Larysa Musick

About

A wildflower meadow doesn’t bloom in the first year it’s planted. Takes three years to see your first flower. Maybe longer. A firm believer in the slow build, Larysa Musick established herself as a poet and illustrator-author before crossing into singer-songwriter territory. Given her last name, it may have been fate.

Though she comes from Winnipeg, her style of folk music hardly represents her home city’s proverbial sound. Listening to her, you’d think of New Orleans jazz cafés or Greenwich Village clubs in the 60s. Effortless finger-picking guitar, unmistakable vibrato, endearing melodies, all delivered by a lush, crooning mezzo-soprano. Wide-eyed, flower-power-era nostalgia folk that sometimes bends into the psychedelic, baroque, old-western country, old-timey, and prog-rock spaces. 

Lyrically, Larysa is adventurous and earnest, probably from her years spent performing spoken word poetry. At poetry slams where competitors are scored from zero to ten, not unlike Olympic diving. At various bars and pubs across the provinces, and as far as Detroit, touring in a tiny hatchback. At streetlit cyphers where freestyling poets showed Larysa the power of improvisation. As Artistic Director of the Winnipeg Poetry Slam, Larysa learned a few tricks to turn a phrase, some more when she wrote, illustrated and self-published her poetry colouring book To See and Be Seen.

That got sidetracked in 2020 when on long walks around the prairie grass reserves in her family neighbourhood in Headingley, Larysa started humming the melodies to what would become her debut EP Tomorrow Is Bound to Come (to be fully released in September 2023). A collection of whimsical, self-reflective, coming-of-age songs. Some told with a cheeky tone and wry smile, others with a lamenting croon, all carried by Larysa’s signature sparkly vocal which naturally instills levity in every phrase.

Soon after emerging onto the Winnipeg music scene, Larysa’s inimitable style captured the attention of critically-acclaimed fiddler and up-and-coming producer, Sierra Noble. The two joined forces, co-producing Larysa’s EP with award-winning producer and engineer, Madeleine Roger, daughter of Lloyd Peterson (The Weakerthans, The Wailin’ Jennys, JP Hoe, Oh My Darling). Larysa’s proud to have achieved gender parity with these recordings, rallying together a list of exceptional players including Rory Verbrugge (pedal steel guitar), Sheena Grobb (keys), Kieran Placatka (keys), banjo (Alison De Groot), upright bass (Julian Bradford), to name a few.

Rushing nothing in the process, it's clear that Larysa is not the type of singer-songwriter to cut corners. Rather, a disciplined artist carving out her niche bit by bit.