Oona has been a war correspondent, a wild dolphin swimmer, an organic farmhand and a teacher. Her music is a river connecting song to sustainability, heartache to hope, and passion to possibility, revealing an artist who not only loves the world, but believes we can transform it.
In August of 1969, nearly half a million blissed-out music lovers converged upon a muddy farmer’s field in the name of peace and drugs and love and a 25 year old Canadian watched it on TV, crying, and then her fingers ran like water across the keys of her piano as she wrote a love song for humanity, a golden anthem for an era.
Fast forward 40 years to an age of tarnished idealism and ecological crisis and the need to get “back to the garden” is more pressing than ever, which is why singer songwriter Oona McOuat has covered Joni Mitchell’s Woodstock on her new release Honey and Holy Water.
Same nationality, same pure voice, same golden hair, but on this upbeat version of the song, the piano is replaced by a Celtic harp and Oona is joined by rootsy Zimbabwean singer James Mujuru, affirming the cross cultural stream that irrigates the shrinking Eden we now share.
Soothing, grooving, eco-Celt, organic and emotive, Honey and Holy Water flows with urgency and wonder. The honey bees are disappearing. The oceans are in peril. Will we make it back to the garden before the jig is up?
More artist than eco-evangelist, McOuat is nonetheless dedicating this release to promoting awareness of environmental sustainability and ocean conservation. Top scientists recently predicted that unless we immediately decrease CO2 levels, the Great Barrier Reef will die in 20 years, with other coral reefs following close on its heels. This was a wake up call for McOuat, who, as seen on the album cover, is completely at home in the ocean.
Produced and engineered on Salt Spring Island, British Columbia by Daryl Chonka and mastered at Randy Bachman's The Barn, Honey and Holy Water features stellar performances by wild cellist Corbin Keep, wise cellist Jami Sieber, woodwinds whiz Richard Lee, homegrown percussionist Chris Bertin, fiddlers Zav Rokeby-Thomas and Michael Fox and singers James Mujuru and Desmond Sutherland, with Chonka adding bass, guitar, piano, didg and beats. Some of the tracks were recorded in Hawaii and Brazil adding to the cross-cultural flow of this project.
From the fun and funky re-creation of the trad tune Drowsy Maggie to The Wild Ones’ heartfelt plea for preservation, through the broken-open love song, Where the Emptiness is Full, this album navigates mystery and loss with purity and grace while encouraging us to cherish what might yet be saved.
”Mysterious and reverent” “A near angelic voice” - Michael Henningsen, Albuquerque Weekly Alibi
“Music to lift your soul”- Volcano Gazette
“Pure, fluid vocals… Her lyrics are deeply personal and poetic…Able to draw out unexpected depths of feeling” - Mayne Island Mayneliner
“McOuat deeply touches her audience and lifts them to another place and time”- Comox Valley Record
“Oona McOuat, harp player, is a genuine songbird/diva. When she sings one is moved to close their eyes and contemplate beauty.” - Richard Diamond, The Kauai Oversoul
" …Not believing my ears or trusting my eyes welling with tears of pure delight and enjoyment at a true treasure discovered … more water than music, more valuable than Spanish doubloons." - Charles Collins
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