The Wooden Sky Talk Firework Safety and Double Toe Loops

March 17th, 2010

wooden-sky

While The Wooden Sky were on their Bedrooms and Backstreets Tour last year, bass player Andrew Wyatt almost shot his eye out. While in Saskatoon, the band stocked up on fireworks and set them off to film while they played for their documentary, The Wooden Sky- A Documentary in Pieces. Although, his and drummer Andrew Kekewich’s stories differ—Kekewich claims that Wyatt looked right in the firework and Wyatt says he was angling it away— it is fact that the Roman Candle grazed past Wyatt’s head. “That was when I realized I have to look after you,” Kekewich laughed. “You’re like a kid who touches a stove top to see it was on.”

The Wooden Sky is the indie world’s answer to T-Swift and Keith Urban. With enough folk heart to clear a wheat field, the Toronto based rockers are being buzzed about a lot around this town thanks to two killer albums and a huge Bedrooms and Backstreets tour last summer. Wyatt and Kekewich are joined by lead singer and guitarist Gavin Gardiner and pianist and guitarist Simon Walker and on Saturday night, violist Edwin Huizinga. They took the stage at the ChartAttack Showcase during Canadian Music Week on Saturday and performed their set in various states of undress and through the hollers of one obnoxious audience member. Their set was high energy, interactive and impossible to look away from.

To say The Wooden Sky are comprehensive tourers wouldn’t be fair. The band stops in almost every small town in almost every province. “You almost have to in Canada. The major stops are few and far between,” Kekewich said. Wyatt agreed, “Days off are terrible. We work to play music so that’s what we do.” The band played in traditional venues in places like Nanaimo, BC and not so traditional venues like Levi’s Backyard in Saskatoon (site of the fireworks incident perhaps). “That tour was a new experience everyday,” Wyatt said.

This tour was documented by music video director Scott Cudmore for the series, The Wooden Sky- A Documentary in Pieces. The episodes show the band playing in places like a gondola in Whistler or a sunflower field. “[Cudmore] was very fly on the wall. We always forgot he was there,” Wyatt said. “He always had it on and we never acted differently.” The videos have since gone viral and the seventh episode was recently uploaded online and was featured in Cudmore’s gallery show They Shoot Videos, Don’t They?

Their newest album, If I Don’t Come Home, You’ll Know I’m Gone, the follow-up to 2007’s When Lost at Sea, was produced in 2008 and 2009 by Howard Bilerman who has worked with Wolf Parade, Arcade Fire and The Dears. “He had so many amazing stories. His ear is unreal. The way he described himself was as a music midwife,” Wyatt said. Kekewich says Bilerman even helped him with some girl troubles he was having while recording. “I did follow through but it turned out she had a boyfriend,” he laughs.

Not long before their Canadian Music Week Showcase, The Wooden Sky performed at one of the biggest platforms of their careers, the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver at the Ontario pavilion. They were only in Vancouver for a day so they weren’t able to catch any of the events, but Wyatt revealed his history in a popular winter Olympic sport. “I used to skate. I could do a double toe loop. It’s no big deal,” he said. Well, in the same way that The Wooden Sky are no big deal.

Tags: Scott Cudmore, The Wooden Sky