Four women, one small stage and a hall full of neighbours meet in Nottawa on Thursday, November 5, 2026, when Songwriters that Rock returns to the Nottawa Memorial Community Centre. The evening runs from 7:00 p.m. to 9:30 p.m. as part of Clearview Township’s Small Halls Festival.
The 2026 edition carries the subtitle Women in Song & Stories, and the festival bills it as a celebration of the voices, stories and songs of extraordinary local female singer-songwriters. Romney Getty, Laura Somers, Motes and Oats and Jess Bowman will trade original songs in a songwriter circle, sharing the stories behind the music and backing one another as the night unfolds.
The lineup covers nearly the whole arc of a songwriting life in one evening. It runs from a blues veteran whose records reach back more than two decades to a 28-year-old loop artist at the start of her recording career, with a married harmony duo and a lifelong harmony singer in between.
It is the kind of night the Small Halls Festival was built for: big songs in a room small enough for every story to reach the back wall.
Why a Songwriter Circle Suits a Small Hall So Well
A songwriter circle seats the writers side by side and lets them take turns leading a song. Between songs, they talk about where the material came from, and the others add harmonies, guitar lines and accompaniment whenever their turn to back someone comes around.
The idea borrows from the writers’ round tradition best known in Nashville, where songwriters trade songs in the round and explain how each one came to be. Songwriters that Rock gives that tradition a Georgian Bay accent, with all four performers rooted around the southern bay.
The format rewards listening as much as playing. A quiet story about a song’s first draft can land as hard as the chorus that follows it.
No two rounds sound alike, because the backing shifts with whoever is sitting beside the singer. A harmony duo, a loop artist, a blues voice and a lifelong harmony singer will each pull a song in a different direction.
On this bill, the contrasts are the draw. Romney Getty brings a blues voice with country grit, Laura Somers a lifetime of harmony singing, Motes and Oats a married duo’s blend with flute, and Jess Bowman a loop pedal that can build a band from scratch.
That mix makes the backing as interesting as the leads. A loop can lay a rhythm bed under a veteran’s song, a flute line can answer a blues phrase, and a harmony from across the circle can turn a verse into a chorus.
Audiences hear the songs the way the writers first heard them, before a band arrangement smoothed out the edges. Writers test new material beside old favourites, react to each other’s choruses in real time and occasionally borrow a harmony they have never sung before that night.
The trade-off for all that spontaneity is intimacy. A circle only works when the room is small enough for every story to reach the back wall, and a community hall like Nottawa’s, where the stage sits close and the chairs fill fast, is exactly the room the format was made for.
Romney Getty: Blues-Soaked Country Grit and Two Decades of Original Songs
Romney Getty is a Collingwood-based Canadian singer-songwriter whose country blues has drawn comparisons to Bonnie Raitt and Janis Joplin since her records first reached reviewers. She is also the longest-serving recording artist on the bill, with a debut album that dates to 2003.
That debut, Fill In Your Gray, came out on Augustus Records, and every song on it is a Romney Getty original. She sang and played acoustic guitar and piano on the record, with Jeff Getty producing and playing lead guitar and bass.
Greg Wilson added harmonica and Mike Churchill percussion. Craig Skala engineered the sessions, and the backing vocals on Goin’ to Texas came from Jeff Getty, Kim Getty, Laurence Roscoe and Romney Getty herself. The album’s thirteen songs include You Got to Know, Goin’ to Texas, Delta Dirty and Road to Nowhere.
Her 2008 follow-up, Ramblin Girl, was also released on Augustus Records and carried that writing further. Exclaim! reviewed it that March, noting that she had spent much of the previous two years touring Canada, England and Australia.
The review praised her voice, her guitar playing and her distinctive songwriting, and it traced her range from the dark, brooding opener For Seasons to the soulful country weeper I’ll Meet You. It also noted guest appearances from Bob Egan and Colin Cripps, plus a Hank Williams cover, Ramblin’ Man, recast as the title track.
The reviewer predicted she might become the next major breakthrough from Canada’s roots-rock scene. Other songs on the album include When the Smoke Is Clear, Worth It All, Short Fuse Mind and Homeward.
The honours arrived early in her career, when she was named Best New Country Artist at the Toronto Independent Music Awards in 2007. British press followed, with The Times awarding four stars, Guitar Techniques marvelling at how she delivers a song and the Evening Post in Bristol hearing the grittiness of Lucinda Williams alongside Joplin’s power and excitement.
Her own description of the sound folds folk, Cajun, gypsy, blues and country into modern, soulful originals. Fellow writers have borrowed the voice as well, and she sang additional vocals on nadir, the debut album from String Bone, the project of Stratford songwriter Barry James Payne.
Touring took her across the border early on, including a 2008 date in Bellingham, Washington and a Romney Getty Duo set in Seattle alongside Craig Smith. Smith was also on the 2025 Songwriters that Rock bill in Nottawa, so the circle has some history behind it.
Closer to home, she performed at the Peak to Peak Escarpment Challenge hike-a-thon in 2012 alongside Aaron Garner and Tom Barlow, and she took the stage at Collingwood’s Musicians Christmas in 2024. Musicians Christmas is an annual non-profit event with proceeds going to local charities, and its 2024 tickets sold out in record time.
In Nottawa she is the circle’s blues anchor, and the three writers beside her will have a big voice to answer with harmony.
Laura Somers: Collingwood Harmony From Hunnay to Today’s Blues Stages
Laura Somers is a Collingwood singer and songwriter best known as one half of Hunnay, the singing and songwriting duo she shares with Karen Witt.
Harmony is the foundation of her music, and it has been since the duo’s earliest days together. A 2005 newspaper profile of Hunnay described tight harmonies that amounted to more than music, calling the partnership a spiritual connection as well. The pair had just released their first self-produced album, recorded at home.
Two decades on, she has kept woven through the Georgian Bay music community while the venues and projects around her change.
The blues run deep in her singing, and the Belleville Downtown Blues Festival made that official in its 2025 Women in Blues program. The festival publication presented her among the modern women carrying the blues forward, in company with established names such as Suzie Vinnick and Georgette Fry.
In April 2026 she sang background vocals on You’re a Legend (In Your Own Mind), a single from Toronto-area blues outfit Rosie’s Smokehouse Deluxe, adding her harmony touch to the band’s horn-driven sound.
She remains a familiar presence on Collingwood stages, including a turn at Musicians Christmas in 2024 alongside Romney Getty and Motes and Oats.
A songwriter circle suits her perfectly, because backing another writer with the right harmony at the right moment is the skill her whole career has been built on. When the writer beside her needs a second voice more than a soloist does, Laura Somers is the one the room will hear.
Motes and Oats: Road-Tested Harmonies From the Kootenays to Georgian Bay
Motes and Oats are Melissa McCready and Shannon Moldenhauer, a married duo whose powerful harmonies carry co-written, guitar-driven songs with flute melodies woven through them. Their style draws on folk, country, rock and jazz in roughly equal measure, and it leaves room for both a tender ballad and a feel-good stomp.
They perform as a duo, a trio or a full band, and their own biography describes songs built on stories of love, change and resilience. A September 2025 Collingwood Art Crawl musician profile lists them as a Collingwood-based folk, country and rock act, with the trio lineup noted alongside the duo.
The duo’s road to Nottawa started in Castlegar, British Columbia, where they built a following in the Kootenays before relocating east. In May 2013 they received the Best Country/Folk award at the Kootenay Music Awards, presented at the Spiritbar in Nelson, an early sign that their harmonies travelled well beyond their hometown.
Their debut album, Simple Things, arrived in 2012 as a compact set of eight songs. It introduced songs such as Saskatchewan, a nod to the prairie leg of a performing life, and the duo’s biography credits that track with a Best Folk award at the Kootenay Music Awards.
Their stage history spans British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan and Ontario, which makes them the most road-tested act on this bill. Their calendar still takes them well beyond home turf for dates such as a Friday Night Live festival mainstage set at Lanspeary Park.
They have played Trail Tunes in Collingwood, appeared at the town’s International Women’s Day celebrations, sung at the Wasaga Beach Holiday Market and joined the Musicians Christmas stage in support of Hospice Georgian Triangle. In August 2025 they were the featured act at a Summer Sets evening in Wasaga Beach, and they appear on the 2026 Bruce Trail Day musicians lineup.
Their website currently features Wish You Well, which it describes as a whimsical, laid-back ukulele song that captures the end of a relationship with a hopeful message of love.
In a songwriter circle, a duo brings something a solo writer cannot, because two voices can harmonize with each other and still have hands free to lift somebody else’s chorus. Expect the flute to surface when a neighbour’s song needs a melody line, and expect the harmonies to find their mark every round.
Jess Bowman: A One-Woman Band With Loops, Keys and Georgian Bay Roots
Jess Bowman is a 28-year-old singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist from the Georgian Bay area, and she is the youngest voice in the Nottawa circle by a generation. Her musical roots reach back to Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash and Dolly Parton, the pillars of her earliest listening. Her Blue Mountain biography says she prides herself on writing and playing music that any age can relate to and enjoy.
Her paramount inspiration, though, is Ed Sheeran, and his influence shows in how she builds a stage show out of very little.
The training started early, with piano lessons at five, self-taught guitar at eleven and a first song at sixteen. By seventeen she was playing gigs at small events and farmers markets.
She is proficient on piano, guitar, drums and ukulele, which gives her more colours to work with than most solo performers carry into a hall. She also works as a music teacher.
The loop pedal ties it all together. She discovered it around age fourteen and began working it into gigs at nineteen, layering those instruments live until a one-woman band fills the room.
It is a modern answer to an old problem, since a songwriter playing alone still has to hold a hall’s attention for a full set. For more than ten years she has played pubs, restaurants, festivals and weddings around Clearview, Collingwood, Barrie and Orillia.
Her debut album, Journey, arrived in March 2025 with ten songs and is available on all streaming platforms. It gives the Nottawa audience a way to hear the songs before the stories behind them come out on stage.
The live résumé is growing quickly around Georgian Bay. She played a midday Trail Tunes set at New Lowell Recreation Park in June 2026 and took the first station, billed as On Mountain, on Blue Mountain Village‘s Guitar Trail.
Guitar Trail is billed as Canada’s only guitar trail, a 1.3-kilometre hike through the village and up the mountain with eight musicians tucked into nature along the way. Her Blue Mountain dates also include a Saturday afternoon on the Subaru Stage on September 5, 2026, and a holiday-season live music set on November 30.
That run of outdoor and village stages suits a performer who builds her own band as she goes, since a loop-based set travels anywhere a guitar case fits.
Theatre stages have called as well, including an opening slot for Shane Cloutier and Jeff Gunn at the Simcoe Street Theatre in Collingwood in November 2025.
What to Know About the Small Halls Festival, the Hall and the Evening
Songwriters that Rock takes place on Thursday, November 5, 2026, from 7:00 p.m. to 9:30 p.m. at the Nottawa Memorial Community Centre, 4129 County Rd 124 in Nottawa. The evening is open to all ages in a licensed setting. The listed window of two and a half hours leaves room for several rounds of the circle and an intermission.
Tickets run from $10 to $35, and a community events listing on creemore.com shows $35 a ticket, up from the $25 general admission price in 2025. Each ticket also covers a complimentary pie and ice cream bar, a Small Halls Festival touch that turns the intermission into part of the hospitality.
Small rooms sell out quietly and without much warning, so the practical move is to book ahead rather than trust the door. The festival’s 2025 guidance noted that venues do not accept credit or debit cards and that tickets are non-refundable, so confirm the 2026 policy before you go.
The festival describes the night as a celebration of the power of female voices, built around original songs, personal stories and the experiences that inspire the music.
Songwriters that Rock is a returning favourite, and Clearview’s 2026 announcement named it alongside Amazing Race Clearview: Small Halls Edition and the Single Malt Whisky Dinner.
The 2025 edition filled the same room on November 6 with Clearview’s father-daughter duos, among them Jason and Emilia Redman, Chuck and Ella Baker, and Craig Smith and Jolie Anastasia. After the stories and solo acoustic sets, the writers joined forces as a songwriter supergroup, backing one another with full-band energy.
This year the circle returns to Nottawa with a tighter, all-women bill.
The Small Halls Festival was founded in 2014 to celebrate the community halls at the heart of Clearview Township, rooms that have hosted card games, weddings, dances and reunions for generations. The idea grew out of facility reviews, after which hall board members decided to do whatever it took to keep the halls open. Clearview Township owns and runs the festival.
Duntroon Hall board chair Jim Campbell and Avening hall board member Sara Hershoff had been dreaming of an event that brought all the halls together.
Township staff coordinated the planning, and the community culture and recreation coordinator, Shane Sargant, called it a hoped-for signature event for Clearview. The aim, he said, was less about spectacle than about bringing the halls together and promoting the township as a place that can host significant tourist events.
Tickets for the 2026 season went on sale July 27, with events in September, October and November and Experience Ontario funding from the Government of Ontario behind it.
The Best of Rural Living Series opened the season on September 18 to 20 with Séan McCann at Creemore Station on the Green, Dayna Reid at The Duntroon Hall and film screenings at Dunedin Village Hall.
New additions this year include award-winning Canadian actor and storyteller R.H. Thompson, singer-songwriter Shane Cloutier and a comedy hypnotist show. The stages have drawn serious names over the years, from Buck 65 and Skydiggers in the first two editions to Elliott Brood, Ron James, Julian Taylor and Danny Michel.
Nottawa Memorial Community Centre has welcomed its share of festival stages, hosting Graemazing in 2019, Not Ottawa in 2022 and Roger Harvey in 2024. The festival’s host halls also include Avening, Brentwood, Dunedin, Duntroon, Singhampton, Stayner and Sunnidale Corners, and most are only 10 to 20 minutes apart.
The halls themselves are the point of the exercise, because these are working community buildings that host everything from euchre nights and birthday parties to weddings and reunions the rest of the year.
A Night When Four Songwriters Turn a Small Hall Into a Listening Room
Four writers who have never shared a stage in this combination will spend the evening trading songs, stories and backing parts in one of Clearview’s working halls. Between them, the bill stretches across decades of songs and records. Nights like this are the festival’s founding idea in its purest form, with big music deliberately placed in a small room.
