Erik Bleich "SUMAC" Album Release w/ //NEWBERRY//

Celebrate the release of Sumac, the new full-length album from Erik Bleich.

An evening of songs for kind people with tired eyes. For the ones still carrying tenderness after a hard year.

Raised in an isolated mill town in Northwestern Ontario, Erik Bleich moved to Toronto with a guitar case, a weathered Miriam Toews novel, and a head full of songs. Since then, he’s quietly built a body of emotionally vulnerable work while painting houses, working construction jobs, and politely observing the room from the edges of it.

Sumac is where those years coalesce into something larger: a playful, richly layered record living in the sonic territory of Liminal Americana, drawing from folk tradition, ambient textures, classic pop songwriting, and the restless spirit of late-night rock & roll. Produced by Sam Gleason and featuring an ensemble cast of Toronto musicians, the album recalls sonically adventurous songwriters like Andy Shauf, Sufjan Stevens, and Big Thief while remaining deeply rooted in Erik’s own blue-collar poetry and open-hearted storytelling.

Joined by longtime collaborators Lea Kirstein and Kathryn Merriam, this album release show reimagines the record in an intimate trio setting full of close harmonies, strings, piano, improvisation, and the quiet electricity of musicians listening closely to one another in real time.

Opening the evening is //NEWBERRY//. A Peterborough based grief-rock quartet that stopped worrying if there were enough happy or fast songs on their setlist, and leaned into ambient-adjascent, drone-inspired sad, sad music.