Hello friends, foes, and love interests,
This month I went on what I am affectionately calling Fan Behaviour’s first business trip! I have to send a big thank you to KPP Productions for bringing me out to Kingston for it. This blog post is full of all of the antics from that trip, a background look into a music video I was a part of, an exclusive interview with an Ottawa artist that shares my name, and a dive into a brand-new book written by someone you have likely seen on stage. There’s no time like the present, so let's hop into it.
The Biggest Apple
On a bright sunny morning in Orleans, I walked into an empty, air-conditioned warehouse, followed by Matt Spafford of Hopper. The towering ceilings and orange shelves of unmarked brown boxes would soon become the backdrop for a chaotic music video shoot that would leave many of us sweating.
Although Matt was the first band member I saw, the music video was for The New Hires, one of my favourite bands and the headliner for the Fan Behaviour Birthday Bash. The New Hires had hired (get it?) BPM Studios to shoot their music video for New York City, their most recent single. The band had also invited a host of local characters. Bands, solo artists, bloggers, journalists, photographers, and producers were all in attendance and almost everyone knew each other. It was like the Ottawa music scene’s accidental Annual General Meeting.
The stage was set up with a backdrop of New York City, wooden boxes, and a full band set up, complete with cables that would not actually carry any sound.
After some milling around, staring at the setup, and comparing notes about what the plan was for the day, Max, the band's singer and frontman, used his teacher voice to gather all of us. What he said was mostly a reiteration of the very detailed emails the band had sent. It was at this point that I learned I was one of the few people to actually have read them.
Max split the room into four groups, all of which would have timed entries into the camera frame. There were two organizers on either side of the “stage” who silently instructed groups on their time to enter. Our instructions were to run, walk, skip, and dance across the shot when it was our turn. Each time we were in front of the camera we were supposed to make the scene bigger and crazier than the one before, becoming more animated and outrageous, with The New Hires supplying a steady stream of props, cutouts, and confetti to make this happen.
As time went on people started pulling more and more stunts. One of the early ones that I pulled didn’t make it into the music video, but Mike (AKA PettyChash) was able to capture it on his Polaroid camera. I had been joking about how funny it would be to ride on someone’s shoulders, and Sandy from Teenage Fiction excitedly volunteered. Steadying ourselves against the boxes, I clambered onto his shoulders, and we slowly rose up to tower over everyone else. We (Sandy) ran into the frame when it was our turn, as I stared at the floor and tried not to imagine falling and subsequently cracking my head against the unforgiving concrete floor. Later on, there was a chicken fight and some princess carries, but nothing as fun or dangerous as my assent.
After some sweaty hours, the shoot wrapped, allowing all the “actors” to run down the street to the brewery and pick up some “to-go beers” before rejoining the band for the pizza they offered us as payment for our hard work.
We all milled around in the parking lot, as we had firmly reached the end of our allotted time in the warehouse. In the early summer sun, everyone ate and drank, before slowly petering off, anxiously awaiting the final cut of the music video we had just shot.
Unlike The New Hires, I won't make you wait:
Emma Squared
One night at Live on Elgin's open mic, I was approaching another performer to tell them how much I enjoyed their set, when she opened her mouth and cut me to the chase. We were both incredibly excited about the others’ performance and made a fast connection. Weeks later I would pick up a plant from her house and a month after that I would interview her in a coffee shop on the same street Live on Elgin.
Emma Bayash is an Ottawa native who has captured the attention of the open mic scene with her harmonies and often very intense looping setups that she creates and performs completely live. Emma has a clear and strong voice and puts a lot of storytelling into her music. She's performed in a range of genres with bands but is now starting to go out on her own and do her own very unique style of music.
“[Now] I’m just writing for myself . . . and thinking about what is inspiring me.”
However, Emma and I were not sitting down to talk about her solo stuff. Together with her equally musical sister, she had created a project called Bayash Sisters, an exploration of their community, relationship, and family. Thanks to an incredibly lucrative Arts Council grant, Emma and her sister Eliza were able to produce an emotional EP, Provenance at Audio Vally Recording Studio in Ottawa. Emma lives in Ottawa, while Eliza lives between two cities, Toronto and Kingston, meaning that the two of them have worked hard to keep their connection strong.
The sisters both create music full of harmonies and looping and enjoy taking elements of each other’s writing to transform songs into whole new pieces of art, making the project feel like a collaboration as opposed to sticking two solo artists together.
Before the release of their EP, the sisters had a listening party full of family members and people from their neighbourhood growing up. The project is a “celebration of our own family, of our sister harmonies, but also the community that has supported us since we were little.” Everyone who came had different opinions about the music and there was no clear consensus on THE favourite song. Everyone had a different favourite song. The pair also spent time combing through old family photos and videos to use to promote the project, which was not only sentimental but a great way to cut costs in the immensely expensive world of music marketing.
“[Provenance is] about home, it's about belonging, it's about navigating the world as a young woman . . . It's about seeking home and trying to recreate that for ourselves,” said Emma. “It does take you on a bit of a journey.”
Her excitement about the project was palpable as she gushed about all the people she was able to involve and how amazing and special it was to do an entire project with her sister. “This really feels like the first project of probably a life’s worth [together],” said Emma.
Fruit Reference #2
I am, famously, a Kurt Vonnegut hater. And I’m allowed to say that. I'm allowed to say that when I was in high school I had to write a response essay to his book Slaughterhouse 5 where part of the assignment was rewriting the ending to the book and that I chose to write Vonnegut into the book and then promptly kill him off. Was this very dramatic? Sure, but I was also 17.
All of this is to say that when I began to read Lemon by Stefan Jurewicz I was expecting to hate it. Me and this book were doomed from the start, as I noticed the influence Vonnegut had on the book before I read the about the author section where Stefan lists Kurt Vonnegut as one of his primary influences. This made me incredibly nervous, as my copy of Lemon was gifted to me by Stefan himself and I really wanted to like it.
At first, it was slow going. Much like when I read Slaughterhouse 5, I just could not get myself to keep reading. The first establishing chapters didn't really do it for me, but once the two main characters began their separate trajectories and more about the motivations of M came to light, it was so much easier to root for both of them and to be interested in how they were going to reach their mutual end destination. Partway through the book something just clicked for me and I couldn't put it down.
Minor spoilers start here: Lemon follows Xxxxxxx, a grocery store clerk in a small town who has a chance meeting with M, someone seemingly on the run but hiding it from everyone around them. The two develop a casual relationship built entirely on one-sided lies and loneliness. And, as quickly as they came together, they stop seeing each other entirely. However, the line that draws them together is the fact that both of them are travelling to the same city, at the same time, with the same desperation. Xxxxxxx is chasing something, while M is being chased.
I think this book is a really good exploration of loneliness. It is so easy to be lonely and that loneliness doesn't leave you if you go somewhere else. These characters trek across the country only to realize, wherever you go, there you are.
Although I ended up voraciously devouring the last 100 pages of the book in one day, there is still one thing about the book that I take issue with. And that is the language laws explained in the author's note before the book. Essentially the laws explain the naming conventions behind almost all proper nouns in the book, save for brand names. The book itself is pinned as a dystopian, but quite honestly the only dystopian thing about it is these jarring and often confusing place and person names. However, as irrelevant and as frustrating as I may have found them, the bizarre aspect of these language laws did change the tone of the book and subconsciously makes the reader feel as if they are experiencing more of a mystery, helping frame the book in a light that I don't think would have been achieved without this peculiarity.
If you want to buy the book or get tickets to the Lemon release show featuring Desert Island Big Band, No Hits, and Salmon Ella head to desertislandbigband.com.
Business Trip
In March I wrote a blog post called Invading The Limestone City, during which I visited Kingston and had a peek at the local talent there. Ever since, I've been looking for a reason to return. I really liked Kingston, it reminded me of a big version of my small town. So when Marc and Moira of KPP Productions asked how I would feel about attending Spring Reverb, a four-day music festival in Kingston, I jumped at the opportunity. I ended up spending 45 minutes going through every performer and their Spotify to triangulate that with the festival schedule, ensuring I could hit as many performers that I wanted to see as possible.
I had to miss the first day of the music festival because I was at the Capital Music Awards in Ottawa, but over the three days I was there I ended up seeing sixteen different sets at having a fantastic time in the city. I stayed in this really cool Airbnb that was nestled in the studio of a violin maker. While waking up to the noises of making a violin is not as lovely as the sound the violins themselves make, it was really cool to see the instruments at all the different stages of their process.
After unpacking, I was invited to North of Princess, Zane Whitfield’s production studio. I initially met Zane after writing an article about his daughter, Liv (who you might know as Luella – read my interview with her here). He had invited a bunch of people from the festival over to his house for drinks, snacks, and music talk. I was admittedly very quiet, but I learned a lot listening to all the people around us and I was really psyched to see Zane's studio. It was absolutely packed with gear. Zane is one of those people that really makes an effort to make people feel included and ensures that people who should know each other get to know each other. He is, without a doubt, a community builder.
That night, I hit up The Mansion, a local restaurant with an upstairs music venue. All of the shows for the festival were staggered quite well so that you could attend as much as possible, so this show started quite early. This was also the day when Ontario was having a crazy heat wave, meaning that I learned very quickly that The Mansion does not have air conditioning. This would be a continuing thread throughout my visits to The Mansion, as every set I saw was so sweaty on stage and in the audience.
I arrived to see the last three songs of the Kingston-based band Monach. I really hate to say it, but visually they were giving 5 Seconds of Summer; each one of them individually looked like a different member of 5SOS. However, they had really great harmonies and overall sounded really good. Monach was on my Kingston Behaviour playlist when I first made it, so it was really sick to finally see them play live.
I skipped the next set to go get food downstairs at The Mansion, which I do not recommend, and returned back up to see Housewife. You might remember Housewife from Free Tickets and Sneak Peeks, but since that Kitchener show they have really evolved. At the time that I saw them, they were in the middle of a transition from folk to a more rock sound. They had just undergone a lineup change and were maturing as people and artists, but now in Kingston, they seemed to have settled into that change. They were playing with heavy distortion and introduced their brand-new song King of Wands which is so different from everything else they've put out. I'm, obviously, a fan of the new sound.
After Housewife I was exhausted, So I decided to head back to my Airbnb so that I would wake up bright and early in the morning to see some of the lunchtime shows happening as part of the festival. The shows I had planned to see were at Next Church, a tucked-away place of worship in downtown Kingston. They had green banister ceilings and a dance floor set up, in addition to traditionally uncomfortable pews. It was a really cool space to have music, and apparently, the church does events like this often. The accordion player in the first band that I saw is the minister at the church, which encourages their connection to local art.
The Gertrudes are an eight-piece folk band from Kingston. They sold CDs out of a wicker picnic basket and had fans dancing barefoot in the crowd. They pull a lot from old folk songs, giving them a new life in their modern interpretation.
Piner played after, a solo artist who had brought in a band for this performance. She joked that she saw her brother perform so much when she was growing up and “stole” his bandmates to make her own. She reminded me a lot of Annika from frownline, if frownline grew up listening to Christian rock.
As the sun started to set I made my way to The Ale House, the only venue that subjected me and all of the metal lodged in my head to a metal detector. Of all the shows that were happening, this was the one I was most excited about.
First was The Backsteps, a Kingston-based rock group that sounded way better than their recordings. During their set, I was absolutely transfixed by the full-sized plane that was hung on the ceiling inside the venue (not pictured, you’ll have to take my word for it).
Following the opener was Hotel Mira, an American group that had actually played Ottawa the night before. While their music was good, the lead singer was going a bit wild for the size of the room he was in. Usually, I complain that singers need to move around a little bit more, but the frontman from Hotel Mira was quite honestly doing his best impersonation of Matty Heely… so where was Taylor?
Next was New Friends, a band based in London, Ontario who was hot off their European tour. I've been a fan of New Friends for a while now and I found their energy on stage to be infectious. Their bass was so heavy that it made my drink almost rattle right off the stage and each band member was giving it all they got. Their singer, Stefan, even came into the crowd for a bit, and we all know how I feel about that. The keyboard was also heavily rocking back and forth on stage, I was immensely impressed it didn’t tip right over.
There was a group of genuine New Friends superfans next to me in the audience who, when I spoke to them after the set, encouraged me to ask the band for an interview. So, hot off a conversation with my doctor about the dangers of a young woman interviewing strange bands by herself, I leaned across the stage to introduce myself as the band did their teardown.
Fifteen minutes later I was standing outside with Conrad and Ayden, the band’s bassist and keyboardist/writer, respectively. What followed was the funniest, most chaotic interview I have ever done. All three of us were being pulled in different directions by fans, departing family, and surprise guest appearances by the Ottawa music scene.
Apparently, New Friends used to practice in a studio space very close to where I would walk on my outings in Waterloo. We commiserated about the prices of KW thrift stores and they made it very clear that I would have to come to their upcoming Waterloo shows in the fall.
The band initially met in college, having now moved on to touring and performing across the world in a Sprinter van, just like your favourite van life influencers. When I was talking to Conrad and Ayden I mentioned their phenomenal stage presence.
“We kinda take pride in our energy on stage,” said Ayden. “I think that’s our selling point as a live band.”
“When we started the band the pandemic hit, so we didn’t get to play live often,” added Conrad. “So [when we started playing shows] we all made a deal; all of us have fun together and invite people in . . . that’s why we started the band and we are just happy people get to have fun with us.”
The last time the band played in Kingston they showed up the night before their set to sing some karaoke at their would-be venue, The Mansion. Conrad explained, “Karaoke goes nuts at The Mansion.” “We had to humble ourselves, there was more people at karaoke than our show,” said Ayden. Clearly, the band has since built up a good base in the city as the turnout for their Spring Reverb show was massive. Conrad did catch me off guard though with his immediate answer to, “What’s your go-to Karaoke song?” Don’t Look Back In Anger by Oasis. “Every. Single. Time we go to karaoke.”
It was very fun to talk to them. The superfans were right, they were really nice guys. Ottawa is very lucky that the music scene is so friendly and genuine, but it isn’t always true in other places across the country. However, New Friends are a shining example of the joy that comes with community building and making sure that people feel welcome, on and off stage.
What’s next for New Friends? More. They’re “addicted to the chaos” and they can’t wait to release more and tour more. And as soon as they said that the interview and surrounding people became even more chaotic. More and more people accidentally got themselves recorded and it was hilarious to listen back to. The band left me with one final, ominous statement: “July 21st.”
After the surreal experience of interviewing New Friends, I came back inside to catch the latter half of The Wilderness, a group of Kingstonites who pulled a massive crowd. They had a saxophonist on stage who switched between multiple instruments, and a singer whose guitar had “this machine kills billionaires” painted on the side. The singer into the crowd to climb on some of the bar railings at one point. They were so fun to watch.
I joined up with Melanie Brulée, executive director at the Ottawa music industry coalition, as she headed to see Status/Non-Status at The (still sweaty) Mansion. I had seen one of Adam Sturgeon’s other projects, OMBIIGIZI in Kitchener, But I was really excited about how fast-paced this one was in comparison. They were another group with lots of members on stage doing so much stuff that I couldn't keep track. After their set Melanie went home, but not without convincing me to stay out and go to The Toucan before my night ended, as it is a quintessential Kingston experience.
By the time I arrived at The Toucan, 12:20 am, it was at capacity, but luckily I didn't have to wait for long. The band that I arrived to hear was Cam Kahin, who later told me that he would be driving all the way home to Toronto the same night so that he could shower after his basement set. They had an absolutely insane turnout and had music perfectly suited to this space, aggressive but not too overwhelming. Just before the end of his set Cam said, “I heard someone say they're going for a smoke for the last song and I disagree with that,” leading the entire room into a chorus of laughter and ensuring that the potential smoker stayed inside.
After his set, the next band took forever to set up while I was slowly getting more tired and less interested in staying. I ended up heading home once they started pumping a ridiculous amount of smoke into the room through a fog machine.
The next day was my last in Kingston. I had woken up early to go paddle boarding but, like all the other days that I was there, it was too windy. Normally I'm one to go out in conditions where I probably shouldn't, but it was genuinely too dangerous for me to go. I tell you all of this, because it made my day extraordinarily long, as I had checked out of my Airbnb before going to the lake and had to stay late into the night to catch the last shows. It did mean that I spent a lot of time working on my evolution coursework, something that probably wouldn't have gotten done otherwise.
Eventually, I wandered back to The Mansion to see All The Time Everywhere. They were having issues with their monitors, but the bassist was very funny and constantly joked throughout the set to lighten the mood. The band is local to Kingston and was clearly having a lot of fun on stage.
Following shortly after was Belvedere. As much as I like Belvedere, I was not planning on staying for their one-hour set. However, once they started I couldn’t pull myself away. The band hadn’t played Kingston in eighteen years, meaning that fans were ravid for their return. Since it was a Sunday early evening show, there were many kids, including a baby, with mohawks and big over-ear headphones to protect their ears. One kid in front of me must have filmed the entire show on his parent’s cell phone while jumping up and down. The band had the first mosh pit I had seen all weekend and truly used every inch of the stage they could.
After Belvedere I grabbed myself some dinner and made it to The Broom Factory just in time to see Taylor Adams’ last song. He played a beautiful acoustic song with excellent storytelling.
After Taylor was Kingston local Luella who entered to the sound of a ticking clock. Each time I see her perform she becomes more and more of a pop star. From the glittering makeup and matching glittery capo to the increased stage presence, it is really enjoyable seeing her grow as an artist. That is one of the best things about being involved in local music, finding a good artist and getting to watch them become great. Luella shared a new song with us called Peach Ginger Tea which is set to release later this summer. This new sound full of funk influences really took over the crowd and showed her growth as a musician. I am absolutely chomping at the bit to be able to stream this song on Spotify.
Finally, the last act of the festival went on. Dizzy is a Juno award-winning musician from Oshawa who played a full-hour set. I spent the first couple of songs of her set absolutely transfixed because she is a dead ringer for my editor Maggie. Dizzy is a really cool performer. Her drummer sang the high harmonies and her guitarist used all sorts of neat tools on his strings to pull out extra sounds. She has a completely unique stage presence with a weird yet natural magnetism on stage. Her movements were so bizarre, but they didn't seem forced. It was cool to watch her fill the breaks between lyrics. She also forgoed a water bottle or plastic cup and choose to drink out of a ceramic mug on stage which I thought was a really cool touch. I was really emotionally overwhelmed by her said, in a good way, and immediately wanted to get in my car and start writing music.
But, I had to drive back to Ottawa that night. I stayed and talked to a couple of Dizzy fans who had driven from the US to see her and to Luella for a bit before finally hopping in my car and leaving the festival behind. I ended up making it back to Ottawa at around one in the morning.
I learned about a lot of new artists while at Spring Reverb, who is your favourite new discovery from my recap?
The Slump
With the end of the festival came the end of my time in Kingston, and therefore the end of my business trip/vacation. Although I was “working” through the weekend, I was able to take a surprising amount of time to myself to relax and just think. I took a lot of walks without headphones and thought a lot to myself. I was able to think about a lot of things that I wanted to work on both personally and in terms of projects. So I was really excited to implement all of these things when I came back to Ottawa.
Then the sky turned grey.
Ottawa had some of the worst air quality in Canada, causing Environment and Climate Change Canada to advise people to stay indoors and avoid opening their windows. On one of the few occasions I went outside, I didn't seal my mask properly over my nose, and I ended up having this feeling of burning through my sinuses. I'm still shocked that people were able to walk around and handle that feeling, let alone the smell of the burning that permeated everything.
As I write this, the smoke has mostly disappeared, but the hundreds of forest fires have not stopped. While forest fires are natural, their scale and frequency are caused by increased dry seasons that are the direct result of global warming.
I don't say all of this to scare you, but if it does I hope that your fear motivates you. If you are passionate about music in any way there are a plethora of organizations you can get involved in, such as Music Declares Emergency, a nonprofit that allows musicians to use their platform and art to encourage climate action.
In this blog post, I talked about so many amazing and talented artists, but as Music Declares Emergency says, there’s no music on a dead planet.
- E