After two years of cranking out songs for their latest album, the Canyon Rose Outfit was feeling a little bit pooped when it came time to finish it, says front-man Christan Maslyk.
“The album seemed to put a lot of pressure on us at the end,” says the 24-year-old Morinville native, with lots of missed deadlines and sleepless nights. “We kind of felt a little exhausted.”
So at the last second, as a gag, they decided to change the album’s name from Rock and Roll Hangover to Wilted Rose. “It’s almost funny to us,” Maslyk says.
Canyon Rose Outfit launches its second album this Friday at Edmonton’s Starlite Room. Morinville residents got to preview some of the songs on it last week during the band’s performance at Rocktoberfest.
The band’s come a long way in 10 years, Maslyk says. “Our sound has evolved quite a bit,” he says, and now incorporates a lot more brass instruments and R&B rhythms than when it started.
This album’s themes reflect that growth, with its songs built around a sense of looking back along with frustration at the state of the world today.
Both themes are captured in the band’s music video for Rock and Roll Hangover, the first track on the album. Filmed at the Vimy Hotel in Vimy (supposedly the smallest hotel in North America), it shows Canyon Rose performing the aforementioned song before an initially bored bar crowd.
If the band members look a little young, that’s because they’re being played by junior and senior high school students that Maslyk teaches at Morinville’s Smith Music. “We just like the idea of having kids play the instruments instead of us,” he explains, complete with lip-synched lyrics.
It also reflects how Maslyk felt while re-listening to their 2010 debut album. “I just hear a bunch of kids who had no clue what they were doing,” he says, “but there’s something really cool and artistic and liberating in that.” The band wanted to re-capture that creativity with its latest outing.
The song itself appears to be about a lonely, depressed rocker who, at the close of the video, slumps over dead from an apparent heart attack.
While this could be a profound statement of how the modern music industry crushes artistic freedom and youthful optimism, it was really a random bit of wackiness that actor Therin Hogg (who plays Maslyk in the video) threw in. “We said, yeah, just do something (at the end) and that’s what he did!”
Fans should listen in for some experimental guitar work, he says, including some heavily modified tunes from a 1965 12-string guitar. “In one song, we actually tried to emulate a train we heard while on tour.”
They’ll also hear the band’s four new members: Emma Frazier on the trombone, Alex Pelletier on trumpet, Jeff Meszaros on piano and Matt Kraus on organ.
The launch concert starts at 8 p.m. and includes performances by The Gibson Block and Boogie Patrol. Tickets are $10 in advance and $15 at the door. Visit www.canyonroseoutfit.com for details.
