A Millennial autoharpist meets a Boomer 12-string player at a festival, and all sorts of musical magic ensues. Ottawa-based acoustic duo Libby & Cal transcend boundaries and trip across genres while tackling subjects that are rarely voiced in song. Their music is heartfelt, delightfully risqué, and painfully honest.

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They have played at various venues in Ontario and Quebec, as well as the 2025 California Autoharp Gathering. Together they have three albums and counting: Our Lady of Perpetual Hammer in 2021, If You've Given Up on Love, Then Let's Call it Something Else in 2022, and The Hagstrom-Schmidt Affair in 2025.

 

Libby bought her first autoharp - an Oscar Schmidt found through an online ad - in 2014 after many back-breaking years of lugging her electric piano to gigs. Under the name Elizabeth Bruce she released two albums of piano-based music: As We Sadden Each Other to Sleep in 2007 and The Silent I Know in 2013. She currently plays a prizim autoharp gifted to her by Loren Crowley, who originated the prizim system. Libby also teaches music and runs a monthly women-centered open mic called "Sad Girl Café".

 

Cal (AKA Doug Hendry) has been entertaining crowds with his musical talent since the age of four, singing in a choir in his native Scotland. As a teenager, he made his way playing street corners and folk clubs throughout Britain and Europe. Cal emigrated to Canada in 1991 and has played regularly in various bands including Odd One Out, Bruce Enloe and the Burning Sensations, Emmi Winter and the Heroic Mad Peasants, Fiddlehead Soup, Tripoly, and the Grenville Troubadours.

 

"Libby and Cal unswervingly do their own thing and it is great." - James Stephens

 

“Their harmonies are as tight as those of The Everly Brothers!” - Suzanne Nuttall