Royal Canoe celebrates anniversary of breakthrough

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This article was published 22/11/2023 (1000 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

All is still in Chinatown on Saturday afternoon, but sneaking out from behind a locked door on Pacific Avenue is the rib-tickling hum of amplifiers pushed to their limits and the soundwaves of a 10-year-old album so inventive it feels as if it could be recorded tomorrow.

Inside, the members of Royal Canoe — Matt Peters, Matt Schellenberg, Bucky Driedger, Brendan Berg, Derek Allard and Michael Jordan — are cramped together for a marathon rehearsal, running through their breakthrough, Juno-nominated album, Today We’re Believers, in trickles and bursts.

They don’t have much time: it has been nearly three years since Royal Canoe last played live, and the band is five days out from a two-night residency at the Park Theatre, playing every track to celebrate the album’s anniversary.

In the rehearsal hall, the hardwood floor is covered in wires, a tangled obstacle reflecting the album’s commitment to finding order in chaos, ignoring the compulsion to colour within the lines.

“Our mission statement, when making this album, was to see every idea through as far as it can go,” Driedger says. “We often talked about making the record in a vertical, rather than horizontal, way, adding layers and hooks and layers and hooks and layers and hooks until there were hundreds. Then we’d start muting and pulling things in and out to make it all make sense.”

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Royal Canoe began in the late 2000s as a collaborative project headed by Peters, then lead vocalist of the influential indie band the Waking Eyes. The first official release from the loose ensemble was 2010’s Co-Op Mode; a warm audience response spurred Peters to seek a more stable lineup.

Driedger had toured with the Waking Eyes as a utility guitarist and was invited to join Royal Canoe after his own band, the Liptonians, had shared a few bills with Peters’ burgeoning side gig.

“He said, ‘We need someone that can sing really high to sing falsetto with everything I do,’” Driedger recalls. “I said, ‘I can do that,’ and that was my audition for the band.”

While a lot of alternative rock and indie pop was shying away from the keyboard, the Royal Canoe sound, the band realized, would require an adept hand to take on piano duties. Driedger called up Schellenberg, his fellow Liptonian, “the best keyboard player I know.”

The band cycled through a few members, including Waking Eyes bassist Joey Penner and Quinzy drummer (and current Waverley MLA) David Pankratz, before the rest of the lineup solidified. Unable to tour, Pankratz recommended Allard, who brought Brendan Berg, a bandmate from the rock band Tele, into the fold.

Jordan, a drummer who also played with the Liptonians, enlisted as another percussionist.

With those pieces in place, Royal Canoe got to work on Today We’re Believers, holing up in a jam space above the former Jessica Bridal on Portage Avenue, an environment affectionately referred to as the Shithole.

The idea was to create something wholly separate from each of the artists’ previous projects. There was no genre in mind, nor was there a primary songwriter.

Band members dropped in and out according to their own schedules, adding to songs at their own pace, trying to impress one another by making the stems increasingly complicated.

“There was certainly a lot of internal competition,” Driedger says. “There was a playfulness; we wanted to stretch things to the farthest point.

“Maybe this isn’t the right way to say it, but we wanted to make something that didn’t sound like Winnipeg.”

John Paul Peters of Private Ear Recording recorded and mixed the album at his Gertie Street studio, and remembers being taken aback by the wild ideas at play.

“I remember one situation where they had five bass elements — three electric basses and two sub basses. Usually, you have one element establishing the low end. My job was to turn the mirror on them and say, ‘Which of these are actually creating what we want?’” he says.

Over a three-week recording process, Peters worked with the band to clarify its vision while retaining what he calls a “human groove,” built on a foundation of live, simultaneous drumming by Jordan and Allard. That made things complicated, but ultimately delivered a natural texture to the rhythms.

Driedger wanted to make his guitar sound like an alien, while Peters began experimenting with his voice, adding grain and grizzle. Schellenberg found comfort in distortion, with Berg’s stirring basslines providing an anchor, holding the ladder down while his bandmates climbed skyward.

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When it was released in 2013, the album was embraced by listeners, including Natalie Bohrn, then a 21-year-old music student at Brandon University.

“I remember a jazz guitar student brought over the record on vinyl and the household had a sit-down listening session. Nobody said anything the whole time,” Bohrn, who will open both anniversary shows with her band, Slow Spirit, says in an email.

“Though plenty of people work with these same instruments, genres, arrangement styles, and production software and tools, I doubt I’ll ever hear another record that travels as seamlessly through so many wild sonic textures and emotional spaces as Today We’re Believers.”

In the last decade, Royal Canoe has released four full-length albums, but Today We’re Believers — the thrashing Hold on to the Metal, the swelling Bathtubs, the grimy Button Fumbla — was a sweeping opening statement that stands for many as a hallmark of Winnipeg independent music.

As the band rehearses on Saturday, its creativity is on full display. Driedger uses a microphone as a drumstick while whistling into it. Jordan and Allard smoothly swing from one drum kit to another. Berg burps and burbles to become a human sub-woofer. Peters sings into two microphones at once, while Schellenberg manages three separate keyboards and vocal harmonies.

It doesn’t seem as if it should work, but in the hands of Royal Canoe, it all makes perfect sense.

ben.waldman@winnipegfreepress.com