Q&A With Bethany
On October 4, Halifax indie-rock act Bethany will release their forthcoming album, Handwritten Notes. As the band prepares for the release, vocalist and songwriter Bethany opens up about the creative process, her passion for collaboration, and the excitement surrounding the upcoming album release show at Gus’ Pub on October 5. In an interview with The Boom at Noon, she shares insights into the collaborative spirit behind the project, her excitement for the release, and what this new music means to her.
What can you tell us about the album release show, and what are you most excited about?
I think I'm the most excited to get together with everybody. I love bringing people together for art and music, and a lot of these people I've been playing with in some way, shape or form for a lot of years. So it's kind of like a reunion show for us, and we'll be bringing together new people as well. I haven't played much with The Karol Brown. I've only seen her play a couple of times. I'm also really excited because we have a stage and venue decorator, her name is Stephanie Rybcyzn, and the theme is going to be sparkly broken hearts and handwritten notes. She's going to put some mylar on the back with broken hearts, and she has these sparkly disco ball broken hearts that she's making. I'm really excited to bring everybody together through art and music… It's one of my passions, for sure.
What can you tell us about the album?
The album is a collaborative project. The project is called Bethany, but all of us put it together. I'm the songwriter, and I play guitar and piano and sing, but the album wouldn't be the same without everybody else there. I don't write any other instrumentation; they write their parts. I've had the same players for so long because they can take off and do their own thing. They must also like my music too, if they stuck around for a while.
Who all is in the band?
I have Shane Martin on drums, and Casey Thompson plays bass. They've both been playing with me forever. I'm also playing with Andrew Mackelvie, who plays saxophone; in one song, he plays clarinet, and Andrew Jackson, who plays trombone. I've been playing with Andrew and Andrew and Casey for about eight or nine years now. This is the first full-length recording that we've put out, but we've put out three EPs previously under a different moniker. Shane is someone who I've played with on different projects as well. So not only have we played together for these last eight or nine years, but he's also played drums with me in previous projects. We've toured Toronto a few times together, and played Canadian Music Week in different projects. He really brings something really special to my music. He has an ear for it, and I really like his drumming. All of them have something really special that makes me think, wow, I can't believe that these musicians have stuck with me for so long because I respect them so much, and I see them play with so many other musicians. A lot of the guys are jazz guys who have done so much within the local scene and the Canadian music scene. And so it feels really special to have them play on my music and continue to be excited about it.
You briefly mentioned the moniker - can you tell us about that?
The moniker prior was Shadow, and we played a shadow for a few years, myself and Andrew and Andrew and Casey and Shane, the five of us are the unit, and it started as an art music project. I had this idea for a three EP series called The Light, The Dark, and The Dawn, which explores nature themes, sun, rebirth, in the dawn, and all of that. All of that kind of encompasses the name shadow. Shadow is a play on light in itself. So that's kind of how that name came together. I'm happy that we did those EPs together. But if you try to find them, you need to do a deep cut with a specific song name because there are so many artists on Spotify and online, in general, with the name Shadow or Shadow something. I really liked the idea of that project, but I felt like Shadow had already kind of run its course, and that vision, if that makes sense… also, the kick in the butt was really because no one would be able to find the music. It's still online, it's still on Spotify, but it's really difficult to look up because there are so many other artists named Shadow. It also gave me kind of a kick to move on from monikers in general because I've played with a lot of different bands where I was, if not the front person, one of the front people and always one of the songwriters, if not the main songwriter, and it's always been under a different band name. I guess I just felt like it was time to clarify that I'm the songwriter. I think it's a good move. There are lots of bands and projects that are coming out now that are just a person's name, and I think that we can do this project together and it is a collaborative project, even though it’s called Bethany.
How would you describe your music to someone who hasn’t heard it before?
Very heartfelt, very passionate. There's a little bit of rock and roll, a little bit of weirdness, forward-thinking, but it's a lot of fun. I think you end up thinking about the music, and I hope that people leave wanting to listen a little closer, not only to my music but just to listen to music a little closer in general. I want people to hear the different layers.
Are there recurring themes woven throughout the album?
It's an eight-song album, and there are two songs that have been written for a long time, and maybe there just wasn't the right time to release them before. I think that they fit musically with the album. Otherwise, the other six songs, I mostly wrote when my son and I were travelling across Canada, and we lived in British Columbia for a little while. We camped a lot out there, and it was a really beautiful time. There are a lot of themes of longing in that album - longing for self and longing for learning and a simpler time. It was during times when things started to get shut down, and things became more confusing in the world, and I was on the other side of the world. Because I'm inspired a lot by nature, the outdoors, and growth, there are a lot of themes throughout as well, in metaphorical ways.
What can you tell us about the singles and the music videos you’ve released from the album so far?
The album will be released on all platforms on October 4th. Previous to that, there were two music videos. One of them is by James Turpin for the song Mistakes (Heart Hit A Brick Wall), and the other one is directed by Nicole Cecile Holland, and that song is called Trouble. Those two songs are quite different, but I wanted to release two singles that showed different sides of what we do. Mistakes is fun and sort of carefree musically, and the video shows that. Trouble is heavier, the lyrics are deeper, you have to think a little deeper about the meaning, and the song is heavier. It's a little more like an alt-rock song. After Handwritten Notes, the album is out there's still going to be two more music videos that will come out. One will be for the last track on the album, which is called Weeping Willow, which is just me and the two horn players; although there are about eight horn tracks throughout the song, it's a more pulled-back song. The other one is the title track, Handwritten Notes, which Andrew Mackelvie will actually be directing. It's a lyric video and there will be digital projections of the lyrics with things flying around it. There'll be things that pass in front of the camera as well. It will be released sometime in December. So there's lots coming down the line.
How will it feel to have the album out there for people to listen to and enjoy?
It's going to feel great. We've been working on it for a long time, and I've been working with a lot of people on this album who, again, I'm just honoured to work with not - only the musicians, but it's mixed by Loel Campbell and mastered by Noah Mintz, and I have a couple of special guests, Jon Samuel, and Tim D’eon. It's really incredible to have all these people come together. It'll feel really good to put it out. Sometimes it's really hard to kind of make people care about it. As I've been gearing up for this release, it's like, I want to make people care, but as I kind of step back, I think I really believe in what we did, and I hope that people listen and that they like it. Even if it falls flat as far as success goes, I think that the people that I play with and myself are really happy with it, and it'll just feel really good to be able to have friends listen to it and show them what we've been sweating over for a while.
Bethany’s album, Handwritten Notes, will be available everywhere on October 4th, and you can catch the band at their album release show the following night at Gus’ Pub. If you’d like to get a CD, they’ll be for sale at the show and on Bandcamp.
