Sexy Masked Cowboy Rides in to Ottawa

Presumably older than 20 and younger than 40″ and never without his mask, enigmatic Orville Peck rode in to Cityfolk fest in Ottawa last night.

Night number five of Cityfolk fest in Ottawa promised to be one to remember. I won’t lie when I say that this is the one the concert photographers and his cult following had been waiting for. The masked cowboy was the photo op and performer of the festival so far. The night started off rather slowly. Friday night should have been a night where people are ready to let their hair down after a long work week. Instead, it took quite a while for the great lawn to fill up for the main act. The small crowd, combined with an opener who, although being signed to John Prine’s Oh Boy Records in 2019, was lackluster, didn’t help the vibe. This lo-fi was a little too lo-fi for many in the crowd, although he got a round of cheers when he mentioned that he’s renting a place on the Big Rideau where he’s writing songs for his next album.

As the crowd started to fill in, Winnipeg’s husband-and-wife duo Whitehorse were next up. Based in Hamilton, Luke Doucet and Melissa McClelland were both established singer-songwriters before opting to put their solo careers on hold to work together as Whitehorse. Although McClelland quipped that it was a really risky move on their part, we think it was a really good idea. They’ve even won a Juno Award in 2016 for Adult Alternative Record of the Year and were nominated for several others over the years. While both Doucet and McClelland play guitar as their primary instruments as singer-songwriters, as Whitehorse each performs on a number of instruments. Their songwriting abilities were fully evident last night as they beautifully delivered lines such as “So cry if you want to ya, you can come undone, but you’ve gotta have a heart to have a broken one” written about an ex-girlfriend of Doucet’s. Despite having some of their gear lost by Air Canada on a flight from Nashville to Ottawa, the duo delivered an honest, harmonious and layered set .

Finally, the moment all the cow pattern clothing wearers were anticipation, Orville Peck sauntered on to stage. Orville Peck is a South African country musician based in Canada. He wears a fringed mask and has never shown his face publicly. He released his debut album 2019, followed by the EP Show Pony the next year. His second studio album Bronco was released in April of this year. Peck was born in Johannesburg, South Africa and lived there until he was 15. As a child, Peck taught himself music by playing on an acoustic guitar and an old Casio keyboard.[6] He is the son of a sound engineer, and he did voice-over work for cartoons and other media as a child. Growing up, he trained in ballet for 12 years, and performed in musical theatre. By the time he was in his early 20s, Peck had been on national tours of musicals. In his mid-20s, he moved to London to study acting at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art, and later starred in a play on the West End. That’s all we’ve been told – or is it? Many speculate that Peck is in fact  Many have speculated that Peck is a persona of Daniel Pitout, drummer of the Canadian punk band Nü Sensae, based on the similarity of Peck’s tattoos. The only other thing we know for sure is that Peck is gay. Whoever he is, his fans absolutely adore him.

A self-styled “outlaw cowboy,” Orville Peck is a purposefully enigmatic performer whose music fuses elements of goth, shoegaze, and indie rock with grand-scale vocals and iconography that honors classic country music from the ’50s and ’60s. A friend last night mentioned that there is a Roy Orbison feel to his sound and I think his music should be used in the next Tarantino film. He himself admits to being heavily influenced by the outlaw country of Merle Haggard and Johnny Cash, but it doesn’t stop there. “I think if you know what you’re listening for, you’ll hear elements of Reba, or ’80s and ’90s country, too.” However you classify who he is and what he does, it’s working. The New Yorker magazine said of him “Peck’s second full-length record, Bronco, released this month, is gorgeous, aching, and cinematic, performed with precision and a kind of tender urgency. The new songs are cleaner, catchier, and several degrees more miserable. Over spare, elegant instrumentation—Peck is a student of Sam Phillips, Elvis Presley’s first producer, who, in the nineteen-fifties, pioneered a way of delaying and doubling echo to give recordings a spooky, pinging depth—Peck grapples with depression, heartache, and restlessness.” It was a fantastic way to end the before last night of the festival.

MORE PHOTOS