The core members of Eastern Ontario’s Riverthieves have been playing music together since the early 2000s, first as the house band at the Royal Oak on the Canal and in scores of other bars and pubs from Renfrew to Trenton. Eventually, as the bar gigs were interspersed with festival shows and small halls – venues friendly to original music – the Riverthieves began presenting their own songs. In 2009, the band recorded a very memorable live show at the Almonte Town Hall before a sold-out audience. It was released as their first album, Bandit Queen, the following year.

But the band went into hibernation for half a decade as the the two serving military members of the band completed back to back Afghanistan tours and Devon also deployed to Haiti before being posted to Valcartier, Quebec.

The band was not reunited until the Fall of 2015 when Devon was posted back to Ottawa. The boys dedicated themselves to a second album, composing and arranging relentlessly through 2016, and recording between January and March 2017 with Mike Kay. The tracks were mixed by Chris Bradley. The Riverthieves’ first studio album, Soldier, consists entirely of original tracks exploring the Canadian military experience, past and present. It considers soberly the cost of service, celebrates the joie de vivre of the soldiering culture, and pays special tribute to family, home, loss and hockey.