Bright Righteous to release long-awaited first EP

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This article was published 12/07/2018 (2668 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

In one form or another, local electro-rock band Bright Righteous has been floating around the Winnipeg music scene for years.

There have been lineup changes, name changes and shifts in sound, but the five-piece is finally gearing up to release their long-awaited self-titled EP.

“We just wanted to find our identity, so we evolved outside of (our previous identity), the Revival, and became Bright Righteous,” 27-year-old bassist Jay Jensen says.

“We had done a bunch of recording, so we saved some songs and scrapped some songs and finally we were in a place where we were really happy with the music.”

To really dig into their ideal sound — classic rock roots in the vocals and the guts of the instrumentation, but with electronic flourishes — the band travelled to Los Angeles to work with producer Mark Needham, who has helped craft hits for bands such as Imagine Dragons and the Killers.

“The first time we heard the round of mixes he had done, we couldn’t believe it. We’ve worked so hard, and we haven’t released a lot of music in the past because we were just never quite happy, and to finally hear our sound the way we imagined it is an amazing feeling,” Jensen says.

Not only has it been a long road to getting this collection of songs into the hands of their fans, it has also been a difficult one. The group suffered a great loss when their drummer, Alex Danyliuk, died in 2013 at the age of 22. Danyliuk had a congenital heart condition called Wolff-Parkinson-White Syndrome which, among other things, causes a rapid heartbeat. Jensen says there hadn’t been any cause for concern, so Danyliuk’s passing was an unexpected tragedy for his family and friends.

“I’ll never forget getting the call from his dad… we were all together, because we lived together at that time. It was intense, and life has never been the same since then,” Jensen says.

“But we knew we had to keep going… it’s our passion, and music is honestly what helped us keep moving forward just as people. It helped us cope; being able to express ourselves with music has always been a big thing for us.”

One of the six new songs, Satellites, is about Danyliuk and the group dealing with their grief while missing their bandmate as they continued on their musical journey.

“Every familiar face seemed distant, every condolence for our loss was an echo. It felt as though the anxiety and sorrow took us away to the deepest, darkest and most unknown parts of space. We were passing satellites,” the band wrote on their Facebook page when the track was released in May.

“For months, people were like, ‘I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry,’ but literally it felt like I was in space. And that’s where the concept came from. It’s a very meaningful song for us,” Jensen adds.

The EP will be released digitally on Saturday, July 21, but Bright Righteous is hosting an official release event Saturday, July 14, at the Garrick with fellow Winnipeg group Attica Riots. Everyone who attends the show will be getting a physical split-CD which has both bands’ new EPs on it.

“We just want people to have it, and to listen to it and to share it,” Jensen says.

“This EP is a big part of our life’s work, and we’re really excited to share this with the world and get it out there.”

erin.lebar@freepress.mb.ca Twitter: @NireRabel