Ontarians will perform at this year’s Go North Music Festival on St. Joseph Island later this week.
The group will be part of the Saturday, July 26 lineup on the Timber stage at the Richards Landing Centennial Grounds.
“We do what some people call folk rock in the tradition of The Band, Blue Rodeo, Wilco . . . that kind of roots rock,” said Ontarians band member Frank Deresti in an interview with SooToday.
The Sault’s Deresti, a singer, songwriter and guitarist, has been in the music business professionally since the 1990s.
He has a lengthy musical resume that includes work with his former group - Frank Deresti and the Lake Effect - and recordings and performances with fellow Saultite and singer/songwriter Shannon Moan.
“Ontarians started with myself and Craig Smith from Collingwood. We met years ago when we were in different bands on the same tour. We just kind of hit it off. We just said ‘one day we'll do something together,’” Deresti said.
Smith, a recording engineer, recorded the third Frank Deresti and the Lake Effect album at his Collingwood studio in 2017.
“When that was done Craig and I decided we would take a week in February of 2018 and just try to write some songs together, and it went really well. That eventually turned into the first Ontarians album," Deresti said.
That album, entitled The Greatest Short Story Never Told, was released in 2021.
The band released its second album entitled More How It Is in 2024.
Deresti and Smith recorded the group’s two albums at Smith’s Collingwood studio.
Keyboardist Jay Stiles - who resided in Austin, Texas and now living in Port Elgin, Ont. - recorded his parts of the album tracks remotely.
The three, joined by Sault musicians Chris Johns on drums and Jay Case on bass and vocals, have come together for their current tour of Ontario.
“I enjoy the shared experience, the collaboration of playing in bands like Ontarians. When you get together with different people and you do your craft, you get a result that would be impossible without all of those people involved,” Deresti said.
The group’s members are busy independent musicians who come together and tour whenever they can since they released their first album in 2021.
“It’s a great group of guys. We always appreciate the time together, being on stage together. That whole collaborative spirit expands on stage because there’s this interconnectedness between performer and audience.
"There's no real substitute for it. Artificial Intelligence can't do that,” Deresti said.
He is also the Algoma Conservatory of Music’s education coordinator and an Algoma University music department adjunct professor.
“My whole career has been music, either teaching it or writing it or recording it or performing it.
“Go North is a great festival. They do a great job out there and it's going to be really nice to play on the island,” he said.
The festival will be held from July 24-26.
More information on the Go North Music Festival, including its full lineup and how to purchase tickets, can be found on the festival’s website.