Winnipeg punk duo finds writing retreat in the West

Based out of Winnipeg, Mobina Galore is a punk rock duo formed in Fernie in late 2010 by Jenna Priestner (guitar/vocals) and Marcia Hanson (drums/vocals). Named one of the Top 15 Punk Bands in Canada of 2015 by CBC Radio 3, the duo has toured Canada, the States and Europe, including dates with popular American punk group Against Me! The band is currently on a Canadian tour in support of their second studio album, this year’s Feeling Disconnected. We talked to Hanson about mosh pits, songs about her dad and Vancouver.

Q: Last night you played Edmonton, where Jenna is from. Did her family come out?

A: Yeah, there’s always a big group of Priestners when we play Edmonton. Jenna did a check halfway through, “Any Priestners still in the house?” and we heard them, whoo-ing from the back.

So, they weren’t in the mosh pit. Are mosh pits still a thing?

Yeah, sometimes. Maybe not as much on a Sunday night. There was some movement going on. But, there were a lot of smaller women up front, and the guys were being respectful of that. But yeah, it happens, and I love watching it.

Have you noticed any changes in the kinds of crowds you attract?

I think that people are starting to recognize our name and come out for us, so that’s attracting a certain kind of audience. Especially after the Against Me! tour we did, we’re noticing more LGBTQ people coming out and more women coming out. It’s a good, safe vibe. You’ve got a song on the new album called Vancouver. What can you tell us about that one?

We did this album a lot differently than the first one — we took two weeks off to write in Vancouver. Jenna’s dad has a place there, and we know someone with a rehearsal studio. We would go in every day around noon and play songs and parts that we’d come up with. We had some lyrics written on our phones. It was a really cool, fun process. We got a bunch of songs written in the time we were there, and that was one of them. That song’s about what was going on in our minds while we were driving out to Vancouver: it was like, “Man, we have a lot riding on this next two weeks, because we’ve never put pressure on ourselves to do it like this, so I hope this works out.”

What are you most proud of on this album?

Jenna used to be the sole writer of the band. But, it got to the point where she was feeling a lot of pressure. She does everything — she books the tours, designs the merchandise, does the ordering. And she said, “You know what, I’m not writing enough songs for this album, I could use some help.” I was writing all the time, so it was the perfect opportunity.

So I feel more connected to the songs because I had a hand in writing them. I wrote Spend My Day about my dad. This was my second song mourning my dad; I wrote Pieces of You on our first album about him, too, shortly after he passed away.