True Mountain Laurel with Lia Pappas-Kemps

Event Details

Event type: All Ages

Born out of late-night harmonies, shared voice memos, and a long-standing friendship rooted in mutual admiration, Haley Blais and Sam Lynch have formed the supergroup True Mountain Laurel. Their debut collection of songs, Angel So Bad, is a tender, dust-swept exploration of all the feelings that fall through the cracks. Equal parts folk reverie and country yearning, the project pulls from their respective solo careers. Sam’s poetic introspection and Haley’s razor-sharp lyrical intimacy blend into something softer, stranger, and wholly their own.

There’s a looseness to these songs that feels intentional. Where Sam’s solo work leans cinematic and atmospheric, and Haley’s leans into the clever and orchestral, here they meet in the middle: warm, minimal, and a little bit rough around the edges. Live, the project takes on an even more intimate form without setlists or rigid arrangements. Just two friends singing the truth as they feel it that night. 

Influenced by artists like Gillian Welch, Lucinda Williams, and early 2000s Canadian singersongwriters, the project is less about genre and more about feel. Acoustic guitars, brushed drums, pedal steel, and the occasional jangly piano support lyrics that feel diaristic without being confessional: capturing the ache of growing older, the strangeness of still wanting more, and the joy of finding home in another person’s voice. For Haley and Sam this is neither a rebrand nor a pivot. It’s a postcard from two artists returning to the campfire that first called them to sing.

For Lia Pappas-Kemps, expressing herself through art has always been second nature. This is evident in the confident, natural presence the Toronto-born singer brings every time she steps on stage, stemming all the way back to the beginning of her career in music. In 2021 and 2022, she launched her music career through a series of singles, including the grunge-inflected “Jinx” and the gorgeous, swooning ballads “Sad in Toronto” and “Object at Best". In her emotionally unsparing, sensuous and critically acclaimed debut EP, Gleam, her intricate sound comes across, demonstrating influences from throwback alt-rock to ’70s troubadours to modern indie rock but never truly resembling anyone but herself. With each release she continues to trace her progress while finding her songwriting voice. But nothing about her music is underdeveloped. Instead, every new track plots a crystalline moment in an engaging coming-of-age story—one that will feel compelling for anyone for whom desire has felt as heavy as the weight of the world.