Onion Honey

Onion Honey may hail from Ontario’s tech capital, but musicians Dave Pike, Esther Wheaton, Leanne Swantko, and Kayleigh LeBlanc play folk music like an old-fashioned string band. The lineup are all multiple threats – singing lead and harmony, songwriting, passing around banjo, guitar, mandolin, and double bass in performance – and three years of weekly ‘Banjo Church’ livecasts through lockdown has polished their onstage rapport and banter to a high shine.

The band released Foul Weather Friends in May 2023, their first professional studio album after over a decade of self-produced music. Recorded live off the floor and engineered by Andy Magoffin at his House of Miracles, Roots Music Canada praised the album’s “out-of-this-world harmonies and sweet, tart, string-band sound” and the band’s “catchy-as-hell little ditties that could easily pass for traditional, with a sense of humour that sets them apart from their contemporaries.”

Onion Honey has been heard on radio stations across Canada, showcased at Folk Music Ontario in 2023, and have performed at a number of festivals including Banjofest in Guelph, Springtide Festival in Uxbridge, Cambridge’s Mill Race Folk Festival, Winterfolk in Toronto, River Valley Bluegrass Festival, and more.