Some songs refuse to stay dead and buried. Mercy Please is a reincarnation specialist. Or it is a cat and it has used up six of its nine lives, which are as follows:

Life #1: It started out as a song with what I thought was a clever title – Amee. I thought this title was clever because it was the name of a girl and also the chord names, Am, E, E. There were two problems that we chose to completely ignore. 1) Most girls with this name spell it Aimee, or if you’re conventional, Amey or Amy. 2) The chords in the song are Am, Em, F. Oh well.

Life #2: For some reason we thought that we could get away with putting a punk chorus in the middle of a set of ballads and nobody would notice. When we realized this might not work we slowed it down and turned it into a long (emphasized long) jam song. I can’t really remember it but I’m quite sure it sucked so we stopped playing it.

Life #3: We went back to it for some unknown reason and wrote a new chorus and lyrics about the tortures of dating (gasp!). Renamed ‘Helicopters’ (thank God) this was a staple in our set for a while. People actually liked it!

Life #4: During the writing sessions we did with Byron in preparation for this album, it got a new chorus. It was recorded in that state.

Life #5: Listening to this song we realized that the new choruses were about a hundred times better than the verses. Byron and I jammed out some chord and melody ideas for the verses and all of a sudden it was a completely different song.

Life #6: It was okay but something was off and it almost got the axe again. Because it was put together in such a bizarre way it didn’t have the live energy that the other songs did. We decided it would only have a chance if we re-recorded it and (partly because we were running out of time) went with the simplest way possible. I went into Canterbury Studios on May 16, sat in front of a Baldwin Grand and a vocal mic, click in my ear, and played three takes. I think the one on the album is the middle of the three.

[Listen to Mercy Please]

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As a young band trying to flush out our sound, the dirty word was always “Coldplay.” Not because we dislike the band, or the comparison to such a successful band, but because it was so easy for people to lump four guys with a piano into that box. Did we (and do we still) take some cues from them? Sure. But we didn’t want to just be a facsimile; rather something different – something unique that encompassed the four quartered pie chart of our different tastes. On the road to achieving this, and as the Coldplay comparisons slowed, the dirty word just changed…to “Linehaul.” (For those unaware, the band was called Linehaul prior to Winhara).

To me, Science is where Linehaul died. And Winhara was born.

Science was one of the last songs for writing / structure to be completed during the HBLS recording sessions and is one of only a handful of songs that did not appear on the final Linehaul record. To me, Science is the song that truly marks Winhara becoming its own entity. Gone were the days of the CP70 piano and blues scales; they’d been replaced with computer driven keyboards along side guitars that sound like…well computer driven keyboards. The vocals had new attitude, the rhythm section sounded deeper and other instruments were added to round out the set up. Dan, a long time advocate of clean piano sounds, now found himself with (and using) a litany of distortion, synth and effects pedals. Not to mention Hugh finally using his many distortion pedals tastefully – and getting full approval to do so. A second keyboard was added to the mix and Kent’s ever expanding stomp-box kit continued to expand. When Science was complete, we had arrived at OUR sound.

If you ever stumble upon an old interview on YouTube done by Studio Q in Kingston you will hear Hugh saying, “it’s a progression, I think you can finally start to hear what we’ve been trying to do on previous recordings” in regards to our final Linehaul album. At the time, although as a band we knew where we wanted our sound to go and could see it happening, we were still using the Linehaul sound-scape. Science was the true catalyst to our progression. Now we are the band we knew we could be.

P.

[Listen to Science]

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If I had to describe A Song Full of Regret, the best phrase would be “sleeper hit”…or “the forgotten song”…or “surprise” would work too.

To be honest I can’t remember how, where, why, or when this song started, or how it came to be as you hear it today – but I know where it almost ended up. And that is on the cutting room floor with all the other tracks that didn’t make the cut for HBLS.
In any of the forms this song took during the writing and recording process it always had a few parts that we all enjoyed, but we could never come to a unanimous sense of confidence around the song. Needless to say, the song toiled on the edge of obscurity for quite some time – the forgotten song.
That is until one day, after weeks of no one even uttering the words “song” and “regret” in the same sentence, we heard a mix of the song and had a “whoa, this is actually a great song” moment. Probably followed by a short session of everyone saying they always knew the song was great and agreeing that we had never really wanted to cut it in the first place…or that if we had, it was only once for a brief moment of absentmindedness.
To this day I still catch each one of us, often under our breathe and to ourselves, in seemingly a state of surprise or amazement after a solid run through of the song whispering, “wow, that is a great song.” This is our twenty dollar bill in the pocket of your winter jacket during it’s first action of the season.
I’ll stay away from inserting any cheesy lines about how we may have possibly regretted not adding this song to the album, but every time I catch one of the boys with a sly smile on their face after we perform this song, I know we made the right choice.

P.

[Listen to A Song Full of Regret]

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Hugh and I had rented a three bedroom town house in Kingston while he was finishing his last year of university. Steve was also finishing up school in Kingston but had already signed a lease just down the street with some friends. Dan was teaching at a private school just outside of Kingston and I was working at a bakery knowing that band was eventually going to become our number one focus. We wanted to rent a three bedroom house because we wanted room to setup all the band equipment. The third bedroom ended up being an office for Hugh to do his school work, our dining room became our living room and our living room became our band room, coincidentally the largest open area in the house.

So many nights during that year in Kingston Hugh would be studying hard as I sat in the stairwell or the kitchen playing my acoustic guitar trying to come up with some idea, some riff, that would evoke a comment from the office upstairs. I can’t remember the actual moment in which Hugh probably said something fairly simple such as “That last thing you were playing was pretty cool” but it only ever took that for me to show it to the other guys the next time they were over. It was most likely a Sunday because that’s when Dan would usually make the hour drive to Kingston so we could have band practice and I remember thinking that I was going to show him these verse, pre-chorus and chorus parts I had been working on. I remember feeling confident he wasn’t going to like them but I was feeling obligated to show him because they felt so good to me. Being the super self conscious guitar player I am I had prepared myself for this reaction and was completely o.k. with sweeping these idea’s into the trash. Much to my surprise Dan seemed to really like them so we decided to work on them at the next practice.

Our living room window faced west and at sunset the room would always have an inspiring glow to it but on this particular day it was nothing short of spectacular. As we plugged in our equipment and got settled into our little personal bubbles the room felt normal as usual. We started to throw around ideas for the song and it just started falling into place. A bridge was easily formed and Dan dropped the eventual melody he sings to this day in without any hesitation. As the different parts formed into a song, the room was turning from its usual stale white into a burning fusion of red and orange and it was a songwriting moment I will never forget. The sun was beaming in on all of us with these incredible colours and the room was screaming with a beautiful mesh of bass, drums, piano and guitar. And then it happened. As we swooped emotionally into the chorus the mumbled melody idea Dan was using easily transitioned into wise words to live by,

“Take it slow…and steady…”

[Listen to Slow and Steady]

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A few years ago I found myself at a point in my life when I was “between homes”. I spent a few months sleeping on a pullout couch in the sewing room of my parents newly built home that was not designed with me in mind. Thus I slept in the sewing room (which was only a few feet larger than the pullout itself). The sewing room had no windows, which made for a good sleep but also caused the occasional state of panic. One morning I woke up staring up into complete blackness with a bass line that had transferred over from a dream I was having about god knows what, stuck in my brain. It was stuck in my brain with “Yo Mickey, you’re so fine you blow my mind” levels of catchy-ness that I can only compare to something as random as the soundtrack to Super Mario Bros. 3. I got out of bed and went and grabbed my Dads acoustic bass off the wall in my parent’s bedroom and sat down and figured out how to play the bass line I was hearing.

At our next band practice I showed Hugh the bass line and the four of us started laying out the song together. Over the next few practices we ran into a few problems. Problem #1: We were having a key change debate. I think we came to the conclusion that key changes were neither cool nor un-cool and it was more about who was using them and how they were used. I think? Problem #2: The bass line was really cool and the song layout was coming together nicely but the song on a whole felt more like something you would hear in an elevator and less like something on a Winhara album. I think I was the main culprit because I couldn’t find a guitar part that fit the bass line Hugh was playing. I had just purchased a new effects pedal that I didn’t know how to use and one of its synthesizer settings in particular was a noise I thought sounded absolutely horrible. Because this pedal was new I really wanted to try applying it to something. I think initially I used the synthesizer setting as a joke but realized immediately that it sounded really cool with this song. Usually in these situations I look at the guys with a grin to see what the reaction is because they will never mince words when it comes to bad ideas. On this day I think we all concluded that the synth driven guitar sound was exactly what the song needed to take it away from the elevator feeling we were having. I wanted to keep the part simple so I embraced the bass line and played the octave on the guitar. The song started heading a direction we’d never gone before and Dan really embraced the moment and gave birth to possibly one of his most creative vocal melodies to date.

The song has grown slightly since the first few practices with it, but what developed over the first few practices is essentially what it is today: Hugh and I try and lock it down with the rhythm as Steve pushes it through like a tidal wave. And Dan, well he makes sure that the rest of you are all right there with us.

“We collide, our body language clear and high and full. Please believe me when I say we move like animals.”

[Listen to Please Belive Me:]

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Some songs come easy.  An idea will spark a writing session, ideas will flow, and by the end of one or two sessions, a song will exist in very close to it’s final form.

15 Minutes was not one of these songs.

What eventually became the album’s dark, epic opening track began as a piano ballad called ‘Let Go’.  Dan showed me the song and I set out to put a bass line to it.  So far so good.  The intro/verse line came easily and remains essentially the same as you hear on ‘Hold Back Light Show’.  A few sessions with the full band and the song sounded pretty much done.

We recorded ‘Let Go’ during sessions for our an independent album we were working on at the time.  We got all the way to mixing the song, but it became obvious that it just wasn’t working.  The chorus was falling flat and the song overall was too much of a ballad.  An honest friend of ours laid it out; “Well, it will probably get you girls, but ‘meh.’”

Now sometimes in this situation a song would just be left to die, but we dug the verse and melody.  ‘Let Go’ was stripped down and rebuilt.  I think in the end we probably went through 4 or 5 fully written chorus’ before arriving at one that fit.  Of course with the new musical direction of the song, the old lyrics no longer fit.  What Dan came back with was dark and edgy.  Gone was the piano ballad.  15 Minutes was born.

In the recording sessions for H.B.L.S., Byron pushed 15 minutes to be even bigger, even heavier.  It ended up being one of the hardest songs to mix, with so much going on that needed to be tamed.  I lost count of the number of times the question “Hey Byron, how’s it going?” was met with the response of “Oh, not bad.  Just tried yet another mix of 15 Minutes.”

The song you hear on Hold Back Light Show is the result of over two years of evolution, some easy, most not.  In the end, some songs are worth fighting for.

Check out 15 Minutes on our myspace.  Let me us know what you think.

As you may or may not have known, we spent last Friday at Canterbury, a studio hidden away at the base of Dufferin St. The goal of the session was to rerecord bed tracks using our prerecorded tracks as a template. Why rerecord? Experience has taught me that (at least for this band) there is no such thing as simply recording some songs and being done. The process of writing songs and capturing them to some recorded format always takes time; not an issue in itself. Over that time however, the project never stops evolving. Exhibit A: a planned 1 month recording of a 4 song demo which 6 months later had morphed into the full length album We Are Not Normal.

Rehearsing, playing and recording the current batch of songs has caused them to evolve to a point where the original bed recordings didn’t capture all that we wanted them too anymore. I hope this doesn’t make us sound spoiled. We were lucky enough to have a second chance at it. You only get to make your debut album once, right?

Our day at Canterbury was more than worth it. The size and isolation options of the studio allowed us to play together, while still keeping all the audio discrete. This time we really captured the energy of the songs. I also witnessed some of the most awesome noise I have ever heard coming from the room where Kent was locked away.

I’ve posted some of our photos on flickr.

Now I know that there are at least one or two people with the following question on their minds: “well Hugh, that’s all good, and we’re happy for you, really. But when do we get to hear a finished CD?”

Let me side step that by saying this: I was listening to old Linehaul recordings yesterday – right back to stuff from The No Itacifaxes Sessions, and up to We Are Not Normal – and let me tell you, you can hear the ideas, or at least their beginnings in those recordings. But we have definitely come a long way in the past 4 years. Stick with us a little longer. I promise it will be worth the wait.