"I didn't sit down to write a protest song, but that's what came out and it felt good," says Gavin Gardiner, frontman for the Toronto band Wooden Sky. The band plays Massey Hall on June 23 (Tonight!) alongside the incredible Jenn Grant as part of the venerable concert hall's Live at Massey Hall series.
Gardiner is referring to the song "Black Gold" about the Keystone XL oil pipeline and his feelings surrounding the hot-button environmental issue. It's just one of a number of songs with a more political slant on the album. And, although he wasn't planning on getting all political with his music, the times, as another famous songwriter once said, are definitely changing.
"I just felt like using my voice to do that this time, I guess," he says. "I feel like I might delve even further. I've been listening to so much Clash lately, and I've been so moved by Joe Strummer's writing."
Not that the Wooden Sky are planning a punk record anytime soon. If anything, Swimming in Strange Waters, sees the band veer more into psychedelic rock than anything else and in a decidedly good way. For the new album, the band sequestered themselves in a Quebec farmhouse to work on the new tunes that gave way to their new sonic direction.
"We went up for 10 days essentially and took this old tap machine I have for making demos," he said. "It was awesome, felt very Canadian to be out in the woods. And we just worked all the time, until we were too exhausted to work anymore. By the end, we have six full-fledged demos, and that sort of provided a pathway to something new for us you know."
Gardiner says he was also inspired by the music of his west end Toronto neighbour Simone Schmidt, who records under the name Fiver.
"It definitely influenced where I was going at that point," he says.
The album takes its name from a quote from Frank Herbert's novel Dune, and speaks to the new political climate in which we find ourselves. Although he is excited about getting more political with his music, he does admit to a period of self-censorship when he held back in his writing.
"There was a muzzle put on songwriters where it was uncouth to talk about things that matter, and I think that's changing because things are getting so f'd up," he says. "I feel like even if it's uncharted, I don't give a s–t. I want to talk about it."
Gardiner sees the potential for something of an artistic renaissance as people find ways of expressing their anxiety and anger.
"I think it probably has to and probably is. If songwriters reap is to be a commentator or documentarian of the times, that’s inevitable I think," he says. "But humans are always going to be f'd up. Although the political climate now especially dark."
Gardiner, just finishing up the European leg of the Wooden Sky tour, says the band will play a lot of new material at Massey Hall.
"At this point in our career, we have five records, and that’s a lot of songs," Gardiner says. "But I’m excited about the new songs and I want to play them."
Violinist Edwin Huizinga is flying in from California for tonight's show, so expect something special with this incredible double-bill along with Jenn Grant. Not to be missed.
