The Wild North - Welcome to the Wild North
The debut from East Vancouver’s The Wild North is a raucous rock n roll gem. It’s a warm familiar feeling, like visiting an old friend you haven’t seen in years. Putting on an old-fashioned rock record like this is like unexpectedly hearing your favourite song start to play at a party. It just makes you want to throw your fist in the air. Unpretentious and straight-shooting, Welcome to the Wild North is eight tracks of tequila-drinking, guitar-strumming magic.
On a rainy day in East Van, I sat down with lead singer and songwriter, Elliot C Way, at the Princeton Pub, just in time for the Seahawks game.
“This will be our third and final attempt,” Way says. “We’ve recorded it twice over six years.”
When the process first started six years ago, Welcome to the Wild North was a high priority for all five members of the band. But as time went by each member found themselves getting busy with other projects and session work. As each member went their own way to play in bands like The Deep Dark Woods, City and Color, and Ben Rogers, the Wild North’s debut album would be temporarily put on the back burner. Despite that, they did manage to get into the studio and record something.
“We got that first record,” Way says, speaking of the first attempt at Welcome to the Wild North, “and it just sounded pieced together and flat and the energy wasn’t there.”
As the leader of the band he knew the effort wasn’t good enough. When a lot of other artists might’ve pushed forward with the product they had (recording albums is expensive, after all), Way had the patience and foresight to know they could do better and opted to start again.
As is often said, the third time's the charm.
When things finally did come together properly the band would enter Afterlife Studios studio owner Erik Nielsen.
“We did three days at Afterlife and brought in Andy Bishop from White Ash Falls to be tone wizard and vibe master. He just brings this energy as a producer that’s very chill. It was a very healthy work environment where we were all just vibing.”
After that they took the record over to legendary producer Colin Stewart at The Hive Studios, where they would do vocals and overdubs.
“Collin is just the sweetest, chillest, kindest dude,” Way says. “He pulled the best vocal performance out of me I’ve ever had, other than singing Bob Segar karaoke here at the Princeton Pub.”
On Stewart’s process, Way says:
“When we were doing the record Collin says, ‘I just find out what drug the artist likes and make sure he’s doing lots of it.’ So for me it was just a lot of tequila and cigarettes. It ended up being me in the vocal booth, shirt off, no shoes, high kicking, Springsteen-fist in the air. And Collin was just like ‘Give me more!’”
The record, which was released on November 2nd, 2019, with an album release show at Neptoon Records on Main Street, oozes that kind of rock ’n roll spirit. For the Wild North and their fans it’s an album that was definitely worth the wait.