THE MAGICAL SHIFTING TALES OF GHOSTKEEPER
The story of Ghostkeeper is a constantly evolving one, forever taking a new shape, always travelling in different directions, and providing new chapters and adventures for everyone involved.
It’s something all good stories do and all great music should. And the Calgary band is both. The quartet led by the creative core of couple Shane Ghostkeeper and Sarah Houle have been writing their tale in the city’s indie scene for the better part of a decade now. Musically challenging, creatively diverse, over the course of three albums — including their 2010 selftitled sophomore release, which was longlisted for the Polaris Prize — they have incorporated everything into their music from country, electro, pop, doo- wop, punk, funk, psych, soul and folk to traditional native sounds and rhythms. But in doing so, they’ve somehow created their own artistic narrative that recalls many but is so singular in its voice. The story is all their own.
“It’s always hard for people to nail it down but I think because it is nostalgic in ways there are those hints in the music that bring you back to certain classic sounds,” says Houle. “We’re definitely trying to do something original and something that does progress from our last record. And also just keep going on a track where we’re sounding like how we want to sound and not a trend or a genre.”
Mission obviously accomplished. And the story gets even more interesting and takes a different turn with a new 7- inch single, which they’ll release with a show Thursday night at Wine- Ohs.
Titled Sheer Buffalo, the twosong sampler — with Side A being the track Oceans, Side B Medicine — is meant to get “people prepared” for the musical direction Ghostkeeper are going in, which has changed on a number of levels and for a number of different reasons. The first is that there are a few new characters joining the story, including fulltime bandmates Eric Hamelin on drums and multi- instrumentalist Ryan Bourne, both of whom have worked with equally as unique artist Chad VanGaalen in the past.
Perhaps the most important addition, though, is the introduction three years ago of Ghostkeeper and Houle’s son Vittal. His arrival, she says, has changed the way the band works and creates, with them finally finishing a home studio in their basement.
When he goes to sleep, they go to work, writing and recording and exploring different ways to further the plot.
From her point of view, it’s also changed her role in the band, with Houle now stepping away from her drumming duties and focusing more on guitar, synth, keyboards, vocals and songwriting.
“Just because when your baby is napping it’s not your immediate reaction to want to go bang on a drum kit.” She laughs. “Although he could probably sleep through anything.” In doing so, it’s also changed the sound and dynamics of Ghostkeeper, with Houle now moving forward and sharing equal focus and equal influence on things, especially by taking over lead warbling, wonderfully, on about half of the tracks.
“It’s a different voice, and I think it suits what we’re doing,” she says, with the reaction from those who’ve heard it already being encouraging. “It’s made me feel like it’s important to have another female voice in music. It’s always good to have another Metis voice out there, too, just to even it out a little bit.”
It works perfectly especially in the context of the new songs, which are from a concept album that they hope to deliver in the spring, and which is “based on these two characters portrayed by me and Shane, Sheer Blouse and Buffalo Knocks.”
Her contributions, she says, come from the point of view of the former, a medicine woman, and are “based off of country music heroes, like Loretta Lynn and all those sheer blouse- wearing ladies … And Shane is more the rebel missionary, really bringing about his political ideas and voicing the conflicts of oil and gas and the Aboriginal communities and referencing the American Indian Movement, the Oka Crisis” and other conflicts and issues important to their people.
“So, yeah, it’s loaded,” Houle says and laughs.
The first sampling, via Sheer Buffalo, bears that out, with the Ghostkeeper sung Medicine an obtusely pretty, almost harrowing and confrontational shamble of echoes, fuzz and phonograph wail, backed by a galloping hoof backbeat. Houle’s contribution, on the other hand, is an undulating, shore- lapping wave of wistful beauty, that’s actually based on the story of when she and Ghostkeeper first met, the pair running off on a whim, driving all the way to Vancouver Island, and missing a wedding in the process.
“It is very nostalgic and it is based on our real- life relationship,” she says.
As to how much of Ghostkeeper and Houle are in the work, and how much is actually fiction, the artist says it’s a mixture but with their personalities and ideals rooted in the biographical.
“It’s definitely pretty close. The idea of making it a character and making it not based on us personally is a way to give the story more relatability, and just to, plus, live out a fantasy character through music, which ends up being fun to perform.”
That said, the “fantastical element” to the story and her character is one that she has no difficulty taking to an extreme, actually enjoying the ability to be grander and more magical in the process. “My imagination it’s a little more exciting than my real life,” she says, again laughing. “So I like to go that route.”
Where it will go, we’ll have to wait, although Houle says the tracks for the new album are album done, the storyline written. In fact, she says they’re already writing for the next album that will continue both the tales of Ghostkeeper the band, and these new protagonists that they are and they’ve created.
And while Houle admits that the first record will end with some uncertainty, as we’re left wondering if Sheer Blouse will return from the fantastical realm of “the little people” — important characters in Aboriginal lore — and reunite with Buffalo Knocks, she doesn’t even pause when asked if they will, eventually, live happily ever after.
She laughs almost incredulously. “Of course.”