Said The Whale’s newest album is a made-in-Banff story.
In February, the band’s songwriters came to The Banff Centre for inspiration. They left with several new songs and have now released I Love You, a three-song EP to tide over fans before the release of a full album in the fall.
The Outlook spoke with Ben Worcester about the residency on Thursday (June 13).
“Three of the five band members – Spencer (Schoeing) and Tyler (Bancroft) and myself – came up to use the facilities and write some new songs for the record we’re working on, and we got to pound out some pretty cool tunes,” he said. “It was the first time we had gotten to do somewhat of a writing retreat. I found it to be incredibly useful and I hope we get to do it again in the future and write more songs.”
The time in Banff was strictly devoted to writing music, and there were no shenanigans, he stressed.
“We really intended on nothing crazy, so we could put all our efforts into spending time alone in a box trying to create some cool stuff,” he explained. “It gave us a chance to be really focused without being distracted by other things.
“I took my fishing rod down to the river, to try some fishing, but it was entirely frozen over with ice and quite too treacherous, but nothing too exciting happened, I didn’t fall in.”
When it comes to the process of writing music, it’ll begin with either Worcester or Bancroft writing the lyrics for a song, which will then be brought to the band to finish.
“Since we started, Tyler and I both write the lyrics and the skeleton of the song, the basic idea on our own – it’s really hard to write personal lyrics with others, so we don’t do a lot of word sharing – but once we have an idea of where it’s going, we bring it to the band, and then the whole band works together to shape it and flush out the song,” he explained.
“Sometimes we’ll spend hour after hour after hour in a room working on a demo. Some songs come out quickly and some take a long time to develop and take everyone’s efforts musically to develop it, but we successfully came home with just a couple songs that’ll be on the new album.”
At the time of the interview, the Vancouver-based band was on the road, driving from San Diego to Los Angeles.
“It’s paradise, I’m loving California,” he said. “The shows have been fun and the weather is both cool and mild and hot. It’s such a beautiful state, it’s got everything.
“Next we get to come play in Banff, which is also like paradise. It’ll be more familiar and there’s nowhere I’d rather be than in the Rocky Mountains in summer.”
The Banff show takes place Saturday (June 22) at the Park Administration Building grounds, where Said The Whale will be playing alongside Coeur de Pirate and opening for Serena Ryder.
While the show is sold out, the music will be loud and clearly heard throughout town, allowing even those without tickets to enjoy it.
Though Worcester has never personally met Ryder, he is a fan and hopes that’ll change at this show.
“She’s awesome, the first time I watched her perform it was opening for Hawksley Workman, and she came out and belted out a song a cappella – she has mad skills at singing – and then she put on a wicked show,” he said. “It’ll be cool, hopefully I’ll get to meet her and give her a High 5.
“She seems like a really nice chick and I couldn’t imagine she wouldn’t be.”
Unfortunately, the band won’t get to spend a lot of quality time in Banff, this time in town.
“We may have the next day to hang out before heading to Calgary, to fly to Toronto to film a music video,” he sighed. “Hell yeah though, we can’t wait to come back for another writing time in Banff.
“It probably won’t be a while before we allot ourselves a period of time to focus on writing. It doesn’t happen as often as we wish it would, but we’re definitely going to look into doing it again when we can.”
