This weekend we’re teaming up with old friends (and awesome bands) Tamarack and Union City at the Red Dog Tavern in Peterborough, Ontario.

We open the night off starting at 10:00 so if you’re in town make sure you get there early and clear yourself a circle on the dance floor!

For all the info visit the shows page on our website:  www.winhara.com/shows.html.

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.

Just had band practice.  We’re working really hard to give you different live options for all the different venues we play.  We’re currently working on a mid-size live show that has Prevost playing through a drum pad that triggers MIDI drums in our Mac mini we use to play our backing tracks.  This allows us to remove the full drum setup from the live show and Prevost can stand up and join the party.  Hugh is still working from his synth workstation with his bass and Dano has minimized his setup to allow him to run all over the place.  The stage look is changed drastically for this setup. We have Dan on the left side at the front, Prevost and Hugh facing each other in the middle but set further back where Prevost usually is with his drums and me in my usual spot on the right.  We’ve purchased new pieces that include the start of an interesting light show we’ve been dreaming up and sometime in the near future we’ll be adding visuals to the show.  We’re getting bigger and better every show so if you get a chance come and check it out!

Kent

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:

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And video of “Science” on the toys…