CRANK UP THE VOLUME
The louder, the better for W3APONS
“Loud feels good,” drummer Tallus Scott said calmly, sipping his coffee.
Sitting in a cafe on Second Avenue in Saskatoon, the three members of the locally based band W3APONS could all agree on at least one thing: Playing loud helped bring them together.
“When you find the right group of people that share the same goals ... this is what we want to do,” he said.
Singer Scott, guitar player Jordan Welbourne and bass player Myk Ulan-hohol cut their teeth as musicians playing gigs around Saskatoon. And they’ve been told they were too loud once or twice during their young music careers.
“I was always the guitar player who was told to turn down,” Welbourne said. “It was so immediately nice to have a drummer who was ... there.”
“I’ve learned about dynamics since,” Scott quipped.
For the budding band, being loud isn’t just about cranking up the volume. It’s almost a lifestyle choice — the decision to be big, and make the kind of music they would want to hear.
Their training has been nearly diverse as a rock 'n' roll trio could manage. Scott said he was a selftaught drummer who picked up his skills playing concerts with different groups around the city. Ulan-hohol was more traditionally trained and got his start playing punk music at Buds on Broadway during their weekend jam sessions.
And Welbourne is a self-taught guitarist, but a classically-trained vocalist. It’s a bit of a leap from Rossini and Mozart arias to Rage Against the Machine-inspired rock ‘n’ roll, but Welbourne said the classical training has helped him immensely as the lead singer in W3APONS.
“Falling back on technique has definitely kept me able to sing night after night,” he said. “Even compositionally, in my mindset, the theory we studied in school leaves its mark on things.”
Ever since they came together to form W3APONS, Ulan-hohol said he’s felt “less chained” as a musician. He credits it to the “be loud” attitude they’re trying to foster.
“I can be me,” Ulan-hohol joked. “It was quite a pleasant release. I can just be the dork that I am.”
The story for the name W3APONS comes from an Australian girl Welbourne knew. She would always refer to people who are especially good at what they do as “weapons” — Welbourne said it was fairly common Australian slang.
So when deciding a name for the band, Welbourne said the name took on a double meaning: they wanted to be the best at what they did, and they wanted their music to mean something more to people listening.
“Music is the weapon of the future,” Welbourne said. “The idea that people should make music, not weapons ... all of us are pretty against gun violence.”
It’s difficult to say someone’s trademark sound is “loud,” but a better term for W3APONS is perhaps “powerful.” Their newest song Off the Top of My Heart has received a lot of radio play on rock music stations in Saskatoon. Welbourne and Scott said they tried to create a physical, almost visceral sound in the beat — and the song ’s heavy pulse is indicative of that.
It’s when the band can cut loose and really be themselves, like they did with Off the Top of My Heart, that things really click.
At a concert in Banff, what started out as a normal cheap wine night at the venue ended up with Welbourne and Ulan-hohol playing each other’s instruments that were laying flat on the stage, while Scott played a rhythm on wine glasses to keep time.
Scott said they know their music won’t be for everyone — and their favourite stuff won’t necessarily get airtime on the radio — but the band’s goal is to create something unique in that wide-open rock ‘n’ roll genre.
Make music, not weapons. And be loud while doing it.