Blue Sky
Hi guys, welcome to Vents! How have you been? Thanks for having us! We’ve been great, enjoying some much needed time back in Toronto getting all our ducks in a row for our EP release October 23 at the Horseshoe Tavern. Can you tell us more about the story behind your track Cold Water? Eric came up with a cool riff—the one that opens the song— so Jay and Jena immediately started writing it, coming up with a melody in a different time signature that somehow worked. Lyrically, the song reflects what was happening politically at the time. It became a way to express our frustration with environmental issues happening right here in Canada. Our current government has worked hard to keep Canadians ignorant about what is going on with pipelines and the big corporations are in bed with them. We wanted to create a song to make people feel empowered to stand up and call for a change. The single comes off your new self-titled EP. How was the recording and writing process?
The process began last winter with writing new material and exploring our already written songs. Three weeks before the studio we began working with our producer Todor Kobakov and a great team of mentors like Paul Brennan (Whitehorse) and Lindy Vopenford to get the songs ready to record. We booked six days straight at Lincoln County Social Club, a Toronto studio owned by engineer/producer/musician John Dinsmore. What was it like to work with Todor Kobakov and how did that relationship develop? Our relationship with Todor happened very organically. In 2012 or 2013, a mutual friend brought him down to a live music night that Jena had started. He heard our set and expressed interest in working with us.We were ecstatic! Todor is a musical prodigy and has worked on some of our favorite records (Stars, Emily Haines, Metric.) Over the next couple of years, as Blue Sky Miners grew into the band we are now, we would run into Todor frequently, and he would always remind us that he was waiting for the email. We eventually got our shit together and asked him to produce the EP.
y Miners
You guys mentioned the album was influenced by many of the albums you grew up with. Can you name some of them? The actual tones and techniques used in recording are what tie us to the records we grew up on like Sticky Fingers by The Rolling Stones. We recorded with old tube amps, ribbon mics, plate reverb, and almost all vintage gear. I think the newest instrument we used in the studio was from the 70’s. Lyrically, we took inspiration from albums like Cat Stevens’ Tea for the Tillerman, early Bob Dylan, and the folk singers of the 70’s who were writing songs about the troubles of their times. We really like to write stories that have that folk aspect, but we sit more in a modern rock ‘n’ roll setting when it comes to the performance of the songs on this record. Depending on the lyrics and themes, do the sounds tend to change or have you guys tried to have a consistent sound throughout the whole album? We tried to treat each song as its own idea and give each its own voice. While we explored different textures and sounds,
at its core, the has a cohesi e eel e co l n t p t o r nger on what the sound was in the studio until we started calling it Rocky Mountain Desert Rock. It all came together after that. Do you have any plans to hit the road? Yes! We are continuing our pre-release tour with a show in Peterborough at the Red Dog on October 17, and then our EP release show at the Horseshoe Tavern on October 23. After that, we have plans to tour the East Coast and head back West as well, hopefully within the next year. What else is happening next in Blue Sky Miners´ world? Touring the EP while we do lots more writing! We are really just beginning to explore this Rocky Mountain Desert Rock sound we have collectively created, so we have a lot of demoing and exploring to do before we get back into the studio to record a full-length album. There’s a lot coming up for us!