Last night we had the honour of playing Toronto’s North by Northeast music festival as part of the Random Science showcase. We had the opportunity to share the stage with some of Toronto, Montreal and New York’s best artists including: The Clear, Hexes and Ohs, NLX, Airheart and Purrr.
We met a heap of great people, sold some Hold Back Light Show albums and got some great press (more on that still to come). Thanks to everyone who came out, lent us your energy and made the night a huge success!
We sat down with Graeme of OntheGOinTo, an excellent Toronto entertainment blog, to talk about everything from writing to releasing new songs to the state of the music biz.
Click this link to see Winhara’s chat with excellent entertainment blog, OntheGOinTO.
Along with writing and recording “the beta collection” we’re also drawing up blueprints for a new live show – literally. Dan has already produced at least six different stage plots for us to discuss / try out. We’ve also been discussing lighting setups and other great visual ideas to add to our show. We’ve been away from the live stage for a while now and I can tell the three of us are overly eager to get back at it – but before we do we want to ensure that we are bring out 100% possible best to the stage. And we’re drawing on our long list of past concert experiences for guidance.
After attending the recent Muse concert (which was amazing) Dan and I started a discussion about our favourite concerts of all time – and what made them so. In the end we both were of the understanding that all the smoke and lights and visuals were nice, but it was the showmanship and songs that held our attention long after the concert was over. He spoke vividly of a Pearl Jam concert in a tiny hockey rink in small town Ontario where the band played past curfew and Eddie Vedder “threw his heart on the stage and stomped on it – like here you go, this is rock and roll.” And the Coldplay performance during their Rush of Blood to the Head tour when Chris Martin held so many thousands captive with his every word and movement.
I recalled Silverchair’s Diorama tour, still my favourite concert to date, in which everything, sounds, lights, performers, worked as one to create and amazing sonic and visual spectacle. And of a young upstart band called Say Anything I witnessed play a total of FOUR songs and fell in love. They weren’t even listed on the bill and had just released their debut “say anything…is a real boy”(which if you don’t own it run out and buy it NOW NOW NOW) but were the best band of the night. They had no flashy stage set up or props, but commanded attention, even when falling on patch chords, and had more than enough energy to light the city of Montreal for weeks after that night.
It was the interaction between the crowd and the band on those nights that made them what they were – not the pyrotechnic effects. Sure we’re working on lights and other on stage set ups, but mostly we’re working on our show to ensure that we can create that amazing connection between everyone, every time we hit the stage, with great energy and great music.
In 2008 we released an album entitled Hold Back Light Show. We want to know which of these songs are your favourites so that we can make sure to keep them in the live set! Thanks for taking the time give us some feedback!
These songs can be streamed on our MySpace page.
Hold Back Light Show is available on iTunes.
Tom Thomson's famous painting The Jack Pine. Oil on canvas. 1916.
It’s the stuff of Canadian legend. Artist and avid outdoorsman, Tom Thomson, paddles out into Canoe Lake just as he has done countless times before. This time he disappears. After days of searching, his body – bloated and bruised – surfaces. It doesn’t make any sense.
More on the extraordinary story after these extras we’ve put together for you.
_________________________
Official Version:
Download the full studio version of Tom Thomson at www.winhara.com.
Additional Blog:
Behind the scenes video:
Acoustic version:
Lyrics:
While the official coroner’s report claims that Thomson’s death was accidental there are many conspiracy theories – and for good reason. Tom was a strong swimmer and experienced outdoorsman, he even had a license to guide in Algonquin. It seems quite unlikely that he just fell out of his canoe and drowned on a clear day. In addition he had a bruise on his temple and there was a piece of fishing line wrapped around his ankle no less than seventeen times! There also wasn’t any water in his lungs, an indication that he died before he drowned. These facts, and many others, have raised questions surrounding his death.
Tom was just entering his prime as a painter and was starting to get recognition for his work. He grew up in Owen Sound but had moved to Toronto to pursue his career. He spent his summers in Algonquin park doing small oil sketches that he would transfer into larger works at his studio in the section of Toronto now known as Rosedale.
The best site I found for research is Death On A Painted Lake if you’d like to do some of your own digging. For a more entertaining read you can check out ‘Canoe Lake‘ by Roy MacGregor.
Winhara in mid Hugh-hazing about to hit up Toronto's Resevoir Lounge
Last weekend we took our best friend and bass player of over 5 years out for his exit hazing.
Hugh dropped the bomb on us as soon as we had all regrouped from New Years. He told us that while he loved making music, for many reasons (all of which make complete sense), he is moving on. I can’t say we weren’t shocked. The four of us sat around our kitchen table in complete silence until Steve said “I feel like you guys are listening to me chew.”
It is one of many massive changes that has happened in the last month, and while we’re sad to have Hugh leave, we are extremely excited for what is coming up.
So what is coming up?
Needless to say, Kent, Prevost and I are going to continue fighting the good fight. We won’t be getting a new bass player – the dynamic wouldn’t be right and we don’t have money to hire someone. So how are we going to play live? We’ve done it once already and let’s just say we get pretty creative with samplers and trading instruments!
We’re about to head up to Kent’s cabin, nestled into the woods beside the Muskoka River, for a focused four day writing session. One thing’s for sure… moving forward won’t be the same, but we absolutely wish Hugh all the best with his future endeavors.
Get on the newsletter:
You can barely walk through it, but we're getting things done. (click to enlarge)
I will be the first to admit it. I like it when things are neat, organized, logical. But there is a sense of finality to organization. You clean up. You say “There, I’m done”. And then you go watch TV. Progress, I have learned, is varying levels of chaos. The same can be said for Creativity. Now maybe this is not universally applicable. I am quite certain that my university lab instructors would disagree. But I can tell you that our ‘band room’ has been in a state of barely navigable flux for the last month and we have written more songs, come up with more creative and ambitions ideas and learned and programmed more MIDI than we have in ages. If you are trying to make the song lyrics look pretty instead of just getting them down, you’re missing the point.
August has been, and will continue to be a crazy crazy month. We are not playing any shows until September, but are busier than ever working on the set, live show, writing and all sorts of thing I don’t want to tell you about. Just come to a show in September. I promise it will be worth it.
H.
Starting NOW until August 30th we are running The GREAT Hold Back Light Show Scavenger Contest. Up for grabs is the new HOLDBACKLIGHTSHOW t-shirt (pictured below) and a $20 gift certificate to iTunes or HMV (your choice)! It’s easy! Here’s how you get into the fun:
Head to our new site www.holdbacklightshow.com.
Hidden on the backs of 10 of the photos you see there are items of information you need to find and send to us. Some of these things will test your wit (answering questions), some will let you show off your life experience, some won’t prove anything at all but we hope you have fun!
Once you have gathered all you can, e-mail your snippets of information to winhara@winhara.com.
You’ll notice that for some questions you have to include some visual evidence as well – pictures and/or scans for example – and you can do this any way you like: attach it in an e-mail, give us a link to your Facebook or Flickr page, you can even snail mail them to us if you want. Have your answers in by August 30th. The winner will be announced shortly thereafter and sent the most excellent grand prize mentioned above (we will get in contact with you about sizing etc.).
Happy scavenging!!!
We hit the Queen and Spadina neighborhood last night armed with acoustics, glockenspiels and electronic gadgets to busk for the NXNE concert goers.
Before we had even settled in to play a tune, a traveling minstrel struck up a conversation and told us he had been playing the streets since 1984. He thought it would be a good night if the rain held off. He played us a song about skinny-dipping in Halifax and in exchange we played him ‘Science’ which is not about skinny dipping or Halifax at all.
At times we had a crowd cheering for us and sometimes we were playing to each other and curious passers-by. But all in all it was a great night. Plus we sold CDs which was completely unexpected. We were mainly out to promote our upcoming show at the Mod Club (event details).
Perhaps this was the highlight:
An excited young gentlemen raved, “These guys are better than Lady Ga-Ga… and they’re free… and they’re all mine!!! (We had set up next to a MMVA party hosted by Lady Ga-Ga which makes it a little less random).
Hugh snapped this shot while taking an all-natural iced tea break.
With Earth Hour coming up on Saturday, everyone is trying to ‘unplug’. As you may have noticed, a Winhara show is usually on the other end of the spectrum and is quite ‘plugged in’.
So how do we ‘unplug’? Enter the Battery powered set.
Okay so it’s not totally unplugged – we play using a toy keyboard and drum pad playing through a toy amp, all running on batteries – in addition to acoustic guitar and glockenspiel. But we’re getting closer. This summer we hope to perform running the electronic instruments on solar or human power (but more on that later).
So first there was our cover of Depeche Mode’s ‘Precious’ (check it our on youtube if you haven’t already seen it) and now below you can see us performing our song ‘Science’ on CFRB 1010AM’s show ‘Rock Talk’.
Rock Talk airs from 6-7pm on Sundays and is hosted by Blair Packham and Bob Reid. They had us on on March 8th, leading up the Mod Club show during CMW. You can listen to the full interview below as well as see video of “Science”.
Doing the show was very cool; Bob and Blair were great – made our job easy. Lesson #1 of the day: pay attention to when you’re ON air and OFF air. No major gaffs – this time – just a joke at Prevost’s expense.
Check out the full interview here:
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
And video of “Science” on the toys…