BeatRoute Magazine Alberta print e-edition - February 2017

BOOK OF BRIDGE
BUMMER CLUB
join the club, it’s a bummer
by Courtney Faulkner
Is everything a bummer?
“Always,” says Arnaud Sparks, guitarist, vocalist
and catalyst of the group Bummer Club, while laughing.
It’s easy to see that this running joke is a play on
perception, and once you do you join the club.
“It’s almost like it’s a failsafe,” says Brittney Ruston,
who joined the band last summer as a guitarist and
vocalist, and has made a considerable impact on the
evolution of their sound, now co-writing the songs
with Sparks. “You can get away with doing anything...if
it’s bad, it’s a bummer, if it’s not, then it’s just funny, so
no matter what you’re in the clear.”
“You can be sloppy, you can have a bad show, and
then it’s this conceptual piece, ‘Oh it was just a bummer,
it was a bummer the whole time, it was a bummer
for you, it was a bummer for me, everyone had a bad
time, it was great.’ And then if it isn’t, then people are
like, ‘Oh you guys are called Bummer Club, but you
aren’t sad and terrible.’”
“The sloppiness, the ‘What are we doing next?’ That
helps us,” says Sparks.
“Even when we’re tight, it still has that element of
nobody really knows what’s coming next, which is fun,”
says Ruston. “It’s fun to surprise yourself.”
The band is rounded out by a solid rhythm section,
with Jon Chapman on drums and Connor HD playing
bass, allowing more experimentation to take place.
“As a game with myself, I asked myself what could
I get away with,” says HD. “As the dynamic and the
relationship grew with the band, we’re able to read
each other a little bit better. Jon and I have a really
good relationship in the rhythm band, so often
we’re nodding to each other and making inside jokes
during songs.”
There’s a balance between the four, and push and
pull between the alternating dynamics that’s creates an
interesting equilibrium.
“You can see it even in what we wear on stage,” says
Ruston. “Arnaud and i have committed to this bummer,
all black, we’re going to be melancholy, and then
Conner and Jon are like, we’ve got our colourful board
shorts and our print T-shirts and our hats.”
The four can create a range of sounds, anything
from loud, screaming, post-punk, to a more delicate
drone-folk, centered on minimalist, cryptic lyrics.
“’Colours is about the end of the world...colours are
swirling out of everything, and that’s what’s ending
the world,” says Sparks. “But you’re fine with the
world ending.”
“I spent eight hours mixing that song this week, and
I didn’t even know that,” says HD.
The songwriting has moved towards an abstraction
since Sparks and Ruston began collaborating.
“It’s less direct experience driven and more
here’s an idea, and how can we show this idea...and
sometimes it’s more how can we hide this idea,” says
Ruston. “A lot of it was cutting those words out. So
instead of using ten words to say this one thing, we’ll
only use two or three.”
Bummer Club, who you may have seen play at
Calgary’s BIG Winter Classic recently, are kicking off
a 10-day tour starting on Thursday, February 16th
with Swim, WINT, Bubblewrap, and The FAPS at The
Slice in Lethbridge. On Friday the 17th they’ll play
with Manaray and Time Boy at Tubby Dog in Calgary,
and Saturday the 18th with Power Buddies, l.n.
baba, Brunch Club, and Trampoline at The Sewing
Machine Factory in Edmonton. The tour continues
into B.C., with stops in Abbotsford, Victoria, Vancouver
and Kelowna.
“Bummer Club really facilitates not being perfect all
the time, because it’s in those moments that you’re not
perfect that you get that cool stuff,” says Ruston. That’s
what we’re feeding off of.”
Listen to Bummer Club’s “Live @ CJSW” compilation on
Bandcamp, and search “Bummer Club Winter Tour” for
a full list of tour dates.
SHAELA MILLER PRESENTS
THE WINDY CITY OPRY
warm welcome to touring country acts
Country crooner and sad songstress
Shaela Miller knows how to pull at your
heartstrings, with songs about heartache
and love lost, powered by her emotive voice and
telling lyrics.
“I’m a very emotionally based writer, it’s all my
emotions,” says Miller. “It can be a very naked feeling
sometimes, I’m just letting it all out there for
everyone to see, this is my life, this is what’s going
on inside my head.”
“It’s very therapeutic,” says Miller. “I had this ball
of burning in me, for like a month, was feeling tight
and things were going on in my life, and I was just
like I just need to write a song, and nothing was
really coming out, and finally I just sat and it all
came out so quick. Sometimes it just has to be the
right day, the right moment, the right hour in the
evening, and it just spilled out, seven verses just
like that.”
“Sometimes it’s just a fleeting moment of a feeling,
you just feel this surge and the metaphors you
choose to get it out there, some people may take it
in a different way. You take from it what you need.”
Inspired by her friends in Boots & the Hoots,
who host the Pine Cone Opry in Red Deer on the
last Thursday of the month, Miller has started the
Windy City Opry in Lethbridge to give touring acts
a place to play mid-week.
Miller was contacted by Eliza Mary Doyle, who
were on tour with Rugged Little Thing in December,
and knew it was time to set her inspiration
into motion.
“They’re both banjo acts, mostly female-fronted...and
I thought of my good friend Amy Nelson,
who plays old time banjo in Calgary, I was like this
would be a perfect bill,” says Miller. “That is going
to be the premise, touring acts or out of town acts,
basically trying to build up the bands in Lethbridge
so that when they come back for a Friday or
by Courtney Faulkner
Saturday show, people will say, ‘Oh I saw this band,
they were awesome,’ and they’ll tell their friends
and come out.”
The Windy City Opry takes place the second
Wednesday of the month, at the re-opened venue
The Slice. Miller plays a few songs to open the
night at 8 o’clock sharp. You can dance your heart
out to some great country music, and be home in
bed before midnight, able to get up for work in the
morning with a smile on your face from the fun of
the night before.
This month find your way to The Slice on
February the 8th to party with the band that
started it all, Boots & the Hoots, along with the
Danny Dyck Trio of Lethbridge opening, and
of course the ‘Heartache Honky-Tonk Queen’
herself, Shaela Miller.
“I think I’m just adding to what great scene we
already have,” says Miller. “I love it. CKXU does
such a great job, there’s a lot of really great local
bands who are doing things all the time, we have
a great art scene, art walks and gallery openings. I
think Lethbridge has a great little culture.”
Shaela Miller Band is also recording a new
album this month, with anticipation of it being
released for this summer’s festival season.
“We’re going to do as much live as possible, to
capture all the magic. I’m excited about it, I haven’t
released an album in a long time,” says Miller.
“They’re all really dark, songs in minor keys, it’s
just what’s coming out of me right now. Even my
honky-ton stuff, they’re all lyrically pretty sad and
dark. I’m more inspired by sadness and darkness,”
says Miller. “The songs speak for themselves, they
need to come out of me.”
The next Windy City Opry is Wednesday, February
8th at the Slice with Boots & the Hoots, Danny
Dyck Trio and Shaela Miller.
photo: Lorelai Hoffarth
30 | FEBRUARY 2017 • BEATROUTE ROCKPILE