprise Brett during the middle of his set with a custom made Ottawa Senators jersey with his name and 321 embroidered on the back. The Clubhouse did an awesome job on the jersey and the turnaround time was killer. Thanks again guys, we couldn't have created this moment without you.

You can check out the fan video of us giving Brett the jersey that we posted to our YouTube channel here:

The next highlight was playing the Metcalfe Fair the very next weekend. Since we had never played Metcalfe before and we were headlining solo, we didn't really know what to expect... but man what a party! Over 900 of you beauties made it a sold out affair. Crazy! 900 people who wanted to hear us... you guys must've been drunk. lol  I know we've said it before but I don't think we'll stop saying it until this fantastic ride ends... it is truly humbling to have fans like you all.

This summer also saw us release our first ever EP of original music entitled, "The Long Time Comin' EP". We decided to do a hard copy release first so that people who came out to our shows would get to be first to be able to own a copy. We've sold over 300 copies already which absolutely blows our minds that so many of you are digging our tunes. We already got some play on Star96, Valley Heritage and Country94 radio so hopefully it won't be long before it goes in a couple stations rotations. Fingers crossed! You can help us by contacting your local radio station and requesting our tune "Read That Wrong".
For those of you that are still looking to get your hands on a copy of the EP, we will be releasing it digitally next week! Just in time for Christmas! ;) Keep checking the page for the latest updates as we'll provide links as soon as it's posted.

For now you can check out one of our original tunes, "Before The End Of The Night", in a compilation video of some of our gigs this past summer. Thanks Rob for all your hardwork on this video!

We'll be releasing some more video over the net few weeks so make sure you subscribe to our YouTube Channel to see all the latest videos. We've also, just updated our photo section here with shots from this past summer's gigs so you can check those out too!

What's next for Rainwater Whiskey?  Well the holiday season has us playing a lot of corporate gigs which are always a great time but we'll be back playing for the general public in early 2018!  We have a big gig announcement that we'll be dropping in the next couples days. February 2nd and 3rd, 2018 we'll be playing the ______  ______. ;) Can you guess where? Feel free to make your guesses in the comment sections.

Lastly, we just want to reiterate how thankful we are for every single one of you that has come out to a show, bought our EP, liked/commented/shared our content on social media. Whether you know it or not, those little things you do go a heck a of long way! It truly is a blessing to have amazing fans like you! Thank you from the bottom of our hearts.  We'll see y'all real soon! Cheers!

...that we've been having a pretty kick ass summer! Maybe not as far as the weather has gone, but man this has been one hell of a summer for the band and we don't want it to stop anytime soon!

We want to say a huge thank you to the Fairs that have entrusted us with your entertainment and another big thanks to Mr. Ron Sparling for booking us a couple big ones this year. It really is humbling to have that kind of support and belief in the band.

So far this summer we've got to open for Kira Isabella (see the last blog post below), Aaron Pritchett @ Arnprior, and The River Town Saints @ Renfrew! And... you know who is coming up @ Carp on September 23rd!!! Let's just say he may be the CCMA Male Artist of the Year! Can you tell we're excited? ;)

Arnprior was an amazing time, surrounded by alot of the people who have been avid supporters of the band for years. It's felt like a second home for along time now. Thanks to Monica for always believing in us and being one of our biggest supporters. The Arnprior Fair has taken some hits in the past couple years due to weather but this year I think was a huge step in the right direction. It was a huge milestone for us to be able to open up for Aaron Pritchett and have a quick chat with him backstage. He's a really friendly, down to earth dude and we wish him all the success he deserves. We also got to meet a local country guy by the name of Danny Sylvester on the Thursday night of the fair. His band was kick ass and they were nice enough to let me (Thomas) jump up and sing a tune, so we only thought it "Fair" (pun intended) that we return the favour the next night as Danny jumped up with us to perform during our opening set for Mr. Pritchett. Aaron killed it as usual and then we were lucky enough to be able to keep the party going in the beer tent for the rest of the night...  WOW, what a party it was! Those of you who were there, you know what I'm talking about. lol  We also got to catch our good friends, The Riley New Band, on the Saturday night in the beer tent so the weekend was pretty stellar all around!

We were asked to play the Fitzroy Harbour Community Association's 40th anniversary party on August 26th which was a hell of a night as well and it was all topped off by getting to meet Ottawa's amazing Mayor Jim Watson. He said our CD sounded great so you know he's a cool guy! ;) . Thank you Karen for having us out.

On September 8th, we played my actual hometown (and Rob's), Renfrew! What a stage and what a crowd! From what I heard, this was one the best nights for entertainment attendance the Renfrew Fair has had in a very long time. Of course, we'd like to take all the credit for it but I guess some of it is due to The River Town Saints. These guys are some of the hardest working musicians we know and we feel very lucky to be able to call them friends. We know these guys are destined for super-stardom so we just hope we'll get the opportunity to play with them again. You hear that RTS!? Let's do it! lol
Thank you to Judy Dobec for booking us and all our local friends/family who made it out to the show, it wouldn't have been the same without you and don't worry, we'll be back real soon!

Can you believe after the night we had in Renfrew that we actually managed to crawl out of bed, make ourselves presentable and go tear the roof off the Russell Fair the next night!!!? On September 9th, we journeyed east of Ottawa to Russell where a great crowd of people danced with us all night long. We had so much fun rocking out with you guys, trying out some new endings, and busting out some new dance moves. lol  We didn't really know what to expect as we don't get east as much as we'd like to but if Metcalfe is anything like Russell, damn we're in for a good time! Thank you to Abby for having us out, Will and Pat for a great job and everyone else for stomping along with us.

So what's next RWW?   Well I'm glad I asked myself that question. :P

Next weekend (23rd) is the Carp Fair and we get the tremendous honour of opening for non-other than Brett Kissel! But all next week we're going to be doing some radio promo leading up to the event. Early in the week we're going to be up at Star96.7 in Pembroke, Thursday we'll be at Valley Heritage Radio and then Friday we'll be hanging with Country94 in Ottawa doing some social media stuff! We can't wait!

We're also going to be doing a CD giveaway next week, so make sure you all stay posted to our Facebook page for all the lovely details!

Thanks again everyone, we had a great time these past couple weeks, playing music, meeting all of you, signing CDs, and taking pictures. As the great George Straight said, "If I'm asleep, girl let me dream", cause this all feels a bit surreal, like a dream, and we don't want it to end!

This past Sunday we rocked out at the Navan Fair opening up for Ottawa's sweetheart, Kira Isabella! Our good friend Rory Gardiner also was on the bill and it was great to get to play the same stage with him again. This was our first time meeting Kira and her team and I gotta say they were all really friendly and down to earth people. I really hope we get the opportunity to play with them all again, but this time for an evening show. ;)

The Navan Fair team did a great job as well from the fair board, to the volunteers, to sound, to simple hospitality. We really felt like super stars while we were there. We'd definitely be down to play the fair again as it was a great experience all around! It just makes us even more excited to play with Aaron Pritchett this Friday!

We'll see you there!

Thanks to Photographer Marc Labreque for the great photo! 

This week marks the end of a journey that started over 4 years ago, before we played a single show, before we had a single fan... before we even had a name for that matter. It was always our intention of laying down some original music and now the wait is finally over! The last month and a bit, we've been holing up at Audio Valley Studios with the one and only Steve Foley making some noise in padded rooms (the sound dampening kind, not the crazy kind). But now... the instruments and vocals are all tracked, the songs are all mixed and mastered, the artwork is completed and everything is off to Chris at Standard Media for printing! Woohoo!

It won't be long until we have a shiny (well wood grained) CD in our hands! We can't wait for you all to hear it.

We decided to aptly name the album, "The Long Time Comin' EP" as it has been a long road to get here.

You can pick up your copy from us this summer at any of our Fair gigs or you can buy it online in a couple of weeks. We'll make sure to let you know when/where it's available!

So this past Saturday we did a quick Facebook live video to announce some pretty exciting news. From a new band member, to original music, to a bunch of really great shows! Check out the video below for all latest RWW gossip! :P
 

 

We recently played an acoustic trio show at the Barn in Carleton Place and I gotta say that place is a pretty cool venue for music. The owner Julia wanted to try out live music in what is typically a wedding venue so we were grateful when she decided to book us. It was a very intimate venue and we got to know everyone in the crowd while we played. We also got one of our first actual reviews out of the gig... and it was positive! Imagine that! haha

Thank you to Matthew for the positive review, the pics and the video. You can check them out below.

Take our advice and go check out The Barn the next time they have live music. You won't regret it!

We recently played our first all original show opening for our good friend Rory Gardiner for his CD release party at  LIVE! On Elgin in downtown Ottawa.
This was a double first for us as it was also our first time playing an all acoustic show! We had so much fun at this show that we're now starting to play acoustic shows more often with our next one lined up for December 3rd @ the Lumbertown Pub in Arnprior, ON.

Check out the fan video below to hear us play one of our original songs for the first time ever live!