Home may be where the heart is, but when the wife is Australian, you can bet you're going to be spending some time down under.
That's certainly the case for The East Pointers, an exquisite three-piece folk band from Prince Edward Island in eastern Canada.
Banjo player Koady Chaisson is married to Australian girl Chloe Goodyear. Her professional connection to the Woodford folk festival means Queensland becomes home to the band when they come to Australia.
They famously penned a song, Woodfordia, which they debuted at the festival a few years ago. Lead singer and fiddle player Tim Chaisson married his bride, Jane, on New Year's Day 2016 at Woodford.
Fortunately, Newcastle has become a regular stop for the band when they tour Australia. They return here on Saturday, January 11, for a show at Lizotte's.
And they've got new music.
Guitarist Jake Charron addresses their ties to Australia succinctly: "We love it, first of all, that's why we keep coming back. The climate, the food, the people and the coffee. It's just a nice place to be."
Of course, there are other factors.
"We've toured here more than in Canada," he says. "It does feel like a second home ... We are close to some amazing musicians, like Liz Stringer."
They rolled with Stringer in Tasmania, and in Canada. And cut a song with her, 82 Fires, about being in Tasmania as fires raged around them.
Darkened clouds rolling over the valley sparked the resting flame
Earth has come to claim her country, screaming out for rain.
The song was on their 2017 album, What We Leave Behind, released in 2017. And despite how much it might resonant at the moment, it hasn't been on their current playlist.
They've also become mates with The Wiggles.
"We've become good friends with those guys," Charron says. "They are so hard working. It's been great to experience that whole thing. We've become buddies. We worked with Emma [Watkins] on our new single - she did Auslan sign language for Wintergreen."
The song is from their new album, Yours to Break, which also offers a slight shift in the band's approach, with more instrumentation coming from the same three players.
"We've been experimenting with some new sounds," Charron says. "We all listen to all sorts of music. It feels like it has come together on this album, all the different influences, we haven't been constrained by a genre."
And to replicate the new music in live shows, Charron has added a keyboard (he was always a trained piano player), Koady is also playing bass synethesizer with his feet while playing banjo, and Tim has percussive sounds on his foot pedals.
"We're trying to make a big sound," Charron says.
Say no more.
