EXPLORING ‘COOL STORY’ LED TO CONCEPT ALBUM
Stumbling Distance deals with summer romance from start to finish
Writing a concept album was as much a surprise to Nick Faye as it will be to fans of his music.
The album, titled Stumbling Distance, is to be released on April 17 and in a recent interview to advance the April 14 CD release show at The Exchange, Faye explained how the concept album came to be.
“I didn’t set out to write a concept album. I wrote a few songs and I thought it was kind of a cool story to explore,” said Faye. “I kept writing and having fun with it and before I knew it, I realized that there was a story arc in the songs. What wound up happening is that once Michael (Wojewoda) wanted to work with us, we sat down one day and had a two- or three-hour Skype session. He pushed me to explain what the concept was for the album. He wanted to hear the story ... His point was that if I was going to do a concept album, I needed to understand what each and every character was doing, thinking, even if they ’re not involved in a particular song. He stressed that I needed to know these things because it would help the band emote in the studio.
“He said he liked the concept but that it needed to be flushed out. I needed to be able to tell him the complete story from front to back. So I just started to write the album, it turned into a concept album and Michael helped to refine it.”
Nick Faye & The Deputies have been regulars on the Regina music scene since 2010. The band, comprised of Faye, Adam Ennis (percussion), Byron Chambers ( bass) and Jon Neher (keyboards), have consistently released original music over the past eight years. Their catalogue includes The Last Best West (2011), Harvest (2013), Worry (2014) and Lambswool (2016).
But Stumbling Distance is different, focused on a singular concept throughout the album. It tells the story of a summer romance following graduation in a small town on the Prairies.
Faye admitted that writing for a concept album was unlike writing for any other album.
“It was a completely different writing experience,” said Faye. “It was really, really cool because I’d never thought about characters. I just thought, ‘They’re just songs. They can be about whatever. They’re just themes.’ For this, I actually had to think about emotions and about what the characters were thinking and feeling. It needed to be real.
“It was fun to have a whole blank canvas.”
Hiring a producer was also different from the previous albums released by the band. In the past, Chambers handled the role with input from the other band members.
This time around, Faye decided to go with Wojewoda, an awardwinning producer who has worked with the likes of the Barenaked Ladies, Rheostatics, Great Big Sea and Buffy Sainte-Marie.
Faye wasn’t entirely sure about trusting an outside producer, even someone with credentials like Wojewoda.
“I’ve had friends who’ve worked with outside producers before and the experience was, ‘They just did everything. They had a vision and they just did it,’ ” said Faye. “Michael has shown in his past work that he’s versatile and can tap into bands artistically, sonically, what the vibe is about. He was totally able to understand what we wanted for the album and what our sound was. Instead of making it different, he understood and helped us go a little deeper sonically ... It’s a little intense putting your faith into someone that you don’t really know that well. It was an amazing experience.
“He tried to figure out ways he could contribute what we couldn’t to make it more interesting sonically and to push us to bring the best sounds, the best takes, the best emotions, the best playing that we could bring. He knew what we were going for and bought into it. He helped us dig deeper and I’m not sure producers always do that.”