A Fellow Ship

Folk pop band, A Fellow Ship, performs “A Million Voices” as part of their Canadian tour. - Global Morning Show

Folk-pop seven-piece A Fellow Ship release their latest EP The Black Sheep this week, and Exclaim! is giving you an exclusive early listen to it.

The five-song offering was recorded at Marquee Sound in Toronto with producer John Switzer, and it hears them tightening up their signature blend of folk, pop, funk, jazz and soul.

"The Black Sheep EP is a true reflection of how far we've come as musicians, songwriters, and friends," frontman Joe Dent said in a statement. "It addresses many of the experiences that we have gone through over the last couple years — from lonely nights away from home, to lazy mornings with not a care in the world, it is a testimony to all the ups and downs that make life interesting."

You can hear exactly what that sounds like by giving The Black Sheep a spin down below, before it officially arrives on September 30 with a release show at Toronto's Horseshoe.

Tour dates:

09/27 Hamilton, ON – Casbah
09/28 Guelph, ON – DSTRCT
09/29 London, ON – Tarjj Mahal
09/30 Toronto, ON – Horseshoe Tavern - Exclaim!

http://var.st/3bm
Those who circulate in Toronto’s local music venues may recognize A Fellow Ship, the self-described folk-funk band who have been rocking venues like the Horseshoe Tavern, Silver Dollar Room, The Central, and Mod Club Theatre.

Forming close to four years ago, the band was founded in high school by a group of friends who shared a common love of dancing, singing, and having fun. Their formation began with a jam session, said lead vocalist Forest Van Winkle. “We were hanging out, playing covers, making music, and it just snowballed,” he added.

The band now consists of eight members: guitarist and lead vocalist Joe Dent; lead vocalist Forest Van Winkle; guitarist, mandolinist, and vocalist Jack Stone; pianist Teddy Liptay; bassist Tristan Schultz; drummer Ryan Johnston; trumpet player Austin Jones; and the newest member, saxophonist John Nicholson.

Schultz, Johnston, and Jones are alumni of U of T’s jazz program, and Nicholson is currently completing his master’s degree here.

A Fellow Ship recently opened up for the festival-favourite and critically acclaimed band Magic Giant for the third time.

The group can rest easy knowing that the energetic performance mentality they learned firsthand from Magic Giant was on full display at their show at Mod Club on February 13. They dominated the stage, to the delight of the several hundred people in attendance. The band played new music off their EP The Black Sheep, teased unreleased music, and acknowledged the many friendly faces in the crowd and the support they’ve received.

Relying on a combination of warm string instruments and soul-pleasing brass, the band gave listeners an excellent musical experience and a visual treat of a performance. Seeming extremely comfortable, the band engaged with the crowd, posed for pictures, made jokes, and created a dancing frenzy.

Despite their captivating live set, they are still looking for ways to improve. “We’re still at the point where we’re not making a living off of this,” said Dent. “We hope to be one day, but it’s a long journey. We want to tour more, release more music, and grow a bigger and bigger following, until it is something tangible. For now, we’re all having a blast.”

They’re still hard at work looking for gigs and venues, and they hope to have a follow- up to their first tour in September last year, when they played shows in Ottawa, Montréal, and Halifax.

They also claim to be heading back into the studio soon, and they’re are looking to release a double single sometime this summer that will capture their onstage energy.

“We’re trying to do a lot, everyone is trying to do a side hustle, but everyone is trying to make the most of this,” said Van Winkle.

A Fellow Ship will perform March 15 at the Horseshoe Tavern. - The Varsity

The soulful pop-jazz EP, The Black Sheep from A Fellow Ship is such a great little introduction to the band. The songs are very well built with a great infusion of jazzy trumpet into the songs with guitars, mandolin, piano, bass and drums.

Such a big band with a lot of great potential here! Seriously! When I say big band, I don’t mean just sound wise, I mean size wise as well. Normally a regular mainstream band now is day is 4 or 5 members, A Fellow Ship consists of 7 very talented artists.

Joe Dent: Guitar and Lead Vocals
Forest Van Winkle: Lead Vocals
Jack Stone: Guitar/Mandolin/Vocals
Teddy Liptay: Piano
Tristan Schultz: Bass
Ryan Johnston: Drums
Austin Jones: Trumpet

For an EP, this album is VERY well put together. The Black Sheep title single is, like every other song, nailed right on the head with its production. There is not one instrument or vocal that is overpowered by another, which is really challenging when you have so many instruments and so many people. It is beautifully blended and very catchy. Listening to the songs make you want to get out of your seats and dance. I can see these guys on a big stage at a jazz festival blowing everyone away with their talent.

This album is definitely a pick up if you like jazz, or if you want to pick up some great new music to add to your eclectic library.

Well done A Fellow Ship, well done! - Canadian Beats

The Horseshoe Tavern was dimly lit, and there was a pool table and a scuffed up black-and-white tiled floor that set the stage for the homecoming of Toronto based band A Fellow Ship.

On the night of Sept. 30, the Queen St. bar was full, awaiting the return of the folk funk band who was finishing up a two-week long tour through Ontario, Quebec and New Brunswick.

“It’s been incredible,” said guitarist and lead vocalist, Joe Dent. “We’ve played out of town a bunch before, but this was the first two straight weeks everyone takes everything out of their life and goes on tour.”

The crowd was filled with friends and family, music lovers and people on a night out.



Saturday night also marked the release of the band’s new EP, “The Black Sheep.” Teddy Liptay, former Ryerson student and the band’s keyboardist, describes the new EP as energetic. “It’s fun to listen to. It’s just about getting people up and on their feet really.”

Liptay has chosen to take some time off from Ryerson where he was enrolled last year in the English program. The decision to take time off was hard because he loved going to Ryerson, but he felt like he needed to put school on hold to focus on his music.

“I could definitely see myself finishing a degree at Ryerson, but I’m not in any particular hurry. This is going well,” said Liptay about the success the band is having. Keep your eyes out for him on campus—Liptay feels like he could be back as early as January.

But Liptay isn’t the only part of the band that goes to Ryerson. Band manager Matthew Gibbs is currently enrolled in the creative industries program.

His involvement with the band started a couple of years prior when he accidentally showed up early to one of their shows. After an awesome gig, lots of drinks and food, Gibbs knew he had to work with the band.



“My program is so relevant, it’s so heavy with course material which is so incredibly relevant [with the band],” said Gibbs.

The tour may be over, but that doesn’t mean that the band plans on slowing down. Already reliving moments from the tour, vocalist Forest Van Winkle recounts one of her favourite moments from their show in London, Ont the night previous, which happened to be in a residential house.

“The fame and the fortune, someone else can have that. I wanna play [in] people’s sweaty basements and just have a wild lovely time,” said Winkle.

“The Black Sheep” has just been released but the members say that they’re already working on new content.

“Having finished the EP, we already have all these songs we want to record,” said Winkle. Previous songs have been written by Dent but most of the upcoming songs have been a collaboration of the entire band. They’re all eager to get back into recording. - The Eyeopener

Piranha Bar had a pretty relaxed vibe going on Wednesday night. Downstairs, people sat scattered around the bar, drinking and watching the TV as Metallica played in the background.

Normally, you’d find some metal bands putting on a show at this venue, but that night Toronto-based folk-pop band, A Fellow Ship, was onstage.

The band is made up of seven musicians in all: Joe Dent on guitar and lead vocals, Forest Van Winkle on vocals, Jack Stone on guitar and mandolin, Teddy Liptay on piano, Tristan Schultz on bass, Ryan Johnston on drums, and finally, Austin Jones on the trumpet

They include Mumford and Sons, The Lumineers, Edward Sharpe, and the Magnetic Zeros as early influences.

“We’ve kind of strayed quite a bit from that in recent years,” said Dent.

Their upcoming EP, “Black Sheep,” has swooning pop sounds that were accentuated by optimistic trumpet-playing. Dent and Van Winkle’s dynamic vocal interplay, one sad and the other deep and calming breathed some more life into each track. “Black Sheep” is set to be released this Saturday.

Take that for good or for bad, that’s what I was expecting to hear when I checked out their show.

Upstairs, some bands are chilling and eating takeout food next to the stage while the sound guy is doing his thing. They’ve got a pretty cool neon sign up there, and there really are piranhas in the fish tank.

It’s 8:30 p.m., and the bands are supposed to be starting, but people haven’t really shown up yet. It was kinda dead, so we hung around for a bit and checked out some of the band’s merch, some of which was really nice. They had a sick t-shirt design that gave off some Henri Matisse vibes.

Pretty soon, though, it became clear that the show wasn’t going to start anytime soon. So we left.

It looked like it was gonna be a slow night in there, and clearly, we aren’t the biggest fans of folk music, or alt-rock for that matter, so Simon, my accompanying photographer, and I decided to hit up Five Guys, and then a dep for some drinks.

We returned to Piranha Bar where a decent-sized crowd had formed at the back of the room. Local indie-folk band Matty Parker were up onstage getting ready to perform.

After their performance, the place had filled up a bit more as A Fellow Ship were about to come on. I noticed a couple people wearing last year’s tour merch. They’ve got fans, and when that trumpet first pierced the air, a crowd filled up the front, and started to dance.

This is the grooviest folk-pop group you know, and their trumpet is what Dent said is their signature sound. The brass instrument’s blissful sound hits every track in a joyous return, and really comes through live. In fact, every member of the band really brought things together.

“Tristan, Ryan and Austin […] are all graduates of University of Toronto for jazz,” Dent explained.


A Fellow Ship’s trumpet player, Austin, lends the group their signature sound. Photo Simon New
A Fellow Ship’s sound is clean and practiced, and it looked like they were having fun onstage. As they start out with some of their older stuff, Jones danced and sang enthusiastically, tapping the tambourine as Dent jammed out some guitar riffs while facing the drummer. It was hot, sweaty, and energetic music, and the crowd was vibing with it.

Comparing their recorded album sound to their live performance, I find that I much prefer their sound live.

When they played “Black Sheep,” Dent’s voice came in with an uninhibited, soulful tenderness that cut far deeper—and less like pop music—than the studio recording of the song. The rest of the band echoed his lyrics like a gospel, and then the drums hit, deep, hard and rhythmic. That was their folk-soul bleeding through onstage, fueling the audience and filling the room.

As they played more of their new EP, things got funkier. The drums rolled in with a thumping fill and the guitar slaps, as Van Winkle’s deep, husky voice glided effortlessly over the pulse of the music. Everyone was bobbing and dancing, and by the end of their set, they’d moved into the crowd and interacted with everyone.

“The crowd instantly gave us that much more energy,” said Dent, praising the group’s fans. “They right away were like, ‘let’s go to the front. Let’s dance.’ That was really cool.”

People were smiling from the band’s infectious energy. I hope to feel it coming out of the studio more, as a voice like Dent’s is one like Joe Cocker’s; it’s beautiful because it’s raw, and that’s when it’s best. Uncut, emotional and filled with soul. - The Link

With a new EP coming this fall, Toronto folk pop band A Fellow Ship has recently announced that they will be touring Eastern Canada in September as well. The seven-piece band has a love for music and good company, which lends itself to great music that fans and music-lovers love to dance to. Their genres range from folk, pop, jazz, funk, and soul. The tour kicks off in Ottawa on September 19th and finishes with their EP release party in Toronto on September 30th. Check out the dates below!

September 19 – Ottawa, ON @ Avant Garde Bar
September 20 – Montreal, QC @ Piranha Bar *
September 21 – Moncton, NB @ Plan B *
September 23 – Halifax, NS @ Timbre Lounge *
September 27 – Hamilton, ON @ Casbah
September 28 – Guelph, ON @ DSTRCT *
September 29 – London, ON @ Tarjj Mahal *
September 30 – Toronto, ON @ Horseshoe Tavern *

* with Olivia and the Creepy Crawlies - Canadian Beats

A Fellow Ship, the Toronto based group that features no less than eight musicians kicked things off with their blend of folk, funk and a healthy dose of ska influences. Early in their set they played a grooved up sex jam called Knock Knock, that was nigh impossible to stand still during. The two lead vocalists Joe Dent and Forest Van Winkle play off each other magically. The band, while still emerging was pleasantly surprised at the turnout of the show and Dent comment on how they had never played to such a rapturous crowd before as the venue was already packed to the gills. Dent mentioned in earnestly how different it is for him to be on stage for an event like this, as being such a big music fan he normally is the one in the crowd. The group played a new song that must have not made many live appearances yet because after utterly nailing it drummer Ryan Johnson made sure to give trumpet player Austin Jones props for the excellent performance. Even when the band tried to slow things down on Water Song, the crowd was still dancing along to the tempo. Toronto is notorious for having static crowds and with the powers they clearly possess so early in their careers it won’t be long until they are headlining their own gigs in bigger venues. - Live in Limbo

The Horseshoe is a legendary venue for St. Patrick’s Day, causing rock n’ roll rampage for over 60 years on the slick and busy street corners of Spadina and Queen.

Last Friday was no exception with headliner and local Toronto folk band, A Fellow Ship, serenading a packed crowd in the dark recesses of the tavern, with two lovely co-vocalists Forest Van Winkle and Joe Dent, and six other band members on the stage. It was a busy night put on by Chromatic Concerts, with flickers of green and shots of whiskey abound, and many young music lovers dancing fervently when Dent jumped down to join the crowd.

A Fellow Ship Brings Folk-Jazz Melodies To The Horseshoe Tavern On St. Pat's

Leading the show came as a surprise for the band as the original headliner, The Pick Brothers, canceled last minute due to a band member’s injury and A Fellow Ship stepped up to the plate. It was a night of firsts for the band, which included adding temporary saxophone player, John Nicholson, to create a full horn section in the otherwise seven piece line-up. “We had a new saxophone player for this show. He’s a god damn cutie is what he is,” Van Winkle said. “Adding a saxophone gave the melody a certain depth.”

Another recent addition to the band as of last summer is Trumpet player, Austin Jones, professionally trained in Jazz Performance at the University of Toronto. “It was nice to have another horn, it is like another melody line,” Jones said. “It felt like I was trying to fight between the two vocalists and a third trumpet, and the saxophone chills it out and creates an entire horn section.” A Fellow Ship certainly had a newly developed jazz element in their set due to their budding horn section, yet it balances out the co-vocalists nicely.

A Fellow Ship Brings Folk-Jazz Melodies To The Horseshoe Tavern On St. Pat's

Co-vocalists, Van Winkle and Dent have been playing together since their high school days at Waldorf, and became a dedicated band when they were in Wetter, Germany in 2013 with piano and accordion player, Ted Liptay and Jack Stone on the guitar and mandolin. “It was completely collaborative and organic. We started with open mics and covers, got Jack and Ted involved and then did a trip to Germany,” Van Winkle says, “We happened to have a friend in Germany who gave us a gig and brought his friends out.” Bassist, Tristan Schultz and Drummer, Ryan Johnston later joined the band. Van Winkle’s sultry, deep voice matches nicely with Dent’s rock n roll roar and the two keep the audience on their toes on who will belt out the next line.

The band’s line-up has changed over the years, considerably normal for a larger band, but has recently settled nicely into having a consistent group heading into Summer 2017. A Fellow Ship is also in the works of heading to the studio to record an EP with their new trumpet player in tow.

Catch a Fellow Ship at the Silver Dollar on April 22 for CMW, and see the band rock another venue with their stomp-n-slap, horn-y tunes. - oh-es-tee

"The first band up was the seven-piece outfit A Fellow Ship, which I’m still perplexed on how they all fit up on that tiny stage together. Having not been familiar with them prior to the night, I was shocked when they got the crowd dancing right from the get go, as they sounded like Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros if had a soul section that mixed with the twanginess of the mandolin. The call and response singing provided by Joe Dent and Forest Van Winkle was beautiful to hear live and the bands harmonies all fit together with ease. A Fellow Ship had a super fan up at the front that looked like hippie Jesus as he bounced around shoeless and singing along to most of the songs". - Live In Limbo

"A Fellow Ship kicked the evening off with a bang as they brought their 7-piece band to the stage. With the amount of energy they bring on stage, A Fellow Ship make it clear that they won’t let anything stop them from having a good time.Their presence is exciting and positive. As they jump into the crowd and engage with their fans, it makes their show seem like an intimate concert despite their large sound. It’s sometimes rare to find artists that are so successful at connecting with their fans, and it’s truly special to witness these connections whenever A Fellow Ship performs live". - Canadian Beats

A Fellow Ship from Toronto is like a folk choir for the underappreciated and overworked. They sing music that does its job of connecting with the listener well, and the many voices, both vocal and instrumental, give the short three-song EP a very big sound.

Released this past June, their debut EP makes a strong statement in just 12 minutes. The record was recorded with award winning producer Seppo Salminen and the band consists of Joe Dent, Jack Stone, Teddy Liptay, Scott Somerville, Emma Harrison, Forest Van Winkle and Ryan Johnston.

The EP begins with “Hit the Road” a nostalgic and playful take on folk form. The vocal harmonies accent the musically intriguing riffs, dancing underneath. While “Wild Tonight” has an interesting energetic, yet chill vibe to it. The powerful lyrics will have you singing, “we’re runnin’ wild tonight” for the rest of the week. The final track “In My Bones” starts off with beautiful strings followed by the soft voices the ears have become familiar with. The song is a comforting conclusion to a beautifully composed excursion into the heart of modern Canadian folk.

Like a Mumford and Sons album that has driven off the road at the exact right spot, A Fellow Ship’s EP is addicting, and (unfortunately) very short. You will run through it multiple times without even thinking. So pay the three bucks, support some great local talent and add another great new band to your listening roster! - The Scene Magazine

"Opening act A Fellow Ship came onstage and got the crowd going. This band was energetic from the start. There was no stopping the lead singers from dancing on the stage – and off. Vocalists Joe Dent and Forest Van Winkle jumped off from their marks to dance with their friends and fans in the crowd. Even pianist Teddy Liptay would head bang, and threw in a Charleston when he could". - The Spill

Total Score: 7.6/10
Style: Folk
The crowd at Revival was all warmed up by the time A Fellow Ship went on stage. People cheered loudly and stomped their feet. Some even waltzed!!! A Fellow Ship could have been easily brushed aside as just another Mumford and Sons, but their drive and passion is their own. The ensemble felt sincere about their music and was not afraid to show their enjoyment on stage. Vocalist Forest Van Winkle was dancing joyfully when she could, while respecting spaces for other band members. With eight people on stage, it never felt too crowded or awkward, the members were fully in sync with each other.
Overall, A Fellow Ship had a great set, with songs that showed off their musical diversity and kept the audience entertained throughout. They will be conquering West Toronto in no time.

Written by: Raya P Morrison - The Scene Magazine

A Fellow Ship is instantly gratifying! Sail the ship with Toronto’s latest folk fellows, their self titled EP was released last week at the Silver Dollar and is a an uplifting jubilee of poetic warmth. “Hit the Road” beats to a dancing drum of fiddles,mandolins and spirited harmonies that foot stomps its way to the end. “Wild Tonight” will get you going wild with outstanding boy-girl vocals. Listen as they take a step back with “In My Bones”; a quiet track that takes you on a heartbreak journey with soft harmonies and heartfelt guitars, that finishes with a mad piano. Don’t miss these fantastic friends get lively @ Johnnyland July 3rd with our friends Pins & Needles. - The Deli