TAS In Session: The Wilderness of Manitoba

If a moniker mirrored a band, The Wilderness of Manitoba should have an affinity for thick flannel, overgrown beards and stalking elk. Not unlike Ted Nugent. But the Toronto quintet,  whose new album When You Left The Fire is out now on TinyOGRE, is far more fragile in its musical tastes, leaning to lushly arranged and unabashedly pretty chamber folk.

The five friends - singer/pianist Will Whitwham, cellist/banjo player Stefan Banjevic, bassist Scott Bouwmeester, vocalist Melissa Dalton and drummer Sean Lancaric -  launch a North American tour on July 16 at Rudy's in New Haven, Connecticut. They'll reach the New York area, supporting Rasputina, on July 17 in Teaneck, New Jersey at Mexicali Live. Stops in August include the Philadelphia Folk Festival (August 21) and support slots with Aimee Mann and Cloud Cult on the West Coast.

Plus, for the entire month of July, the band's latest album, When You Left The Fire,  is available via Amazon for a mere $5.

Not long ago, The Wilderness of Manitoba dropped by The Alternate Side for a gorgeous session of songs, including "Orono Park" and "St. Petersburg." You can also hear the entire session with Alisa Ali this Wednesday, July 7, at 9 p.m. on Words & Music in Studio A on TAS' sister station, 90.7 WFUV, which you can also stream here.

[video:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HRO6nAsfNS4]

Alisa Ali: How did you guys get together?

Will Whitwham: Scott and I met through Craigslist five years ago.

Alisa: Which of you put out the listing?

Scott Bouwmeester: We actually both did and I think Will answered our had, but he also posted, and I think I saw his and recognized the responder.

Alisa: So what was the listing? ISO band member?

Will: Seeking quiet times. No! (all laugh) Must be buff!

Scott: Must have the look!

Will: Okay, that was a way different posting and guys, we said we wouldn’t talk about it. No, I was doing a solo thing, looking for a band and they were doing a band thing and looking for a singer. Then Scott and I started writing other music years later, that was a basement project. I was doing a MIDI-cello part and I said, we needed a real cello for this song - even though the MIDI-cello sounds debatedly great.

Alisa: Cello player, what do you have to say about that?

Stefan Banjevic: I’m not a big fan of the MIDI-cello.

Scott: The tone is great, though.

Stefan: Me and Scott were in the Rock Lottery which is a big, all-day, randomly-form-bands kind of thing. The organizers find about 25 musicians from around the city who they know are in bands and then we all show up in the morning, draw numbers out of a hat and form five random bands and write music for six hours and then play it that night for charity.

Will: All of the money in Toronto goes to the Regent Park School of Music, but in whatever city, the music is for charity. We were all in the same Rock Lottery, but in different bands and that’s the first time I met Stefan.

Alisa: So you heard each other’s songs and thought that this would be a better pairing?

Melissa Dalton: I think Will just really wanted cello (laughs).

Will: And Scott already knew Stefan.

Scott: Although at that time he had blond hair.

Melissa: Then Scott invited me to play [a house show] and it sort of happened.

Will: Sean played down the street in a weekly residency and we played as musical guests on the show that Sean is a part of. He came up after and asked to play on some of our songs and asked if we needed a drummer. And we were at the time. It was organic that he’d start to play with us at the time. He had one rehearsal with us and we had a show that Friday or Saturday. That was a few years ago.

Alisa: And now look at the beautiful music you play.

[video:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=afO1wFnC_AM]

Alisa: Why don’t you guys talk about the recording of this full-length album. Previously did you record in your basements?

Scott: We started recording the bed tracks in our basement the way we did the EP but with Sean on drums and bigger sounds, we did about half of it in church. Most of it in a big, nice space. We did in the overdubs at home.

Will: I think it’s just the nature of the beast these days, with technology being the way it is, you can record anywhere with digital recording but I think it require that as well, when you’re making an album. In the old days, when you’d got back in, you’d be running on the clock and certain mistakes would be there that you loved and certain mistakes, not so much, that you hated. Now it’s nice that you can listen to songs for weeks and weeks and then head back down to the basement, the drawing board and put your parts in. Get the bed tracks done and then spend two to three months agonizing over arrangement and little parts.

Alisa: Is that what you did? Spend two or three months agonizing?

Scott: We used ourselves as guinea pigs in a way in which we’re all learning how to record and do this almost in real time so yeah.

Will: Experimenting with different mics and sounds.

Scott: Having the time to do that is key.

Alisa: Were there specific songs that you fiddled with a lot longer than other songs? Others that came together more quickly?

Scott: I think every one of us would have a different story because we take the reins on different songs. “Hardship Acres” was a really simple song for me and then “Golden Beets" was a really complicated song for me.

Will: The last song on the album, which is “Reveries En Couleurs” - Sean was lead on drums and I was playing piano in this church to get the bed track done and all he said was, “Look at me when you want me to come in and don’t look at me throughout the song.” So I looked at Sean twice for that song and then at home we put all the layers on it. That song was really fun for me because it was a giant experiment with sound walls.

Alisa: That worked out really well, the eye contact. What if you accidentally looked at him?

Scott: Gazing into Sean’s eyes and being lost for a moment?

Will: He can’t defend himself [no mic] so we’re going to take all of our shots now.

Alisa: Can you tell me about the next song you’re going to do?

Stefan: We’re going to play “Orono Park” which is the emphasis track or whatever. Essentially, that got started as a little banjo line, I wrote it around our house, and then we were just touring around Canada for a bit about two years ago and we kind of got together and wrote this thing.

Alisa: You guys all live together?

Stefan: All except for Sean, but he likes to make frequent visits.

Alisa: And you have a cot set up for him.

Stefan: The couch. It was written in a garden, we played it in a park and then we finished it in another park when we were on tour in Montréal. Driving home, we ended up going through Scott’s hometown and he took us to this place where he used to hang out, called Orono Park. It was amazing and we finished it and I asked if we could call it “Orono Park.”

Alisa: Do you play in parks often? Live shows? Or write music there?

Will: We play often in parks.

Stefan: We played in a cemetary once. At midnight.

Melissa: One of the biggest cemetaries in Toronto. It was somebody’s birthday party.

Will: A goth girl. No! It was a girl who wanted to do special and interesting. I was really surprised. The cemetary was jam-packed with mosquitos. There were so many mosquitos there. It was like we were standing in a swamp.

Melissa: I can’t believe that’s what you remember from that night.

Will: At least they weren’t bats.

Stefan: I remember Meli playing a harp, in a tree. She climbed up and played the harp and sang. Will: On her back. Surreal. We were more afraid of getting caught and arrested.

Alisa: Than zombies.

Will: That was the second worry. Getting caught and arrested by zombies.

[video:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJgi62tU4yg]

Alisa: Are there collaborations within songs?

Will: The entire beginning of “Orono Park” was something I wrote a year and a half ago. We realized it was in the same key so we tagged it on the front.

Stefan: We were going to make it two tracks at one point, but then we liked playing it.

Will: We never play it without it. There’s obviously an edited version of it, but on the album it’s one track.

Alisa: You keep good records of things you wrote in the past.

Will: Things stay in the brain and other things take the place of those, but I think ideas are like that. They fly in and out.

Stefan: They stick around and sometimes you record them too and they sit around until everybody else hears them.

Scott: That’s another benefit of having everything we need in our basement. Any time you have an idea, three o’clock in the morning, you just hit space bar.

Will: Sometimes the middle of the night is the best time. I heard a story, I don’t know if it’s true, that Eddie Vedder has a fire pole in his room so when he wakes up and has an idea, he can take the fire pole down into the basement to a recording studio. Why he doesn’t have a recording studio in his room is beyond me, but the fire pole thing. That’s a fun story.

Stefan: But can you imagine being Eddie Vedder’s wife?

Alisa: Do you rehearse a lot?

Will: In phases. When we do our next album, we’ll be rehearsing quite a lot around that, but right now [on tour] we’re trying to keep things fresh as well.

Stefan: It really kills it if you’re playing the same song. This way, if you play it live, it’s an adventure. But we’re doing other projects too, so we’re constantly playing. Will has a solo thing or two.

Will: I do electronic music.

Stefan: All the guys are playing with our friend Elaine Kelly. The band is Carnival Moon and she plays the harp and sings.

Will: It’s so fun to play.

Alisa: How do you balance all of these projects?

Scott: We have really great friends back home who are willing to work around our schedule which is wicked. We love playing with Elaine and doing our thing. We try to fit in as much as we can when we’re home. I recorded a couple of harp tracks for Elaine; we did most of the overdub work at another studio. But we have people come by when we can. We have modest skill maybe, but we have the gear and we have the space.

Will: Everyone’s got their own style.

Stefan: A lot of times people have their own technical know-how, but it can come out sounding dry. People like what we do.

[video:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CCopDjQPCjE]

The Wilderness of Manitoba Tour Dates:

July 16 - New Haven, Conn. @ Rudy's
July 17 - Teaneck, N.J. @ Mexicali Live #
July 19 - Pittsburgh, Pa. @ Mr. Small's Theatre #
July 20 - Newport, Ky. @ Southgate House #
July 21 - St. Louis, Mo. @ Old Rock House #
July 22 - Kansas City, Mo. @ The Beaumont Club #
July 25 - Denver, Colo. @ Bluebird Theater #
August 12 - San Juan Capistrano, Calif. @ Coach House ^
August 14 - Solana Beach, Calif. @ Belly Up Tavern ^
August 19 - Grass Valley, Calif. @ Northern California Center for the Arts ^
August 21 - Schwenksville, Pa.Philadelphia Folk Festival
August 25 - Seattle, Wash. @ Neptune Theatre %
August 26 - Portland, Ore. @ Mission Theatre %
August 30 - Los Angeles, Calif. @ Hotel Café
August 31 - San Francisco, Calif. @ Hotel Utah

# Rasputina
^ Aimee Mann
% Cloud Cult