Prairie band Wyatt came to the Humboldt Gallery on Aug. 7 to perform a mix of their own country-rock songs and a collection of covers by artists as diverse as Bill Withers and Poison.
“It sounded good, it was fun, and the crowd was good,” said guitarist and vocalist, Scott Patrick.
Though Patrick remains in Saskatoon while fellow guitarist/vocalist Danny Fortier now lives in Alberta, the two haven’t found it difficult to continue their collaboration in the band.
“It’s a lot of travel. But the nice part is that we’ve been working together for so long that a lot of the music is easy to put together,” Fortier said. “We’ve gotten to the point now where if we’re going to learn something new or write something new, we can do it over Skype.”
Patrick added, “I probably see him more now than I did when he lived five minutes away.”
The group’s first official band meeting was in 2004 in Meacham. In fact, the two got excited driving through Meacham on their way to play in Humboldt.
“As we were driving here, we passed it and said, ‘That’s where it all began! How far we’ve come!’” Patrick said, laughing.
In fact, Fortier immediately recognized Meacham artist Bonnie Gilmour’s work, since she recently donated the urn for a family member’s ashes. It looked similar to the Meacham Moonshine Gang face jugs that are exhibited in the gallery right now.
After the duo’s second album, they decided to get a full band together and added Cam Ewart on bass and Bray Hudson on drums, though Ewart and Hudson weren’t present at the gallery.
The band’s music doesn’t fit into any one genre, combining country with rock and blues. Fortier describes it as “Rock and roll with a country soul.”
“We’re one of those bands where our influences are rock and Americana, R&B, which fits in that country genre, but there’s a lot of different influences,” Fortier said. “We both brought these different influences in and started melding them together … It doesn’t fit squarely in one genre; it’s definitely our own sound.”
“We kind of sat down … and said like, these are the kinds of artists that we like. Let’s write like that, because we like that,” Patrick said.
Right now, both of them are listening to pop, which Patrick laughed about, citing Hozier, George Ezra, and Imagine Dragons as some recent favourites.
“To me, I’m always surprised it’s on the radio because I like it, and it’s not so pop-ee,” Patrick said.
“I listen to the pop stuff all the time because it’s hooky. As a songwriter, you’re listening to everything,” Fortier added.
The two say that they are mostly in sync with writing their songs and will often bounce ideas off of each other. If something doesn’t work, they both know it. It helps that they sometimes write with others and get that kind of outside influence.
The band has played such diverse events as Big Valley Jamboree and Dauphin Countryfest and have had rotation on CMT, but after the show in Humboldt they were set to play in Osler and Lanigan and they both talked about the upside of playing in a small place.
“The thing I really love (about performing) is the energy that you get from playing and you get off the audience and interacting with the audience,” Fortier said. “That’s why these house concerts are really cool … they’re like two feet from you instead of (you) sitting up and doing a cabaret. You’re interacting and you’re talking.”
“Here, they’re listening. You’re playing a cabaret sometimes and it’s like, people are more concerned about other things. There just happens to be music going on. Something they have to yell over,” Patrick said.
But there are downsides to performing as well – both talked about the large amounts of time taken up by getting to performances and waiting for them to begin.
“It’s like golf, in a way,” Fortier said. “In golf, you walk, walk, walk, walk, swing, walk, walk, walk. It’s very much like that because you have to drive and then you do the performance for an hour. The performance is really only an hour, and the rest is driving and setting up.”
“To me, if I could get all the time back that I was sitting around waiting for a sound check, or something like that where your time wasn’t necessarily your own, that would be great,” Patrick said, laughing.
But when on the stage, both hope that people just have a good time. Patrick said between their originals and the mix of covers they do, odds are good that at least one song will strike a chord for everyone in the audience.
“The thing I love about performing is when you take a crowd that has never heard you, and you look out there and think, ‘They’re not going to get us’ but by the end of the performance they are there, they’re right into it,” Fortier said. “And you surprise people. You get the chance to surprise people, and I think that’s one of the best things about performing.”
The two are back in Humboldt on Aug. 21 to play Streetfest.
