MARSHWEED ENSEMBLE is a group of musicians who plays the music of Los Angeles-based performer-composer Heather Lockie. Drawing from whatever soundmaking devices are at hand - a string trio, close vocal harmonies, a penny whistle, a live-processed field recording, an oven rack, a folk song, a bell - Marshweed Ensemble weaves sonic tapestries ranging from aggro-noise sound painting to folk Americana ballad to doomy chanting, back to ballad, onward to atonal pop-culture-referencing chant, sometimes ending at the beach. Live, this group presents a bewildering and engaging show.
NEW RECORD • COMING 2025 • "POINT OF CONTACT"
About this record ••••• Most of these tunes reference different facets of my life in LA, and the different ways of connecting to other entities around me. Hence, the title.
Living in the sprawling metropolis of Los Angeles, meaningful contact is at a premium. Even when I am surrounded by people I know well, I rarely have notable interactions with others.
BUT! important interactions are common, daily! with critters and plants, and soil. Such nature may seem at odds with living in a big city, but it's everywhere. Does it mean that I am anti-social, even non-humanistic, when I say that much of my meaningful contact with others occurs with insects or with the plants they live on, fly around, end up sleeping in, coddled by the petals of whatever bloom they have lit upon to spend the night?
Well...so it may be. But encountering a fly sleeping on a lavender leaf in the early morning, before the sun has warmed its little fly joints, and graced its multi-faceted eyeballs, does make you look at flies a little differently. Just sayin'.
SOUNDS
PRESS QUOTES FROM NON-PRESS PEOPLE
"MARSHWEED IS A GROUP OF BLISTERINGLY TALENTED AND DISCIPLINED PEOPLE LETTING IT RIP AND HAVING A REALLY GOOD TIME. VOICES AND HARMONIES THAT CAN BRING YOU TO TEARS. A CANDY STORE FULL OF EMOTIONAL, FUNNY, INVENTIVE, LYRICAL SONGS. PLUS, HEATHER, ENDEARINGLY, TALKING WITH THE AUDIENCE IN AN UNINHIBITED AND CONFIDING WAY." -SARA R., @ 2220ARTS SHOW
WHO'S TO SAY YOU CAN'T HAVE A STRING TRIO MUSHED WITH A VOCAL TRIO, MIXED WITH A BUNCH OF SYNTH NOISE, THAT JUMPS FROM INSANITY TO ONE OF THE MOST HEARTBREAKING SONGS I'VE EVER HEARD? LIKE, IN THE SAME 6 MINUTE PERIOD." -AUDIENCE MEMBER, @ 2220ARTS
"...FOR SOME REASON I WAS CRYING."
-AUDIENCE MEMBER. @ ZEBULON
PHOTOS
PERFORMANCES
February 9 2024 @ Casa Berenice, w/ Skate Witch (NJ), Dan Destiny - LA CA
March 20 2024 @ 2220 Arts & Archives, w/ Moons, Michael Pisaro - LA CA
January 31 2024 - live on The Watt from Pedro Show
June 20 2023 @ Zebulon, w/ Invisible Dog, LFZ - LA CA WATCH
June 9 2022 @ 2220 Arts & Archives - LA, CA
May 26 2023 @ Moryork Gallery, w/ Desert Magic - LA CA WATCH
May 2 2019 Co-Axial Arts, w/ Patrick Shiroishi, LA CA
About this song: TOMORROW I'M GOIN' TO THE BEACH
••••• You know the feeling, especially if you work at home, or if you have been cooped up in the house for weeks, months at a time at any point in your life for whatever reason...illness; society shut down; crippling social anxiety...'n' you get the chance to actually go somewhere where there will be none of those stress factors, LIKE THE BEACH, and you practically can't sleep because you are so excited? Well that is this song. ••••• ...anyway, this song was a fun live-show throwaway to me, it was just an excuse to bat mini-beach balls at the audience and get them to bat them back to us on the stage, multiple times throughout the song. And when I said into the mic at our last show that this one "wouldn't be on the album", like 4 people came up to me after and were like, "don't you dare not put that on the record." So, clearly we recorded it after that, and it's kind of like the best track. I think it's the big single. Just goes to show you that you can't judge your own work.
About this song: GREAT EQUALIZER
••••• When I was writing this song, I was thinking how I should maybe get a gun. And how I would never ever have a gun. •••••• My favorite lyric is: “If you’ve ever tried to stab someone, you know how hard it is.” Which I have, that’s how I know that it’s super hard. No, just kidding. •••••• When playing this song live, I think of robots. Robots killing other robots; robots killing people; people killing people; people fighting about killing people, and their “rights”. Which makes it very, very fun to play this song live.
About this song: SEASONS
••••• This is a snarky song disguised in a cloak of mellow beauty, its moody vibe woven with the textures of a cloudy day. It's a backhanded shrug about LA's perfect weather, and how boring it gets with its ceaseless brightness. ••••• Favorite lyric: “It’s not that I’m complaining, it’s not the sun I hate: I think it’s just that every day’s the same.” I didn't mean for it to be whiny, but there is difficulty in that this ideal weather provides zero change, zero challenge for anyone. Because of that I end up taking it for granted, and end up being driven crazy by all the perfect sun. ••••• People around here IDEALIZE the wearing of sweaters. We laugh at it, but humans benefit from diversity in their surroundings. One little cloud in the morning, and my friends all cuddle in their favorite sweaters for like one hour. Then I visit other places, with their exceptional flooding-humidity-tornadoes-unrelenting cold, what-have-you, I'm like, "Heather you're a real A-hole." TBH, this song is propelled by an underlying envy of others who live in climates that actually change.