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 multi-talented lineup all sing lead and harmony, write songs, and pass 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.

HEARD AND SEEN ON: 

Both Raisin' Heck and Earthly Trials have appeared Earshot's Folk/Roots/Blues charts for national campus radio. 

Onion Honey was invited to participate in Jan Hall's Sunparlour Sessions in 2018

"Kitchener folk group Onion Honey sounds so authentic that it's often hard to distinguish the original songs from the traditional ones." - Coral Andrews, Waterloo Region Record

“...in their hands and through such defining tunes as "Won't You Get Me a Hound for Christmas" and the plaintive "Zombie Love Song", the pair infuse their Appalachian by way of Kitchener-Waterloo inflected sound with oddball humour and a hovering menace that wouldn't be out of place on a 'Justified' soundtrack. ” - Lenny Stoute, Cashbox Canada

 “Lead singer Esther Wheaton showed off her refreshing, mountain creek voice, as she accompanied herself on washboard and clawhammer banjo, with Dave Pike holding down the fort on vocals and lead guitar. Their 'morbid' version of Goodnight Irene was a showstopper.” - Robert Reid, Waterloo Region Record