HEDLEY FOLLOWS A DREAM
Band has done a lot of growing up, but don’t call them mature
The boys in Hedley can’t say enough about the Quietest. Concert. Ever.
The CBC and Parks Canada sponsored event brought the Canadian pop-rock vets to Banff last month for an outdoor show in front of hundreds of contest-winners who were all equipped with headphones tuned into Hedley’s frequency.
Now, almost two weeks later, as frontman Jacob Hoggard and guitarist Dave Rosin are making their rounds to promote the band’s latest release Wild Life, the pair still marvel at the experience the performance provided.
“It was a life moment,” says Hoggard over breakfast at Bridgeland eatery The Main Dish. “It was probably one of the coolest shows I’ve ever played.
“Just the fact that it was silent and largely because it was in the mountains under the stars. It was the most beautiful backdrop.”
Rosin agrees. “The fine people at National Parks, dude, they opened up the doors to us and said, ‘Here’s our scenery.’ I actually even said, ‘Thanks for having us in your park.’ And they said, ‘No, no, no. It’s our park.”
Rosin and his agent actually conceived the idea back at last year’s Junos after a talk with the CBC, which he calls their “dear friends.”
That, actually, should give you a sense of how far the West Coast act has come since forming a decade ago. Long a MuchMusic staple and an obsession of the younger, often female set, the quartet is now, officially, approved by the Mother Corp. for audiences of an older age. Just don’t call them mature. “I know for a fact that I’m not,” Hoggard says. “I know that because the people closest to me in my life complain about a real lack of maturity on a personal level.”
The band, though, has done a great deal of growing up over the years, both personally and musically, with 2011’s Storms marking perhaps the biggest shift for the four members. It was written and recorded while they were all going through some “dark” times, including bassist Tom MacDonald who was diagnosed with cancer, and the songs sailed straight into that darkness with material about mortality and loss.
The skies, though, are much clearer, with MacDonald cancer-free for the past year and a half, and the future looking bright for the quartet, which is rounded out by Chris Crippen.
Perhaps that’s why Wild Life, which was released this week, sounds like something of a reaction to that, a return, for the most part, to the more upbeat approach and clearer skies of Hedley past, including the album’s first single, the superbly infectious “anti-negative” anthem Anything.
“It’s important because how are you supposed to know what really happy is if you don’t know how sad sad can be,” says Hoggard of the past couple of years.
“So to go through those experiences is the product of Wild Life, for us to look back at our lives and go, ‘Yeah, we’ve had some low lows but we’ve had some crazy high highs,’ and that combination of experiences and the unpredictably of what happens next is why it’s Wild Life. It’s why Wild Life is something that has this connotation of unexpected, unpredictable, this impulsive who knows what’s going to happen.”
And while both bandmates agree that the new album is a return to fun, they’re just as adamant that they take it seriously and they don’t see it as frivolity.
Wild Life, they say, is all about living the life you want to live and following those dreams, something they think is an important message no matter how old you are, and one they’re happy to be in a position to express to their audience.
“It’s a beautiful part of your life to be able to be creative and express yourself and articulate yourself and have dreams and talk about them or just like,” he says and pauses.
“I don’t know, get deeper than talking about some stupid f--king mayor who smokes crack. There’s other stuff that’s going on in our lives that’s real and substantial so it’s important for us to be able to connect those thoughts and feelings that people can identify with, that our fans can latch onto.”
And, despite what some may have seen as following a formula with a limited shelf-life — cute, tattooed guys singing songs about love and stuff — that fan base hasn’t fallen away.
Storms was Hedley’s most popular album to date and the initial reaction to Wild Life and the push from hit radio and, yes, the CBC, could see it continue to climb.
The music, naturally, is a large part of that, but so, too, is the fact that for the past 10 years they haven’t wanted to rest on their laurels, or rest, period.
The past 10 years have seen them write, record and tour at a relentless, two-year cycle, that will have them hitting the road again in the early part of 2014, for a two-month Canadian tour which will bring them to the Corral April 5.
Hoggard admits the foursome get “itchy” if they’re not touring and “anxious” if they’re not writing, as they try to maintain that mix of hunger and fear that can drive longevity.
“It’s part of what we do as professionals,” he says, “as opposed to just accumulating cobwebs.”
“It’s non-stop,” Rosin agrees.
“And I think the secret we’ve learned, the secret to being in this band is not only getting along with each other but don’t stop, keep the momentum rolling, because you never know when the floor is going to fall out. Nine years later we still treat every day as if we’re the luckiest guys doing this and it’s going to be our last.”