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.
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.
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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.
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I’ve spent my Sunday (the first day off with no obligations in two weeks) working on my Pro Tools chops. They’re still not good but damn that program is fun. If you’re one of those people who don’t like Pro Tools I’m sorry…but damn it’s fun. I haven’t been working on Winhara songs because we’re not yet to the recording stage with any of our new stuff. I did mess around and come up with a terrible “Hip Hop-ish” song I’ve entitled “pajamas” because it is the least “Hip Hop-ish” name I could think of. OK well I’ll let you know if this makes it on the next Winhara album…that was a joke…seriously, even if I joked Dano would hit me with a blunt object, haha. Well enjoy!
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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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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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Personally? Well I think I sound a little pitchy and I sometimes struggle with my “R’s”. This band on the other hand, well we sound like Winhara…I hope. On the rare occasion that Mic Jagger runs into someone who has not heard the Rolling Stones before I always wonder what his answer to that question would be.
“Well we sound like The Beatles but we’ve done more drugs and are less worried about peace and more concerned about sex, but hey tomaytoe tomattoe right?”
or
“We sound like the F$%#ing Stones man!”
It’s raining this morning and I’ve been sitting around thinking about what kind of music I like. I’ve been thinking about what I enjoy in a song and how I interpret new music. The hardest part for me is removing my idea of the artist before I judge the song. Why is it I can’t listen to a song for its musicality and production?
What do we sound like?
We sound like the cover of our album. We sound like the promotional pictures on our website. We sound like our small club live show. We could sound like our big stadium live show. We could sound like our radio or TV interview. Hell we could even sound like our leaked celebrity sex tape.
What do you hear?
Winhara…I hope.
-k
