Culture shock

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This article was published 06/10/2023 (734 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The song P77 speaks volumes, even if you don’t know a word of Ukrainian.

The track is powered by an industrious, industrial drumline, jilted electric guitar and vocals that feel less like a request than a demand to dance. It could easily have been produced in a Lviv warehouse in 1982, but in fact, it was recorded two years ago by Stephen Levko Halas, a Winnipeg lawyer who spends his days dealing with estate litigation and his nights as the frontman of Tired Cossack, a local indie band that throws post-punk, new wave and old country into the pot and stirs until the flavours blend just right.

A lifelong music obsessive who gave up on guitar lessons relatively quickly as a preteen, Levko Halas only began recording his own music during the pandemic. While his then-partner, now-wife and bandmate Jodi Plenert (of the late Winnipeg group Yes We Mystic) was out of town, he visited his parents’ house to do laundry and found a USB microphone lying around. He ended up spending two days holed up in the basement to record a series of demos, retreating from the stress of real life into a singular artistic pursuit.

“By the end of those two days, I had seven songs I was happy with and made me feel the way I wanted them to make me feel, whether it was joy or melancholy,” recalls Levko Halas, 31, while a fish burger cools on the plate in front of him at a Sherbrook Street restaurant.

He decided to release them as an EP in the fall of 2020, and dubbed himself Tired Cossack, a reference to the Cossack Mamai, a recurring character in Ukrainian folklore who sits with his bandura, often depicted smoking a pipe and wearing a peaceful expression on his face.

A year later, Tired Cossack released Hocus Pocus, a full-length album that features P77 and Ukraine-inspired tunes such as Lviv Vacation and Drink from the Don.

“It wasn’t really a concept album, but it was about my own journey in grappling with my identity, coming to terms with where I fit in, in terms of diaspora and connecting with the culture that I’ve been brought up with through stories,” he says.

Inspired in part by the death of his grandmother, the album was released two months before the Russian invasion of Ukraine, giving Levko Halas’s lyrics — especially those in his baba’s language — unexpected gravity.

When he and his band — now consisting of Plenert on keys and vocals, brother Frank Halas on guitar, cousin Jony Bailes on drums and friend Dan Robidoux on bass — played their first gig in May 2022 at the Handsome Daughter alongside Montreal’s Paul Jacobs and local songwriter Alice Hamilton, Levko Halas was teary-eyed as he introduced Drink from the Don, a song named for the fourth-largest river in Europe, grounded in yearning for home.

As far as first shows go, Levko Halas was pleased.

“I didn’t get booed off stage. Nobody threw cabbage at me,” he says.

But displaying that kind of vulnerability felt new and tinged with anxiety. He was mostly focused on not looking as out of place as he felt under the spotlight.

Since then, though, Levko Halas has transformed into one of the city’s most dynamic, joyful and likable frontmen, able to capture an audience’s attention with his slinky, unpredictable movement and Begonia-inspired hand gestures.

A show last winter at the Good Will Social Club closed with a swaggering cover of Start Wearing Purple by Romani-influenced punk act Gogol Bordello; some audience members, and Levko Halas, started Ukrainian folk dancing, and even when the music stopped, they kept going.

The concert was a bit of a coming-out party for Tired Cossack, leading to a gig opening for alt-country rocker Amos the Kid at a sold out West End Cultural Centre in May.

“I’ve joked about it with my brother or with Jodi that it feels like we’re playing Rock Band. Each little step leads to something bigger,” he says.

The biggest moment in Tired Cossack’s career arrives today with the release of I Know, I Guess, the band’s second LP. Levko Halas likes the title because it evokes in one breath both certainty and the unknown.

Like Hocus Pocus, the album was produced, mixed and mastered by Donavan Ostapowich.

“One of the common themes (through both albums) is adding character through disruption. That’s usually how I refer to it,” says Ostapowich. “On every song, we’re trying to insert as much character and weirdness as we can without hurting your ears.”

I Know, I Guess is an album typified by “great joy, but also great sorrow and pain,”says Levko Halas, who used this album to confront depression, anxiety and the loss of family members (the haunting, dirge Downer, dedicated to Levko Halas’ grandfather, lives up to its title) while celebrating the power of friends who always stick together (the delightful opening track Sardines, named for the classic hide-and-seek variant).

While the new album features fewer Ukrainian passages, the industrial sound Ostapowich refers to as “cold wave” is still present on the metallic Tin and the jagged Zubov. But subtle hints of alt-country and even glam-pop often seep into Tired Cossack’s latest. Levko Halas views the record as a kaleidoscope of his influences.

While a few of the new songs have worked their way into the Tired Cossack live set, the band will officially release its latest work at the Good Will on Saturday. The Kyiv-based indie band Love ’n’ Joy was supposed to open, but had its visas denied last week. Ostapowich’s band Good Bandits and the Winnipeg synth-pop quartet Dayloft will open instead.

Then Tired Cossack will take the stage; hopefully, the audience won’t pelt him with cabbage this time, either.

ben.waldman@winnipegfreepress.com