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Rosina Cove, finding joy in “making a racket”

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When it came to forming his new band, Rosina Cove, Peter Stone just wanted to be with his friends.

“Music, if you’re doing it for a job, can lose that joy, that spark,” he says. With this group, “it’s going back to the thing we all started doing music for. Just making noise with friends. Being together and enjoying ourselves.”

Mission accomplished: since the band’s launch six years ago, more than 25 of his musical pals have played in it.

It all started at a Tragically Hip farewell tour concert in 2016.

Stone and his buddy Drew Malcolm attended together. Afterward they felt shaken, having watched a band of longtime best friends perform their last tour together, knowing frontman Gord Downie had terminal brain cancer.

“They had been playing music together for so long and weren’t going to be able to do it anymore,” Stone says. “We went to a bar afterwards and just sat there in silence. We thought, ‘we don’t have much time left on this spinning rock, what are we doing? We should be playing music together.’”

That was the beginning of Rosina Cove. It’s been Stone and Malcolm from the beginning, with Vicky Berg also now a core member.

After 15 years creating gentle, pristine folk music as one-half of folk duo 100 mile house, Stone wanted to create something new, something relaxed, fun, and loud. It was time to bring out the electric guitars.

(Disclaimer: it’s loud but it’s still melody-driven folk music. No need to fear Stone has turned to thrash metal.)

The band recorded their first song in 2019 and finished recording a year ago. Now that it’s out, the timing feels exactly right, says Stone.

Monumental life shifts have happened since the band started. Foundational relationships ended and started, Malcolm became a dad, and Stone, Malcolm and Berg, all went back to school for Masters degrees. (“Completely coincidentally,” says Stone.)

“It’s been a really transformative period, fun to record the songs at the beginning of that period and then releasing them at the end. It’s been a bit of a celebration.”

The name, Rosina Cove, was Stone’s great-grandmother’s name.

“I thought it was the prettiest name I’d ever heard,” Stone says. It also celebrates her life.

“She died by suicide. When that happens we always focus on the way they died instead of the life that came before it. But without her, my grandad wouldn’t have been here, or my dad, or me. I want to celebrate every day she was alive; many days were likely struggles. I wanted to honour her in some way.”

Now her name lives on, titling a group that has connection and joy at its heart.

“The last few years have been challenging times for a couple of us. Having a group of friends you can get together and make a racket with, it feels really important now,” Stone says. “Some of the best, most special parts of the human experience are the ones we can’t really find the words for – playing music with friends is one of those things. It’s good for your heart.”

Rosina Cove just released their new album, Someday We Will Make It There. They’re playing an album release show with T. Buckley at The King Eddy in Calgary, Friday, Dec. 8.