Skip to content
Join our Newsletter

The Whale surfacing in Whistler

Vancouver’s Said The Whale just one of 40+ artists on the bill for upcoming Deraylor Festival
63351_l

Who: Said the Whale

When: Friday, Aug. 13, midnight

Where: GLC

Cost: $40 Deraylor wristband

Last Friday afternoon, Tyler Bancroft was busily "sifting through mounds of shit," getting his band's converted 2000 Dodge Ram van, "Franklin," ready to head out on the open road once again.

"He's dark green and has a raised roof, so kind of looks like a turtle shell, like Franklin the Turtle," Bancroft explained.

Bancroft is a founding member of the Vancouver-based indie rock band, Said The Whale, which features himself and Ben Worcester on guitar and vocals, Spencer Schoening on drums, Peter Carruthers on bass and Jaycelyn Brown on keys.

"The band name was really just a result of a brainstorm between Ben and I three years ago and we just kind of thought the name sounded kind of West Coast and reflective of the music that we were making at the time. It worked then, and now we're stuck with an animal band name, which is just fine by us!

"I mean really, how important is your band name, unless you've got the worst band name in the world? Some of the most famous bands we know have the worst band names."

The Whale was born almost three years ago, at the time Bancroft and Worcester were releasing their first EP, Taking Abalonia.

"I've always been pretty ambitious, so I definitely envisioned success and that was just our first step towards it, at the point," Bancroft said. "I could make it a far more romantic story if I said it was some sort of small passion project with no expectations, but in reality it was totally us wanting to take a stab at being successful musicians."

It took them a little while to iron out a lineup that worked. Eventually they recruited Schoening, Carruthers and Brown and ended up re-releasing that first EP, beefing it up with tracks that pushed things beyond the pure pop genre and created an "interesting dynamic" in the process.

"That's kind of something that's always been a little bit of a challenge for us - and when I say that, I mean having songs of different genres, if you will, fit in with each other. Ben and I are influenced by such different things, honestly it's not even that we write different songs than each other, it's that we write different songs than ourselves. Neither of us is really locked into one particular genre when writing, and we're just writing what comes naturally."

Their sound ranges from straight-up bubblegum folk of The Light Is You and gentle ukulele ballads like The Real of It to the thundering hard rock tune, Last Tree Standing.

Worcester and Bancroft write on their own and then bring the songs to the group to help shape and form them further.

"The first record, a lot of people said it was very Vancouver-central. And that's true because the first record, we wrote the majority of it in Vancouver and it's influenced by our lives in Vancouver. And then with Islands Disappear a lot of people were saying it sounds like a road trip across Canada, which also makes perfect sense because during the time we were writing most of the songs we were on tour across Canada, time and time again."

Said The Whale has been touring pretty rigorously recently, starting out with the Kill Them With Kindness spring tour.

"It's funny when you look back on a tour, kind of every day feels like the exact same day because you just fall into this routine of 'wake up on the floor of the hotel, eat some shitty breakfast and get on the road for anywhere from three to 10 hours, load in, play a show, drink, go to sleep,'" he laughed. "So it just becomes this disgusting one day."

But the highlight of that tour was the stop in St. John's, Newfoundland.

"The show there was really great, really well-attended, and actually it was probably one of the worst shows we played on tour, just in terms of our performance, but the crowd was so awesome and the city is so amazing," he recalled.

To keep fans interested in their material in between tours, they also recently released the Bear Bones EP, which was recorded in Worcester's bedroom.

"Well that's kind of how we started out, just recording stuff like that and experimenting in bedrooms, so I guess it was sort of a throwback to that, but at the same time, it was to kind of keep the ball rolling I guess, because people have short attention spans when it comes to bands and putting out records and stuff."

The EP was created for their fans, so it made sense that the cover art for the project was created by a fan.

"That was a really successful little initiative that happened there," he said. "I guess we just kind of stuck with the loosey-goosey feel of the whole thing - it was all sort of last-minute."

In fact, Said The Whale seems to offer a lot of their EP content on their website, for free. But it isn't because they're passionate advocates for content sharing.

"In terms of downloading our music, I mean, we've still never made a dime off our music anyways, so at this point it doesn't really make a difference to us whether someone buys it or downloads it," Bancroft reflected. "But that being said, the more people that buy it, the closer we are to being out of our pit of debt and closer to being able to quit our day jobs."

He points out that it's the mid-level and indie bands that are struggling with their careers as the industry tries to figure out how they can effectively "monetize music."

They are, however, pretty tech savvy, with Bancroft acting as an avid Twitterer for the group. Of note, recently, was a Tweet that mentioned they are interested in a spot on the lineup for the Live at Squamish festival being held over the Labour Day weekend.

"That was really just an off-the-cuff comment," Bancroft laughed. "We'll see if anything happens! I've had a couple re-Tweets, so you never know."

Even if they don't end up on the bill for Live at Squamish, fans can catch them live in Whistler in two weeks time as they play the Deraylor music festival. There, they'll be playing a combination of material from their newest album, Islands Disappear, coupled with some original favourites.

"It'll be a pretty broad spectrum of all of the records, as is typical. For the Whistler shows, I'm sure you're pretty familiar with the Whistler crowd - they're loud, they like to drink - so maybe not so much the mellower stuff."