Preview
KIDS THESE DAYS
Saturday, March 5
The Night Gallery
So, what’s the matter with kids these days?
"They think about sex way too much," says guitarist Ryder Havdale, before bursting into contagious laughter.
The members of Kids These Days get asked that question a lot. But when one of your songs is used to score a make-out session on the Kelly Osbourne TV teen-sex drama Life As We Know It, people want to know what you have to say on the subject of child rearing.
And just like a typical teenager, the Vancouver band has left their awkward stage behind and blossomed into a musical success story. They’ve been summoned by the cool kids (Exclaim! and CBC Radio 3), and are now sitting comfortably at the popular table of Canadian indie rock (move over Hayden and Broken Social Scene).
Havdale is one of four vocalists for the catchy and diverse musical collective. He’s a busy guy with a heavy coffee addiction ("I was just telling my girlfriend that I have to do something about it," he says), and besides having a rigorous touring and writing schedule with the Kids, Havdale also heads a successful solo project (The Mohawk Lodge) and runs his own indie label, White Whale Records.
"I still have to take some odd jobs, but the label is something I’ve been trying to make full-time," he says. "With both music and the label, there is a never-ending list of things I could be doing. I’m trying to relax a little more, but can’t help feeling that I’m not doing enough."
When Havdale was let go by the commercial radio station where he worked, he used his severance package as the start-up money for his label. Getting laid off turned out to be the best thing that could have happened to him.
"I was working at the major-market radio station in Vancouver and they swapped formats and ditched the staff," Havdale explains. "I’d been talking about doing more with music for a long time and all of a sudden they were buying me out. You have to live up to what you’ve been saying for years. I ended up recording The (Mohawk) Lodge in six months and drove across the country and started recording the album (Rare Birds). That was the test release to see how it would do and what it meant to start a label. From there on, there was no looking back."
White Whale Records is home to Kids These Days’ debut All These Interruptions, an album that fuses a mix of styles, influences and voices. The band’s four singers share songwriting responsibilities and the result is a record that sounds like a mixed tape.
"Songs just sort of happen if they’re working. We’ve all got other projects so it makes it easier (to let go)," he says. "I’m not so attached if no one’s into a song I’m really excited about – it’ll probably become a Mohawk Lodge song and same goes for everybody."
Like many bands starting out, their local music scene was slow to catch on. Havdale sees the irony in the fact that it took coverage from the national music press before the band built a local following in Vancouver. However, Kids These Days are finally at a point where they can draw a big hometown crowd.
"We’ve just broken in Vancouver. The last show we played was lined up around the block," he says. "I don’t think Vancouver is an easy crowd, but we’ve been chipping away at it for a couple of years. It usually takes a bunch of people to warm up to a new sound before people finally catch on." |
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