Bo’s Bar and Grill on Sept. 22nd will be hosting two of Alberta’s up and coming acts when Red Deer’s Magic Spells opens for Edmonton’s Whale and the Wolf.
“We love Red Deer and have played there a bunch now,” Whale and the Wolf Vocalist Ryan Maier said. “We have played a bunch of different places but Bo’s is now our go to spot.
“As far as Western Canada is concerned, that is our favourite venue to play. It is so well put together and it is always well attended. The people in Red Deer are always a raucous crowd that are engaged in the shows.”
For those listeners who haven’t heard Whale and the Wolf’s sound, Maier described it as ‘erotic rock’ that takes you through ‘a variety of moods’.
“We always get asked what that means. Usually, when people leave the show they say, ‘I get it now,’” Maier said. “The themes of the songs are fairly sexually charged; the guitars are very wet and some of the themes of the songs are around the bedroom. You’ll get it.”
Whale and the Wolf recently released their new single Touch last June, which is currently charting on Top 40 charts across the country.
“Touch was recorded back in December in Edmonton with a Danny Craig, who was the drummer of the band Default,” Maier said. “We recorded three songs in December and this is the first single of the bunch.”
Recording Touch was a learning process for the band. Their EP Domino was mostly recorded similar to how they are presented live. Touch, however, was recorded in studio – with much of the creative process handled on the spot.
“The scary thing about that situation was there is a deadline involved,” Maier said. “The rest of the songs we recorded we had already had crafted for live performances. When we recorded our EP, they were recorded pretty much how we play them live whereas with Touch it was about change. It was about treating it as a group project because what comes out is the best for the group. It was crafted in the studio and it was really fun doing it that way.”
Whale and the Wolf have decided to navigate through the industry by producing smaller groups of singles, rather than releasing a full-length album.
“The people we have talked to have said it is becoming less effective to release a full album regarding the cost of recording,” Maier explained. “We used the studio time we had allotted to do some songs we feel really strongly about and also run the spectrum of the sound we feel we encompass as a band. We feel we picked the right songs but it is a little scary thinking whether we picked the right songs to catch peoples ears.”
Maier is excited to perform with Magic Spells again in Red Deer.
“I get so much of a kick out of their shows and I’m almost more excited to see their show than ours,” Maier said. “They are guys out of Red Deer who are out of Vancouver now and they put on a hell of a show. Very live, very vibrant. I think our band with theirs is a very cool pairing. We have played a few shows with them and it is always a good mash-up of different styles of rock.”
