The Peterborough Folk Festival has announced indie folk trio Wild Rivers will kick off the 35th annual festival with a ticketed concert at Market Hall Performing Arts Centre in downtown Peterborough on Thursday, August 15th.
The Juno award-nominated band consists of Devan Glover on vocals, Khalid Yassein on guitar, keyboards, and vocals, and Andrew Oliver on lead guitar and synthesizers.
Now based in Toronto, Wild Rivers was originally formed by Glover and Yassein at Queen’s University in Kingston in 2013 as the duo Devan & Khalid. With the addition of Andrew Oliver on bass and guitar and Ben Labenski on drums (who has since left the band), they became Wild Rivers and released their self-titled debut album in 2016. That was followed in 2018 by the EP Eighty-Eight and a tour with Australian indie folk rockers The Paper Kites.
In 2020, the band released their second EP Songs to Break Up To, which included their most popular song “Thinking ‘Bout Love,” a single certified gold in Canada in 2022 and platinum in Australia in 2024. In 2022, Wild Rivers released their breakthrough album Sidelines, which landed at #9 on the U.S. Spotify Debut Album Chart and earned them a nomination for breakthrough group of the year at the Juno Awards in 2023, with the band supporting American country music trio The Chicks on select dates of their world tour that summer.
Their Peterborough Folk Festival concert will not be the first time Wild Rivers has performed in Peterborough. The band’s first show in Peterborough was in 2016 at the former Garnet where they performed with local musician Caitlin Currie. In 2018, they performed at the Market Hall as the opening act for Canadian folk and country singer-songwriter Donovan Woods — who himself performed a kick-off concert for the 2019 festival.
“What better way to celebrate a milestone year for the Peterborough Folk Festival than to have a band of Wild Rivers’ calibre perform at the inaugural event,” says the Peterborough Folk Festival’s artistic director Ryan Kemp in a media release.
VIDEO: “Thinking ‘Bout Love” – Wild Rivers
Tickets for the August 15th concert, which starts at 7 p.m., are $63 with taxes and fees included. They go on sale at tickets.markethall.org/rivers24 at 10 a.m. on Thursday (May 30) for members and password holders and the following morning for the general public.
The Wild Rivers concert kicks off the Peterborough Folk Festival’s four-day celebration of music, culture, and community, and will be followed with events at various downtown Peterborough venues on Friday, August 16th before shifting to Nicholls Oval Park for the weekend.
The family-friendly weekend will feature four stages of live music, an artisan village, a licensed beverage area, and a children’s village. All weekend events are free, courtesy of granting agencies, community supporters, and sponsors.
“We are thrilled to have Miskin Law join us as the main stage sponsor for our 35th year,” notes festival chair Rob Davis. “They’re a generous community partner and it’s because of this kind of support the festival is the longest-running free folk festival in Canada.”
Davis adds the festival is currently seeking additional volunteers and sponsors, as well as local artisan vendors and emerging artist submissions. For more information on the festival and how to get involved as a volunteer, artist, vendor, donor, or sponsor, visit www.peterboroughfolkfest.com.
Organizers say this year’s Peterborough Folk Festival will draw an estimated 15,000 people to Peterborough and the surrounding region.
