Riishi Von Rex. Photo credit: Petr Maur
I recently spoke with Riishi of Riishi Von Rex about their upcoming appearance at Ottawa Bluesfest. You can catch them on Saturday July 8th at 3:30PM on the Black Sheep Stage.
You can call the band Bluesfest veterans now as this will be their third appearance. The duo is looking to put together a stronger set this time around. As Riishi put it, “We’re a very loose live band. We do a lot of shows without sets, or shows where we completely muck up the set, or make changes every 2 songs. So, I think for this one we want to do something a little more rehearsed, a little more planned out. And that’s a new thing we’re trying to work on.”
Apparently Riishi was a little more excited to get the news on their upcoming gig. “I woke Michel up and he was slightly annoyed with me. He was like, ‘Well that’s great but I was sleeping.’ Very reserved in his response to these things,” she said with a laugh.
The duo released their debut EP Shed Your Helmet back in 2015. I’m always curious if a band has new music to share to at Bluesfest. Riishi was happy to say, “We have a couple new tunes. We have a lot of stuff that’s still relatively new so only people who have been to see us in the last little while have heard it. We have one tune that we’re hoping to play for the first time. It’s actually a song that Michel wrote the lyrics to so it’s kind of a different thing for us. Usually I do all the lyrics. It will be fun to bring it out for people.”
With new music sitting around, could there be a new album on the way? “We’re at one of those weird points where the majority of the music we have, hasn’t actually been recorded.”
Riishi continued, “We’re kinda always adding but we’re also trying not to let things get stale. We’re always kinda building on the older stuff and trying to keep everything interesting to us. We’re trying to slow down until we can record more and that way things won’t get old before they’ve ever hit the studio.”
Unfortunately, it sounds as though you will have to wait a little while longer for something recorded. “We’re still trying to figure out exactly how we’d like to do it. We’d like to approach this recording as really different from what we did with the EP. But it’s at that point where we need to get it done in the next year or so.”
While the festival is on, Riishi is definitely looking forward to taking in some live music as well. “There’s another local act playing on our stage after us that I’d like to catch, so we’ll probably miss the first bit of their set but be able to catch the second bit. I think we’ll definitely go check out 50 Cent cause we’re there.”
Much like myself, she’s also really looking forward to seeing Muse take the stage. “They’re such an interesting strange band. I think that will be really cool.”
Later on this summer, Riishi Von Rex will play the House of Targ along with some other local dates, and they may look to do some out of town shows as well. Visit vonrex.org to see their upcoming dates.
July 8th, 2017at 1:32 pm(#)
[…] party by the river continues this afternoon as local artists Made Wade, The Tackies, Riishi Von Rex, Brea Lawrenson and more set the stage for the headliners Brandi Carlile, Gord Bamford, 50 Cent and […]