Latest / Almost Famous Enough / ep14 Lyle Bell will shout secrets

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ep14 Lyle Bell will shout secrets · Almost Famous Enough

0:24
Lyle Bell is a career artist that's a literal use of the word artist.
0:29
The sum of his creative output is not restricted to music, to album cycles, but instead to producing multiple musical projects at once.
0:38
The music, the art, the costumes, the videos, some escaping regional landlock to a greater audience and some that do not.
0:47
But also his painting, and photography work.
0:50
He's an incredible live music photographer.
0:53
Most careers are tempered with a mindless day job to pay bills, not a blossoming secondary artistic talent.
1:00
Most careers might feature one band, one project that hits a peak and crosses over into some version of measurable success.
1:08
Lyle has had three or five, depending on your definition of such.
1:14
Molly's Reach Slow, Fresh Oil.
1:16
Whitey Houston.
1:17
Shout Out.
1:18
Out, Out, Out The Wet Secrets.
1:20
I mean, The Wet Secrets produced three full length albums and an EP between 2007 and 2017, won a hundred grand in the Peak Performance project, signed with six shooter records and became infamous for their performances in Bright Red marching Band uniforms.
1:35
Shout Out, Out, Out.
1:36
Out was a Juno nominated dance, punk electoral band producing three full length albums and a bunch of singles in collabs.
1:43
Between 2006, 2012, showing up on soundtracks like mass effect three, which was massive.
1:51
So the cliche of everything he touches turns to gold might actually be true, except for his own perception that none of those projects ever quite crested the wave of enough fame or enough money or whatever his own initial admission is.
2:08
I am still in the trenches.
2:10
This is the life of the indie rockstar.
2:12
Maybe back when music always came with packaging, an enthusiast would enthusiastically scour the liner notes of a band's new record, absorbing all the names and the instruments, and the producers and the equipment.
2:26
Sowing the seeds of indie music snobs.
2:29
Who knew when the bassist of this band also plays bass in that band who play with the little sister of the drummer of the other band that the bass has started with?
2:40
That's Lyle Bell.
2:42
He's the guy threaded through the music snobs, mental encyclopedia.
2:47
Every town has a local hero.
2:49
I think every town has a Lyle.
2:52
Needs a Lyle.
2:54
My name is Glen Erickson.
2:56
This is almost famous enough.
2:58
Thanks for spending your time with us.
3:00
This is Lyle Bell.
3:16
Glen Erickson: Live with Lyle Bell
3:18
Lyle Bell: glad that wasn't, uh, recorded.
3:20
Lyle Bell: Oh,
3:21
Glen Erickson: Yeah.
3:21
Lyle Bell: intro.
3:21
Glen Erickson: Yeah.
3:22
Glen Erickson: Crazy Preambles.
3:23
Glen Erickson: Okay.
3:24
Glen Erickson: Um, thanks for joining me, Lyle Lyle Bell of, um, so many different things.
3:29
Glen Erickson: So we're gonna cover all these different things.
3:31
Glen Erickson: I guess some people might call you local Edmonton hero of the music scene.
3:36
Glen Erickson: So I'm gonna ask you some questions about that.
3:37
Glen Erickson: But right now you look like so comfortably set with, you know, a nice mic set up, but like right square in the middle of a living room, it looks like as you're set up almost, are you sitting at home and you're beautifully decorated?
3:51
Lyle Bell: This is, uh, I mean, our whole house is essentially just one art zone.
3:55
Lyle Bell: so sort of have a little, a studio and a photo studio.
3:59
Lyle Bell: I've got, of course, as everyone should have a, uh, a flute that I'm now learning to play.
4:03
Lyle Bell: So,
4:04
Glen Erickson: A, yeah, a yas flute.
4:06
Glen Erickson: Is that a Yas Flute?
4:08
Glen Erickson: So then you're obviously partnered up, with somebody, Kim, who, uh, shares the temperament for just letting the shit sit around everywhere as you work, because that's the easy way to work.
4:20
Glen Erickson: Is that a fair assumption?
4:22
Lyle Bell: I, I think it, both of us go crazy, um, you know, in our own ways about having clutter and, uh, and fight back against that.
4:31
Lyle Bell: She was actually cleaning this morning.
4:32
Lyle Bell: Um.
4:33
Glen Erickson: Uh, appropriate timing.
4:35
Lyle Bell: she's, she's obsessed with, so like clothes and also has a little studio, a studio upstairs here, one of the rooms Plus, um, has her own studio elsewhere.
4:45
Lyle Bell: That
4:45
Glen Erickson: Hmm.
4:46
Lyle Bell: uh, where she does lots of costume designs and stuff like
4:49
Glen Erickson: Yeah.
4:49
Glen Erickson: Well that's great.
4:50
Glen Erickson: I mean, I only ask'cause I'm, yeah.
4:52
Glen Erickson: I'm partnered up with somebody who would have none of it.
4:54
Glen Erickson: Like, I remember years of coming back at like 3:00 AM after like playing the last closing time of gigs and carrying my shit in and having to take it down to the basement and put it in its right place.
5:07
Glen Erickson: And there was almost, anyhow, uh, so, you know, we worked through what we worked through.
5:11
Glen Erickson: Right.
5:11
Glen Erickson: But that's okay.
5:12
Glen Erickson: so you're right here.
5:13
Glen Erickson: Oh, go ahead.
5:14
Glen Erickson: Go ahead.
5:14
Lyle Bell: we actually have just one point on that.
5:16
Lyle Bell: We have a, a sort of, uh, spoken rule that we will get.
5:21
Lyle Bell: The shit sort of sorted, but to, we have a little bit of a buffer zone.
5:25
Lyle Bell: So if either one of us is sort of a bad day and just don't want to deal with it, then
5:30
Glen Erickson: Yeah.
5:31
Lyle Bell: we don't get on each other
5:33
Glen Erickson: Yeah.
5:33
Lyle Bell: so if there's stuff around mine or hers, it will, it will get dealt with eventually.
5:39
Lyle Bell: But we just sort of have this like, buffer zone built into the marriage
5:43
Glen Erickson: You, you gotta, you gotta, right?
5:45
Glen Erickson: Like that's how we keep it going.
5:47
Glen Erickson: so I'm excited to have a conversation with you.
5:49
Glen Erickson: I remember when I was first evolving my idea for this with Chris Wynters, he actually was the first guy who very quickly said your name, and he's like, Lyle.
5:59
Glen Erickson: He is gonna have some good stories, good conversation.
6:02
Glen Erickson: And I was like, yeah, of course he is.
6:04
Glen Erickson: And uh, I've intersected with you a number of times in my life, in history, in the biz around Edmonton and beyond.
6:11
Glen Erickson: So, this is great.
6:12
Glen Erickson: So you've got like a long history bud.
6:15
Glen Erickson: Like you've got one of the longest histories of people I'm gonna get to talk to.
6:19
Glen Erickson: You know, your first band, that was a real, pretty big takeoff band.
6:22
Glen Erickson: I mean, that goes all the way back to 92, I think, when that takes off with Molly's reach.
6:27
Glen Erickson: Right?
6:28
Glen Erickson: And, and so you've got, like, besides all the other things that you've done, like musically, you've got like five significant projects that have, you know.
6:37
Glen Erickson: Gained traction in their own way, one way or then or another, enough to get on the web and survive.
6:43
Glen Erickson: if that's fair to say.
6:45
Lyle Bell: I, I feel like I'm still, uh, a guy in the trenches.
6:48
Lyle Bell: and I feel like quite often I'm, I'm still sort of an unknown entity, or at least I don't, uh, assume that anyone would know who I am.
6:56
Glen Erickson: That's kind of interesting though, right?
6:57
Glen Erickson: Yeah, I,
6:58
Lyle Bell: are pretty disparate, so, so it pulls from, you know, fans of one band may not be a fan of one of the other bands that I've been in.
7:06
Lyle Bell: Uh, so you just never know who, which band is resonating with someone and, yeah.
7:11
Glen Erickson: Well I was gonna ask you about that part too, and we'll get in there.
7:13
Glen Erickson: 'cause like, these aren't just sort of logical progression steps.
7:17
Glen Erickson: Like, you, you seem to take like big leaps, right?
7:21
Glen Erickson: Or left.
7:22
Glen Erickson: And, and I.
7:23
Glen Erickson: And sometimes they're with new people, which would be understandable.
7:26
Glen Erickson: And quite often you're taking the same people with you.
7:29
Glen Erickson: But, so out of these groups, there's a whole bunch of overlap and like you said, sort of disparate stylistic endeavors as well.
7:36
Glen Erickson: to which, you know, I, I'm curious sometimes how much your involvement is in pushing those or whether you were brought in.
7:43
Glen Erickson: But maybe we could start with, sometimes I draw people's timeline out on my conversations like this, but because there's this overlap that I'm probably gonna get really wrong, a couple of times I thought maybe I would let you just give me the high flying, you know, I was doing this and then Molly's reach was the first thing maybe that started to take off.
8:04
Glen Erickson: And now, you know, up to, you know, where the wet secrets left off maybe, or if there's other things you could sort of give me that high flying timeline.
8:12
Lyle Bell: Yeah,
8:13
Glen Erickson: is that cool?
8:13
Lyle Bell: yeah, absolutely.
8:14
Lyle Bell: yeah, so, I mean, to me it's not that the projects that I've done aren't really that, uh, there's a through line for everything and, and it makes sense to me.
8:25
Lyle Bell: Um, when I look back at it, it may be baffling for other people and just also focusing on a ton of different things, like in the last, I've always been, I've always had a camera.
8:37
Lyle Bell: but just in the last 10 years, just really going down that rabbit hole and obsessively,
8:43
Glen Erickson: Hmm.
8:44
Lyle Bell: know, focusing on, on photo and, uh, video work.
8:48
Lyle Bell: So, is kind of one of the main things now,
8:51
Glen Erickson: Yeah.
8:51
Lyle Bell: design as well.
8:52
Lyle Bell: So, so back to, we'll back it up.
8:54
Lyle Bell: So, um, the first band that really maybe had any impact was Molly's reach.
9:00
Lyle Bell: I'm, actually about to turn tomorrow,
9:06
Glen Erickson: then we're the same age.
9:07
Glen Erickson: Are you at 1970?
9:09
Glen Erickson: You're a 1970 kid then?
9:11
Lyle Bell: So
9:11
Glen Erickson: 71.
9:12
Glen Erickson: Okay.
9:12
Lyle Bell: Man, I, this is embarrassing that I don't even know how old I am anyway.
9:17
Lyle Bell: Uh, my, so my birthday is actually tomorrow, which is, uh, kind of
9:20
Glen Erickson: Oh, holy shit.
9:21
Glen Erickson: Happy birthday, bud.
9:22
Glen Erickson: That's fantastic.
9:23
Lyle Bell: you.
9:23
Lyle Bell: I'm, I'm spending my, uh, my birthday with, Chris Wynters.
9:26
Lyle Bell: I'm gonna shoot the Captain Tractor Show with
9:29
Glen Erickson: Oh,
9:30
Lyle Bell: that's
9:30
Glen Erickson: that's perfect.
9:31
Glen Erickson: That's beautiful.
9:32
Lyle Bell: so anyway, back to the early nineties.
9:34
Lyle Bell: Met, uh, met these guys.
9:36
Lyle Bell: I went to U of A briefly, and then got playing in bands and it was just a magical thing to me.
9:42
Lyle Bell: So the first band, Molly's Reach was very much in a sort of teenage fan club, sort of power pop vibe.
9:51
Glen Erickson: Yeah.
9:52
Glen Erickson: Yeah.
9:52
Lyle Bell: we did that for quite a while, like basically till about 1999.
9:56
Lyle Bell: there were other bands sort of going at the time, like one never seemed.
10:00
Lyle Bell: Like enough, there's always other fun things to do, like something a little heavier.
10:04
Lyle Bell: I also always liked so much different, styles of music and like really broad, uh, you know, broad interests musically.
10:11
Lyle Bell: So to
10:12
Glen Erickson: Yeah.
10:12
Lyle Bell: it wasn't that weird to like both, uh, you know, like angle and, I don't know, CAAs like that, you know?
10:20
Lyle Bell: So, so there's like, uh, and, and indie rock.
10:23
Lyle Bell: I don't know.
10:23
Lyle Bell: There was, there was tons of stuff like that.
10:25
Lyle Bell: Um, as I sort of went on, there were, uh, you know, sort of expanding it.
10:29
Lyle Bell: There was slow fresh oil, which was gravy.
10:31
Lyle Bell: Myself and Brent Oliver kind of doing indie rock and that was almost, it started as a experiment.
10:38
Lyle Bell: Just we had time at CGSR and we're just go in and spontaneously write random stuff.
10:45
Lyle Bell: So it's like, it's truly all over the map.
10:47
Glen Erickson: Mm-hmm.
10:48
Lyle Bell: kind of morphed into the two piece Whitey Houston, which was way heavier.
10:52
Lyle Bell: That was like turning the distortion distortion way up.
10:55
Lyle Bell: So that was just a bass and drum project with Gravy, Uh, so this is now around 2000.
11:01
Lyle Bell: Whitey actually did fairly well.
11:02
Lyle Bell: We went on, uh, mean, put out a record, on a, a ton of tours.
11:08
Lyle Bell: This, this actually got me connected with six shooter.
11:11
Lyle Bell: This is our
11:12
Glen Erickson: Yeah.
11:12
Glen Erickson: Yeah.
11:13
Lyle Bell: to six shooter.
11:13
Lyle Bell: Was meeting Shauna in Toronto in probably 2004 or so, something like
11:19
Glen Erickson: Hmm.
11:19
Glen Erickson: Okay.
11:20
Lyle Bell: they became our managers.
11:23
Lyle Bell: They have man on and off.
11:24
Lyle Bell: I have,
11:25
Glen Erickson: For Whitey
11:26
Lyle Bell: on.
11:27
Glen Erickson: at the time.
11:27
Lyle Bell: Whitey, at that, around that time.
11:30
Lyle Bell: It gets a little blurry because, um, the wet secrets also started, was, in my mind, we were gonna be sexy.
11:38
Lyle Bell: Divo was the idea.
11:40
Lyle Bell: Maybe like not, although Divo is sexy.
11:43
Lyle Bell: Divo is sexy Divo.
11:44
Lyle Bell: So, uh, kind of an art rock band.
11:46
Lyle Bell: It just was Without any, none of these, I mean, everything that I've done, there was no intention of it lasting more than a few shows, you know, or like playing locally.
11:57
Lyle Bell: so a lot of this, a lot of this stuff ended up being, yeah, it can be obtuse and weird and obscene.
12:05
Lyle Bell: Some of it is fairly obscene.
12:07
Lyle Bell: And you don't, you know, I don't care.
12:08
Lyle Bell: 'cause I just never thought that I'd have to explain this to, uh, to parents or border guard, crossing guards, like what the band name is and what we do.
12:16
Glen Erickson: Yeah.
12:17
Lyle Bell: and, uh, you know, a thing again, like in the, with the devo comparison or, or Ween or something like that.
12:23
Lyle Bell: Like, we wanted it to be absurd.
12:25
Lyle Bell: we got, uh, for the Wet Secrets, it was kind of a little bit disco and a little bit, uh,
12:31
Glen Erickson: Yeah.
12:32
Lyle Bell: I guess an intersection of that.
12:34
Lyle Bell: And then, uh, Trevor's mom, who actually lived in Red Deer and Trevor grew up in Red Deer, Trevor being the drummer.
12:40
Glen Erickson: Mm-hmm.
12:41
Lyle Bell: also filmmaker from Edmonton, who now lives in, uh, Toronto and Montreal.
12:45
Glen Erickson: Cool.
12:46
Lyle Bell: yeah, his mom found, uh, the, the Red Deer Royals were getting rid of their old outfits from the seventies.
12:52
Lyle Bell: So she got us this, this insane deal and I still, we actually just pulled these out.
12:58
Lyle Bell: Uh, wet Secrets are gonna be playing again this summer for the first time in
13:01
Glen Erickson: Yeah, I saw that.
13:02
Lyle Bell: I think.
13:03
Lyle Bell: So,
13:03
Glen Erickson: Wow.
13:03
Lyle Bell: yeah.
13:04
Lyle Bell: And,
13:04
Glen Erickson: So the Red Deer Royals being a marching band back when they would have organized marching bands.
13:10
Glen Erickson: Yeah.
13:11
Lyle Bell: Yeah.
13:11
Lyle Bell: Yeah.
13:11
Lyle Bell: And it's the, the, that pure sort of seventies look
13:15
Glen Erickson: Yeah.
13:15
Glen Erickson: Yeah.
13:16
Lyle Bell: of, you know, you envision, uh, marching bands of the seventies and eighties.
13:20
Lyle Bell: It's that, uh, the huge hats and, and big, uh, sort of ettes and
13:25
Glen Erickson: Yeah,
13:26
Lyle Bell: dress.
13:26
Lyle Bell: So, so that, again, it seemed like slightly absurd, but we, we rolled with it,
13:31
Glen Erickson: yeah,
13:31
Lyle Bell: it also takes away.
13:33
Lyle Bell: Like it is a bit of a costume, but we always sort of viewed it, uh, that we were a bit of a gang, know, gang mentality.
13:40
Glen Erickson: yeah,
13:40
Lyle Bell: it allows you to slip into a persona a little bit.
13:43
Lyle Bell: And,
13:44
Glen Erickson: for sure.
13:45
Lyle Bell: you also don't have to worry about the age old question.
13:47
Lyle Bell: Like, uh, what are we wearing tonight?
13:49
Glen Erickson: Exactly.
13:50
Lyle Bell: unknown,
13:51
Glen Erickson: Yeah.
13:51
Lyle Bell: unknown thing, and was a lot of fun that that band also, uh, got to travel a ton and, yeah.
13:57
Lyle Bell: Played, uh, a ton of amazing shows sort of around the world.
14:00
Glen Erickson: Yep.
14:01
Lyle Bell: made, three, four records, I guess.
14:03
Lyle Bell: So, Uh,
14:04
Glen Erickson: uh, in the middle of that.
14:05
Glen Erickson: It was also shout out, out, out, out.
14:07
Lyle Bell: yes.
14:08
Glen Erickson: I said four of them in there.
14:09
Glen Erickson: So,
14:10
Lyle Bell: That's,
14:10
Glen Erickson: yeah.
14:10
Glen Erickson: So there was that overlap.
14:12
Lyle Bell: Yeah.
14:12
Lyle Bell: To, to not, thinking it out in advance, that, you know, you're gonna need to explain this name to your.
14:18
Lyle Bell: parents or grandparents, whatever,
14:20
Glen Erickson: Yeah.
14:21
Lyle Bell: look when you tell'em what your band is called.
14:24
Lyle Bell: yeah.
14:25
Lyle Bell: So that was, that was another thing.
14:26
Lyle Bell: We, um, more Edmonton Edmonton sort of classic players and guys that I had known.
14:33
Lyle Bell: Uh, Nick, I actually knew Nick when he was, just a little kid, like
14:38
Glen Erickson: Baby Nick.
14:39
Lyle Bell: Yeah.
14:39
Lyle Bell: Baby Nick was, I had mutual friends.
14:41
Lyle Bell: A guy that I learned to play guitar with I was in high school, was friends with, with Nick's dad Wolf.
14:49
Lyle Bell: So I would see Nick running around when he was like seven.
14:51
Lyle Bell: little kid just like booting around.
14:53
Glen Erickson: talking about Nick Kozub, by the way, for listeners who's kind of a well-known Edmonton guy, especially for his, electronic, maybe dance electronic, I'm not sure I'll get the genre or sub genres right.
15:04
Glen Erickson: But even normal's welcome and the label that put a lot of stuff out for a while, so yeah.
15:09
Lyle Bell: And, and he's still, I mean, he's still recording.
15:11
Lyle Bell: He works as a, as a producer and, um, leaned largely into mastering as well.
15:18
Lyle Bell: But he's, right now he is, uh, recording the, home front record.
15:22
Glen Erickson: Okay.
15:22
Lyle Bell: home front also has a connection where Clint was, Clint was one of the drummers, uh, in shout outdo as well.
15:30
Lyle Bell: So
15:30
Glen Erickson: Yeah.
15:30
Lyle Bell: little full circle there anyway,
15:32
Glen Erickson: Clint Frazier, who is also the older brother of Emma who is in the Wet Secrets,
15:37
Lyle Bell: That's right.
15:37
Glen Erickson: all kinds of circles here.
15:39
Glen Erickson: Yeah.
15:39
Lyle Bell: yeah, I mean there are, there are sort of through lines, uh, with people that.
15:44
Lyle Bell: Ended up being involved.
15:45
Glen Erickson: Mm-hmm.
15:45
Lyle Bell: it was Emma, Emma had known Kristen.
15:49
Lyle Bell: We were looking for an extra, an extra horn player to originally just replace Paul.
15:53
Lyle Bell: This is in Wet Secrets again,
15:55
Glen Erickson: Yeah,
15:55
Lyle Bell: to come out for a few dates on the road, but as soon as we got him in the band, it was just like another little magic moment and convinced him to sort of join full time.
16:04
Lyle Bell: So that was sort of
16:05
Glen Erickson: yeah,
16:06
Lyle Bell: I think the classic truly jelled lineup when, when we were, um,
16:10
Glen Erickson: yeah.
16:10
Glen Erickson: I'd agree.
16:12
Glen Erickson: I would agree.
16:12
Glen Erickson: I.
16:13
Lyle Bell: yeah.
16:13
Lyle Bell: And, and, um, I had been on a tour with the band Veal, uh, where we were opening, and Nick Kozub was actually the bass player, the third bass player.
16:23
Lyle Bell: I.
16:23
Lyle Bell: In the, the veal, history.
16:26
Glen Erickson: Yep.
16:26
Lyle Bell: On the way back, we had discussed, um, just'cause we were both really into synthesizers, I had been collecting synth, uh, and kind of using them in more of a punk rock way, like six Finger satellite maybe that sort of, vibe, with, slow fresh oil.
16:42
Lyle Bell: anyway, Nick was sort of putting this new band together.
16:45
Lyle Bell: He had a project and so Conscripted Gravy and I to be in shout out, out, out, out what became Shout Out, out, out, out, which was sort of a, a dance rock, uh, crazy dance rock band that, uh, just passed the 20 year mark as well last year.
17:00
Lyle Bell: Uh, which seems crazy to me, but, um, it, and originally Gravy wasn't quite sure that he wanted to do that.
17:06
Lyle Bell: So.
17:06
Lyle Bell: It was not going to be a two drummer band.
17:09
Lyle Bell: Uh, it was just gonna be gravy.
17:11
Lyle Bell: But he was sort of waffling on it.
17:13
Lyle Bell: And Clint found out about this project.
17:15
Lyle Bell: Clint was only 17 at the time, but, uh, excitedly called, called Nick and said he wanted to play drums in that sort of like gravy.
17:23
Lyle Bell: Then sort of, uh, you know, he recanted and, and, uh, stayed in the band.
17:27
Lyle Bell: So we just at that point we're like, okay, we're gonna have two drummers, which was a financial disaster, it was really fit the, the bombast of that band.
17:36
Glen Erickson: Nobody cares about logistics.
17:38
Glen Erickson: Yeah.
17:39
Lyle Bell: no, it's another, another thing kinda like the name, the name has grown on me, but, you know, if you're thinking that you're gonna be making a, you know, an international push.
17:49
Lyle Bell: You might think rethink some of these decisions.
17:51
Lyle Bell: But at the
17:52
Glen Erickson: Yeah.
17:52
Lyle Bell: was again, just gonna be another fun, locked, uh, band doing something a little bit, a little bit different.
17:59
Lyle Bell: There's still a through line.
18:00
Lyle Bell: Like the stuff that we were listening to at the time would've been like, add in to X and the Rapture, uh, DFA bands were all
18:09
Glen Erickson: Hmm.
18:10
Lyle Bell: of going at that time.
18:11
Lyle Bell: LCD Sound systems, so
18:12
Glen Erickson: Yep.
18:13
Lyle Bell: kind of stuff right off the hop, which was, um, I guess d Dance Punk Chick, chick Chick and the Juan McLean, kind of thing.
18:21
Glen Erickson: Yeah,
18:21
Lyle Bell: Uh, so that was sort of maybe the, where that was coming from, but it still to me was punk rock in a way.
18:28
Lyle Bell: You know, like
18:28
Glen Erickson: yeah,
18:29
Lyle Bell: pretty bombastic, uh, fuzzy get fuzzy bass and a pile of synthesizers, which I also loved.
18:34
Lyle Bell: So, yeah.
18:35
Glen Erickson: I mean, how, how can we tell that story though?
18:37
Glen Erickson: Jumping all over the place, right?
18:38
Glen Erickson: Like there's just, again, the overlap and trying to find the through lines.
18:42
Glen Erickson: So I'm gonna.
18:43
Lyle Bell: yeah,
18:43
Glen Erickson: I'm gonna drag back a bit and then try to pull some things out.
18:46
Glen Erickson: so let's go all the way back to Molly's reach.
18:49
Glen Erickson: uh, I've had a couple conversations here with people whose bands were t taking off in the nineties and what that nineties scene was in Canada and even in the world, and how, especially I, I mean, it's kind of the rise of indie rock.
19:02
Glen Erickson: I feel kind of right underneath what was happening right in with Seattle and all the shit in the nineties, like underneath that was essentially creating this, I think a real hotbed just for indie rock and people to feel like we have a place and an opportunity and let's just keep going.
19:18
Glen Erickson: And people are noticing that scene.
19:20
Glen Erickson: So you said like, you, you described it as like a power pop kind of band, which, uh, in the Sloan vein, which there was like, that stuff was all over.
19:29
Glen Erickson: Much music in Canada.
19:31
Glen Erickson: Um, I I, I keep thinking like I used to go see Treble charger and the Killjoys.
19:35
Glen Erickson: It's like they toured together every year, at least once a year.
19:39
Glen Erickson: They would show up here and play the rev or, or play the rebar or some place.
19:43
Glen Erickson: so it was all over the place and you guys fit in with that.
19:46
Glen Erickson: And to the point where you even get the label deal with BMG, who at that time was, one of the top.
19:52
Glen Erickson: I think there were four considered major labels back in at that time in the nineties.
19:56
Glen Erickson: So that would've been one of them with their international reach.
19:59
Glen Erickson: Right.
20:00
Lyle Bell: yeah, yeah, yeah.
20:01
Glen Erickson: So what does that look like?
20:02
Glen Erickson: Like what, what does that, what's, are you guys, is that the stereo?
20:06
Glen Erickson: I guess my big question, Lyle, is like, was all those cliche things happening for you guys?
20:11
Glen Erickson: Like, you're in your twenties, this stuff is happening, it feels like this is it, this is how this whole dream happens.
20:18
Lyle Bell: You know, it's sort of, uh, It sort of felt that way.
20:22
Lyle Bell: It was never that meteoric of a rise.
20:25
Lyle Bell: I, I feel like there was more of a, I was, I was more mentally prepared for it.
20:29
Lyle Bell: When, when shout out, sort, shout out, took off, that felt more like, okay.
20:34
Lyle Bell: This is the
20:35
Glen Erickson: Hmm.
20:35
Lyle Bell: let's go.
20:36
Glen Erickson: Okay.
20:36
Lyle Bell: already prepped to prepped for disappointment.
20:40
Lyle Bell: and then when that, when that began to take off, I was like, okay, um, I've been working hard.
20:45
Lyle Bell: Let's let's roll with this.
20:47
Lyle Bell: So
20:47
Glen Erickson: Yep.
20:48
Lyle Bell: take it for granted the second time around.
20:50
Lyle Bell: That's sure.
20:52
Lyle Bell: with Molly's reach, it was still, I mean this is like proto days,
20:58
Glen Erickson: Yep.
20:58
Lyle Bell: and it's sort of the last of the regional bands, like you're talking about last of the regional scenes.
21:03
Lyle Bell: I sort of look at the smalls being one of the last of the truly
21:07
Glen Erickson: Mm.
21:08
Lyle Bell: um, you know, phenomenons.
21:10
Glen Erickson: Yep.
21:10
Lyle Bell: would, I, I remember seeing them in Toronto and, and, and it was nothing like seeing them in Edmonton or Winnipeg or something like that, like up to about Winnipeg.
21:18
Lyle Bell: They were enormous and would play these like huge, you know, packed thousand person.
21:23
Lyle Bell: Rager events.
21:25
Glen Erickson: Yeah.
21:25
Lyle Bell: and uh, and then seeing them in Toronto, it seemed like, not that it was empty, but it was just not
21:31
Glen Erickson: Yeah.
21:32
Lyle Bell: fervor that they had out west.
21:33
Lyle Bell: Anyway, my point being, uh, we were also sort of that way had had, so there was a definitely a regional scene and we were pretty, um, locked into that kind of music.
21:44
Lyle Bell: Like at that point we were sort of living and breathing that, you know, sort of punk,
21:50
Glen Erickson: Yeah.
21:50
Lyle Bell: I wouldn't even say punk, like sort of indie rock,
21:53
Glen Erickson: Yeah, for sure.
21:54
Lyle Bell: the time.
21:55
Lyle Bell: And, uh, got to do lots of, lots of fun stuff.
21:58
Lyle Bell: The, the label was actually a smaller label with a BMG deal, so it never felt like we got the full,
22:04
Glen Erickson: Yeah.
22:04
Glen Erickson: Okay.
22:05
Lyle Bell: you know, wine and dine from, from, uh, the industry.
22:09
Lyle Bell: I mean, there, there, there were, uh, it was pretty fun to, yeah.
22:14
Lyle Bell: To get, to go to, I mean, to get the first taste of that side of the industry.
22:20
Lyle Bell: even, even being from Edmonton, it felt, it always felt like you're, you're going uphill you
22:26
Glen Erickson: Yeah,
22:27
Lyle Bell: Like Toronto seemed like the,
22:28
Glen Erickson: a hundred percent.
22:29
Lyle Bell: you know, the.
22:30
Lyle Bell: Where you want to be based if you're, if you're gonna be doing music in Canada.
22:34
Lyle Bell: And prob, and probably still is.
22:36
Lyle Bell: I've just always loved, I, I never felt the, pole to move away.
22:41
Lyle Bell: I've always
22:42
Glen Erickson: Well, that's on my list of questions to ask you, Lyle, actually, I'm glad you actually brought that up.
22:46
Glen Erickson: I mean, with all of the bands you've been in and the in, in, in most of them, sort of really dipping their toes in, what does the next level bumping up to?
22:56
Glen Erickson: And the Toronto question, if you're from Edmonton, always comes in pretty quickly.
23:02
Glen Erickson: And I've wondered how often or how strongly that suggestion or that pull, even from within yourself was, and you sort of half answered it there, but if you could explain more.
23:12
Lyle Bell: we had, um, we had seriously considered moving.
23:15
Lyle Bell: A few times.
23:17
Lyle Bell: The one that maybe was most close was, uh, shout out.
23:20
Lyle Bell: Spent quite a bit of time and, and by that time we were, uh, we were also pretty heavily involved with six shooter.
23:27
Lyle Bell: the distribution deal for normal Alcom, which we were talking about, which is the label, the little indie label that Jason and Nick ran, who were the main guys in shout out, were distributed through six shooter.
23:38
Lyle Bell: So it kind of made sense to move there.
23:41
Lyle Bell: We spent a lot of time in Toronto.
23:42
Lyle Bell: but that time I think everybody had.
23:45
Lyle Bell: Other projects that were still kind of going simultaneously.
23:50
Lyle Bell: there was a dip in shout out activity, I would be doing Wet Secrets.
23:54
Lyle Bell: Whitey Houston was still touring that whole time.
23:56
Lyle Bell: So it was like one, uh, one still by Southwest that I went to.
24:00
Lyle Bell: And I was so excited'cause it was like, shout out right in the heyday of shout out, like playing Fader Fort and that kind of thing.
24:07
Glen Erickson: Hmm.
24:07
Lyle Bell: Wet Secrets also had shows and Whitey head shows, and there might've even been a Wizen Days show.
24:12
Lyle Bell: It was another band that, uh,
24:14
Glen Erickson: Paula Anish started.
24:16
Glen Erickson: Yeah.
24:16
Lyle Bell: Paul, yeah, one of Paul's Paul's bands.
24:19
Lyle Bell: But it was too much.
24:20
Lyle Bell: It was like, it was insanity.
24:21
Lyle Bell: It
24:21
Glen Erickson: Yeah.
24:22
Lyle Bell: to not have any fun on the road trying to juggle like
24:25
Glen Erickson: Yeah.
24:26
Lyle Bell: bands and, and all, and like running around.
24:28
Lyle Bell: anyway, um, we, we always had, everyone had like multiple reasons to stay in Edmonton at that time.
24:36
Lyle Bell: I had a house here, I had bought a house here, I'd had a couple properties.
24:41
Lyle Bell: So it just made sense to, to actually get out and truly move to Toronto.
24:46
Lyle Bell: Even at that time, it's, Toronto's had already seemed, um, prohibitively expensive
24:51
Glen Erickson: Yeah.
24:51
Lyle Bell: and now it's just, it's gone through the roof.
24:54
Lyle Bell: Like to get, uh, house like I have, I'm 10 minutes from downtown in a like a hundred year old house, with, as we were talking about before, the full art zone.
25:03
Lyle Bell: So I
25:04
Glen Erickson: Yeah.
25:04
Glen Erickson: Yeah.
25:05
Lyle Bell: do all the, do everything here, you know, I dunno, we, we jam in the basement to get that, in Toronto.
25:11
Lyle Bell: Just seems like the impossible dream at this point.
25:14
Glen Erickson: And you, you mentioned you have all kinds of reasons to stay.
25:17
Glen Erickson: I was, I'm curious what your perspective was on, is moving there actually gonna pay off?
25:23
Glen Erickson: Maybe is the question because my observations, when the question came up for me and for my band and, besides the reasons to stay, I already had a family, that my observations were how many Edmonton and Western Canadian bands had gone out there and kind of.
25:39
Glen Erickson: Disappeared.
25:40
Glen Erickson: Like the same way you described the, the live music effect of regional bands and what was happening with Molly's reach and then they get out to Toronto.
25:48
Glen Erickson: You know, I, I observed artists that had already moved and then I felt like they just became like a, you know, an average size fish in a way, bigger ocean.
25:58
Glen Erickson: and things took longer to get traction and I was like, I don't know if I want that either.
26:02
Glen Erickson: Was I'm wondering what your observation on what you saw.
26:05
Glen Erickson: 'cause you, you had a lot of friends I'm sure who were going back and forth.
26:09
Lyle Bell: Yeah.
26:09
Lyle Bell: Oh, oh.
26:09
Lyle Bell: I mean, definitely there were waves where in the nineties, um, almost everybody, I mean, not universally, but Vancouver was the big draw for, for quite a while.
26:21
Lyle Bell: Uh, tons of Edmonton bands all moved to Vancouver,
26:25
Glen Erickson: Yeah, easier for sure.
26:27
Lyle Bell: and most of them sort of dropped off the radar.
26:30
Lyle Bell: I, I think quite often the, the move was, you bring your band, you're excited to move to a new town, you band ends up breaking up, but now you're, you're working in this bigger
26:42
Glen Erickson: Yeah,
26:43
Lyle Bell: so it would happen in Vancouver and then on in Toronto and Montreal, like by, you know, 2005 everyone's making the move to Montreal.
26:53
Lyle Bell: That was the new,
26:54
Glen Erickson: the Arcade Fire.
26:55
Lyle Bell: Yeah,
26:55
Glen Erickson: The Arcade Fire Secret.
26:57
Lyle Bell: yeah, yeah, yeah.
26:59
Lyle Bell: I
27:00
Glen Erickson: It had a real scene.
27:01
Glen Erickson: It had a scene.
27:02
Glen Erickson: It was a good scene for sure.
27:03
Lyle Bell: it has, it had a, had a scene and, and, uh, and still does.
27:08
Lyle Bell: And I love that town.
27:09
Lyle Bell: I mean, I love
27:09
Glen Erickson: I.
27:10
Lyle Bell: all of these places.
27:10
Lyle Bell: I, I really love going to visit and play and we, uh, and shadowed actually spent a lot of time in Toronto and staying there, for extended periods, with maybe the intent of moving.
27:22
Lyle Bell: I think Nick was the closest to actually pulling the trigger and doing it
27:26
Glen Erickson: Hmm.
27:26
Lyle Bell: and actually moving there.
27:27
Lyle Bell: And that might've changed.
27:29
Lyle Bell: Um.
27:30
Lyle Bell: How everything, you know, how everything went, it would've either fallen apart or everyone follow.
27:35
Glen Erickson: Yeah.
27:36
Lyle Bell: as it turned out, yeah, I just, I think that by the time we were seriously considering moving as well, we were already, like, shout out, had, uh, a great agent in the, in the States and in Canada.
27:48
Lyle Bell: Right off the bat.
27:49
Lyle Bell: We had Rob Elli and we were getting offers.
27:52
Lyle Bell: I, I remember seeing offers and like, kind of rubbing my eyes'cause it looked like there was one too many zeros on the end.
27:58
Lyle Bell: I'm like, wow, what?
27:59
Lyle Bell: Like, no one is gonna, no one's gonna pay us that amount.
28:02
Lyle Bell: And,
28:03
Glen Erickson: Yeah.
28:03
Lyle Bell: we would get these, like these crazy offers.
28:05
Lyle Bell: So at that time it, it felt like it was viable to just stay in Edmonton and do it.
28:10
Lyle Bell: You know, like it was, we were never set either.
28:12
Lyle Bell: So there would be humbling shows.
28:14
Lyle Bell: We'd go and play Toronto and we did like a two nighter at Lee's Palace.
28:18
Lyle Bell: And like sold out these pals two in a row and we're like, alright, here we go.
28:23
Lyle Bell: And then go play Buffalo next night to like 10 people
28:29
Glen Erickson: It feels like
28:29
Lyle Bell: we're
28:30
Glen Erickson: this is, this is the tragically hip curse in Canada.
28:33
Glen Erickson: Right?
28:33
Glen Erickson: Like same thing like cross the border and nothing
28:37
Lyle Bell: it's
28:37
Glen Erickson: I.
28:38
Lyle Bell: to me that, that like border, this like fake line in the air, matters.
28:43
Lyle Bell: Like you're so close to Toronto when you're in Buffalo,
28:45
Glen Erickson: Yeah, yeah,
28:46
Lyle Bell: you're, you're way, you're way closer to, you know, to Toronto than you are to Edmonton.
28:51
Lyle Bell: We did really well in Edmonton and across Canada at that time.
28:54
Lyle Bell: Shout out was doing great in Canada and even Buffalo, something like right across the border, just sort of, No dice.
29:02
Glen Erickson: yeah.
29:02
Lyle Bell: I mean, I shouldn't say no dice, but it was like, we would, uh, yeah.
29:06
Lyle Bell: It was always a hit and miss in the States.
29:08
Lyle Bell: Sometimes we'd have like absolutely dynamite shows and go to the next town and it'd be like a Yeah.
29:14
Lyle Bell: Graveyard.
29:14
Glen Erickson: But I, I mean, at least the big difference is the next town is an hour and a half drive, not eight hours.
29:20
Glen Erickson: Uh, which is the, the thing that kills you in Canada, right.
29:23
Lyle Bell: yeah, yeah.
29:25
Glen Erickson: Yeah.
29:26
Lyle Bell: it's a bit of a, to me it's like a Canadian, um, badge of honor
29:30
Glen Erickson: Yeah.
29:30
Lyle Bell: to do that, uh, drive around the,
29:33
Glen Erickson: Around the Great Lakes,
29:34
Lyle Bell: Yep.
29:34
Glen Erickson: thunder base,
29:35
Lyle Bell: through,
29:36
Glen Erickson: the Sioux in Sudbury stay at the townhouse.
29:39
Glen Erickson: Yeah,
29:39
Lyle Bell: Stay at the townhouse, eat at the, eat at the Hodo.
29:42
Lyle Bell: Uh, then go to, uh, you know, go through Wawa, stay at the little, uh,
29:48
Glen Erickson: yeah.
29:49
Lyle Bell: in
29:49
Glen Erickson: these, all these venues closing down do, does it feel,'cause we're the same age, so we can talk like grumpy old men on our lawn, but does it feel like the kids right now are missing something by not getting that rite of passage anymore?
30:02
Lyle Bell: Well, I, I mean, everything has shifted.
30:06
Lyle Bell: I mean, at, at that time, especially in the nineties when we first started, started going, kind of pre-internet or proto internet anyway, you're, you really had to, the, the whole touring plan was to go out, hit a market, and then come back and build on that draw.
30:22
Lyle Bell: And it was
30:23
Glen Erickson: Yeah.
30:23
Lyle Bell: by continually hitting this, you
30:26
Glen Erickson: Had to keep going back and keep going back.
30:28
Lyle Bell: yeah,
30:29
Glen Erickson: Yeah,
30:29
Lyle Bell: gonna build a draw that way.
30:30
Lyle Bell: Now nobody looks at it that way as a viable
30:33
Glen Erickson: yeah,
30:34
Lyle Bell: strategy to build a, a career.
30:36
Lyle Bell: You're online.
30:38
Lyle Bell: You build a presence online first, and I mean, this is,
30:40
Glen Erickson: And I'm being nostalgic about something that we all fucking hated, like if I'm being honest, right?
30:46
Glen Erickson: Like it killed us to make those drives quite often.
30:49
Lyle Bell: of loved it.
30:50
Lyle Bell: I'm a, I'm
30:50
Glen Erickson: Did you?
30:51
Glen Erickson: I.
30:51
Lyle Bell: I did most of the driving.
30:53
Lyle Bell: I was also the, the main driver, so did gravy.
30:55
Lyle Bell: So it was mostly gravy and me
30:58
Glen Erickson: Yeah.
30:58
Lyle Bell: But I, I actually liked doing the driving and I loved the scenery and all of those drives.
31:04
Lyle Bell: I, I mean, later on we would, we would do the shortcut, so we'd go over to Winnipeg and then
31:10
Glen Erickson: Down Minneapolis, Chicago,
31:13
Lyle Bell: uh, yeah,
31:14
Glen Erickson: and up.
31:14
Lyle Bell: that sort of all the way over to New York shout out and with wet secrets a bunch of times.
31:21
Lyle Bell: That was sort of the,
31:22
Glen Erickson: That's the beauty.
31:24
Glen Erickson: Yeah.
31:25
Lyle Bell: yeah.
31:25
Lyle Bell: And that, that was really good.
31:26
Lyle Bell: But I've, I've still always liked, uh.
31:29
Lyle Bell: drive around the the Great Lakes.
31:31
Lyle Bell: It wasn't that long ago that we did that.
31:34
Lyle Bell: I have done that drive.
31:35
Lyle Bell: It's maybe been five years, but
31:37
Glen Erickson: Okay.
31:37
Lyle Bell: long ago.
31:38
Lyle Bell: Yeah.
31:38
Glen Erickson: and I think it's great you referenced, you know, a couple of the bands had the same thing going, but, and, and so I'm gonna be sort of like, I'm gonna break it down real quick for anybody who's listening.
31:48
Glen Erickson: 'cause you and I might just be comfortable jumping between all of these things.
31:52
Glen Erickson: But, so, you know, Molly's reach very much I think in the pocket of things that were getting attention, which is, you know, especially out east and it was much music was kind of king.
32:04
Glen Erickson: Um, so that was also part of Toronto and you, you're in that pocket of that pop indie rock stuff.
32:10
Glen Erickson: So that has that obviously that pull and that draw and it overlaps with you doing sore oil, which was sort of just a local regional experiment.
32:19
Glen Erickson: But then you clearly were getting a lot of attention, or at least opening slots with bands were a bit heavier.
32:25
Glen Erickson: and starting to get pulled around to that.
32:27
Glen Erickson: Like you said, you start Whitey Houston, that two, two man.
32:31
Glen Erickson: Band thing, which, and there's been a few iterations in Canada for some reason.
32:35
Glen Erickson: I feel like that is always just, just the presence of a loud two person band has always done pretty well, right up to Japan's and, and, um, I mean, even look at Misha and the Spanx right now down in Calgary, Misha's killing it and keeping her career growing and it's awesome.
32:51
Glen Erickson: they have that two person sound, bit heavier, you know, and then the 2000 rolls around and you start the wet secrets.
32:57
Glen Erickson: And like you said, it was this Divo disco, indie, uh, blender of performance rock even.
33:05
Glen Erickson: Uh, and then you have this complete sidestep with your friends who love just, you know, the same intersection of these synthesizer heavy, dance electro shout out outs.
33:15
Glen Erickson: there's through lines in your relationships with all of them.
33:18
Glen Erickson: Clearly there's, there's.
33:20
Glen Erickson: And the people that were involved that would pull you in.
33:23
Glen Erickson: And there's through lines with some of the larger opportunities and the places that you were going and the people that you met along the way in the business.
33:31
Glen Erickson: I'm just curious of for you, Lyle, the through line stylistically, you know, the way that you play, you know, most of the time it feels that I've seen you playing a bass.
33:41
Glen Erickson: Sometimes it's a guitar, sometimes your bass just sounds like a guitar.
33:45
Glen Erickson: the way that you sing and even produce your vocal very specifically in those choices that you've obviously developed, what's, what was your personal through line, stylistically all these choices?
33:57
Lyle Bell: Well, every, every, uh, one of the bands that I've been in, especially if I'm playing bass, which is mostly, you know, what I've been, what I've been doing, what I've been certainly known for in Molly's Reach, I actually played guitar.
34:11
Glen Erickson: Yeah.
34:11
Lyle Bell: sort of would switch back and forth and then basically to bass.
34:15
Lyle Bell: But it's like that skunky sort of, uh, post-punk bass tone, a pase into a cranked trainer amp is essentially it, with or without a, a SoftTech, big muff on there.
34:29
Lyle Bell: but every band that I was in is sort of revolves around that tonally to some
34:34
Glen Erickson: Yeah.
34:35
Lyle Bell: shout out you know, a bunch of bass players.
34:37
Lyle Bell: I was sort of like, I would do if Will was playing like more of a, Lower kind of disco e base thing.
34:43
Lyle Bell: I would be doing something up high, adding something again, using that tonally kind of really crispy tone.
34:49
Lyle Bell: Um, obviously I didn't sing in shout out, but this is why I say to me, there was like a very much a through line.
34:56
Lyle Bell: It was still coming from the same place, sort of in my mind.
34:59
Lyle Bell: It's just what surrounds, all that thing.
35:02
Lyle Bell: So in the case of shout out, there's like lush synthesizers as well as we got, as we got, uh, better at ourselves too, and, and got more, more gear and familiar with it more from a, an electronic point of view.
35:15
Lyle Bell: It was, it was actually great for my brain because Nick opened me up to so much music.
35:20
Lyle Bell: Like I was pretty insular in the nineties, like wanting just like sort of that, uh, pop and like punk rock to some degree, but indie rock.
35:28
Lyle Bell: Uh, and then going with Nick would play all kinds of stuff on, on, uh, he would make mix, mix tapes for the road that would be like remix to Ignition and, you know, there'd be like booty bass tracks and we listen to aqua all the time and Clinton and I of would listen to a while while we're driving.
35:46
Lyle Bell: Much said gravy, chagrin, you know, I dunno, Giorgio Rotor and, this sort of thing.
35:51
Lyle Bell: So it was all over the map and, and uh, yeah, it really opened my mind as well.
35:56
Lyle Bell: Like, I like to try other, to really dig into other, other forms of music and go at these festivals to, uh, to all kinds of stuff like music that I probably normally wouldn't go to and just really lean in.
36:09
Lyle Bell: anyway.
36:09
Lyle Bell: Yeah, this is, that was a bit of an aside.
36:12
Glen Erickson: no, that wasn't totally an aside.
36:13
Glen Erickson: I was asking about your stylistic through lines to the choices.
36:18
Glen Erickson: I mean,
36:18
Lyle Bell: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
36:19
Lyle Bell: So, so it's sort of at the core, there's still this like fuzzy crispy bass,
36:24
Glen Erickson: yeah.
36:24
Lyle Bell: sound, and then we're beginning to drape it in other things.
36:27
Lyle Bell: It was like, you know, 3 0 3 bought a 3 0 3 and like getting, getting into like programming acid baselines and stuff like that.
36:34
Glen Erickson: Hmm.
36:34
Lyle Bell: And, uh,
36:36
Glen Erickson: Were you always
36:37
Lyle Bell: to the mix.
36:38
Lyle Bell: It's like,
36:38
Glen Erickson: were, were you always starting these bands or were there some of them that you were brought into?
36:44
Glen Erickson: Or is, you know, I think there's a real difference.
36:46
Glen Erickson: I'm curious about, you know, how you end up in a band.
36:49
Glen Erickson: I,
36:49
Lyle Bell: well, the ones that, the main ones that we're talking about here right now, I, I.
36:55
Lyle Bell: Started in a way, I guess shout out was definitely Nick and Jason's sort of main thing.
37:02
Lyle Bell: But Nick and I had had already talked about, uh, while we were on that
37:06
Glen Erickson: yeah.
37:06
Glen Erickson: Yeah.
37:07
Lyle Bell: about he wanted to start this new thing that was all synthesizers.
37:10
Lyle Bell: And I even at that point, I had a pile of vintage synths.
37:14
Lyle Bell: we were actually just talking about this.
37:16
Lyle Bell: The, the beginning of that band was actually getting together to try and make a, a soundtrack for a video, a climbing video that his sister brother-in-law were making.
37:27
Lyle Bell: They, they have a company that makes like climbing holds and stuff like that.
37:30
Lyle Bell: So
37:31
Glen Erickson: Okay.
37:31
Lyle Bell: very first thing that we did, what, what started shout out was making, um.
37:37
Lyle Bell: tracks, like kind of proto shoutout tracks for this video, a corporate video for their company
37:43
Glen Erickson: Okay.
37:44
Lyle Bell: uh, I don't think I had actually forgotten about this.
37:46
Lyle Bell: We were just talking about this a month ago.
37:48
Lyle Bell: it never, that never got completed as far as I know, that was the, the songs I do remember
37:55
Glen Erickson: Huh?
37:55
Lyle Bell: having done that, made these songs in
37:57
Glen Erickson: Yeah.
37:58
Lyle Bell: in the early two thousands.
37:59
Lyle Bell: So, yeah.
37:59
Glen Erickson: Oh, that's pretty fun.
38:00
Lyle Bell: uh, I mean.
38:01
Glen Erickson: well, you know what, the other interesting, shout out sidebar for me, one of my favorite moments for you guys around here, and I had to do a bunch of digging to go and dig it back up, was when you were contacted by this group from Vancouver that had this TELUS funding to do this playground series.
38:20
Glen Erickson: And, and I mean that was back in the, the day when a lot of these like video sort of production companies were creating the, the series of the live, different live versions of artists coming in.
38:31
Glen Erickson: And so they were, had that TELUS funding called playground.
38:34
Glen Erickson: one of my best friends or best friend Greg, was one of the video directors.
38:38
Glen Erickson: There was two Gregs, and, and some other people anyhow, and they came here to put on that live thing and connected with you and you in that.
38:45
Glen Erickson: I don't even remember somewhere in.
38:47
Glen Erickson: White Ave Strathcona area and that crazy video that you wrote the song for, I had to really dig to go and find it'cause I couldn't remember.
38:55
Glen Erickson: But
38:55
Lyle Bell: Planet
38:55
Glen Erickson: an incredible experience.
38:57
Glen Erickson: Yeah.
38:57
Lyle Bell: that,
38:58
Glen Erickson: Yeah.
38:58
Glen Erickson: That was pretty wild.
38:59
Lyle Bell: yeah.
38:59
Lyle Bell: Yeah.
38:59
Lyle Bell: I, I mean, I remember that.
39:01
Lyle Bell: yeah, that was great.
39:02
Lyle Bell: We wanted it again to be, uh, the thing we keep coming back to is bombastic.
39:07
Lyle Bell: So, so shout out was already somewhat of a bombastic band where the gear was almost.
39:13
Lyle Bell: of the show, like big towering piles of synthesizers and two drummers.
39:17
Lyle Bell: So we just thought, like, what would be make it even more the next level was having like a whole, orchestra of people playing Toms and,
39:25
Glen Erickson: Yeah.
39:25
Lyle Bell: another, like I brought in all my like, um, modular synth racks.
39:30
Lyle Bell: So it's actually, Jamie and Wolf.
39:33
Lyle Bell: So Nick's dad, Wolf,
39:35
Glen Erickson: Yep.
39:35
Lyle Bell: are Wilford Dan and the grown men, they're in the back.
39:38
Lyle Bell: They're playing all the, all the, the buring synths in the back and yeah, we had
39:42
Glen Erickson: He became,
39:44
Lyle Bell: so,
39:44
Glen Erickson: he became the face of it.
39:45
Glen Erickson: I think with that, uh, you guys brought in that super vintage, um, one that looks like, you know, like that standing thing with all the knobs and the wires moving around.
39:54
Glen Erickson: I can't remember the name of it, but, um, they had him on that and it looked like the crazy old mad scientist'cause he had the long white hair.
40:01
Glen Erickson: It was pretty awesome.
40:02
Glen Erickson: quick summary for
40:03
Lyle Bell: It's
40:04
Glen Erickson: o do you, oh, that's a beauty.
40:06
Glen Erickson: Yeah.
40:06
Glen Erickson: So I mean, people should google this.
40:08
Glen Erickson: I think I found it by remembering the name of the production company.
40:11
Glen Erickson: Art a band, A-R-T-A-B-A-N and then playground and they can find this thing'cause it's still on their Vimeo.
40:18
Glen Erickson: It was an incredible endeavor.
40:19
Glen Erickson: That was probably one of the most creative things I had been around in the last 25 years to try in two days to pull off this live, audience involvement.
40:28
Glen Erickson: You guys went and rented and found 60 floor toms from around the city, and then people were gonna somehow be taught how to play them in sync together
40:38
Lyle Bell: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
40:40
Glen Erickson: and clap wood blocks and sing and the whole crap.
40:43
Glen Erickson: It was wild.
40:44
Lyle Bell: took me, I, I made those, I like cut and sanded all the wood blocks
40:48
Glen Erickson: What?
40:48
Lyle Bell: take me, you know, an hour.
40:50
Glen Erickson: Oh,
40:50
Lyle Bell: it, it ended up taking me like all day to make whatever it was, 60.
40:54
Glen Erickson: my God.
40:55
Glen Erickson: Yeah.
40:56
Lyle Bell: to
40:56
Glen Erickson: Yeah.
40:56
Lyle Bell: Yeah.
40:57
Lyle Bell: Uh, yeah, it took me a long time and painting them all, I was like, yeah.
41:01
Lyle Bell: But, but I mean, it was kind of a, a labor of love and this is part of the thing we wanted to do, stuff like that here.
41:08
Lyle Bell: Not that it necessarily really matters that it was done in Edmonton, but,
41:11
Glen Erickson: Yeah.
41:12
Lyle Bell: I like the fact that there's something that I, I like about the idea that you don't have to move away to do stuff.
41:17
Lyle Bell: Uh, I mean, by the time that was going
41:19
Glen Erickson: Hmm.
41:19
Lyle Bell: too, it's, it's, you know, that's in essentially modern times where, you don't need to be, you can be from anywhere and your music can be out anywhere, there's no reason you don't really have to move,
41:29
Glen Erickson: Well, Lyle, I,
41:30
Lyle Bell: a community here.
41:31
Glen Erickson: I mean I've spent a lot of the last 15 years of my life with that moniker title.
41:36
Glen Erickson: being involved in different arts boards and different things and trying to be such a strong advocate for, you don't have to move away, which is why I love talking to people with careers outta Western Canada about the pull to Toronto or not.
41:49
Glen Erickson: I love hearing you say that.
41:50
Glen Erickson: I mean, you should know.
41:52
Glen Erickson: You were a, a huge influence on me at that time as well for two reasons.
41:57
Glen Erickson: One, one was for that reason.
41:59
Glen Erickson: the, the fact that you seem so committed to just staying and building success regionally or however, however, but I mean, the other part was, I mean, you've referenced a couple times of how bombastic a bunch of these things that you've done, they're hard to explain names and song titles and all the shit to border guards or grandparents and all these things.
42:20
Glen Erickson: But that ambition, I think has so much influence and I, and I think, I have this deep desire for artists currently and people still trying to build their career or keep a career going to just hear things like that and be reminded that I.
42:38
Glen Erickson: It is too easy, especially on the internet right now.
42:41
Glen Erickson: I think you can tell me if you agree, but, uh, to just think it's just like, I just need to write a song and then that song just has to go viral.
42:48
Glen Erickson: Or there's something about it that people will love or that it's so much more that the uniforms and the performance art with the wet secrets that I saw and I even felt like, I remember after you guys won the Peak Performance Project and then you released the EP with, I Can Swing a Hammer, and I just remember watching you guys and thinking, it sounded like you were writing songs that would perform well in these personas.
43:11
Glen Erickson: In this, this whole it was bigger, right?
43:13
Glen Erickson: It was bigger.
43:14
Glen Erickson: Like the shout out out thing is just so much bigger.
43:18
Glen Erickson: You're taking bigger swings.
43:19
Glen Erickson: It's not just about I'm gonna write a really good song, I'm gonna build this entire package or brand, or whatever you wanna call it.
43:26
Glen Erickson: Was that like that's part of your heartbeat and all of these things.
43:30
Lyle Bell: you totally nailed it to me.
43:33
Lyle Bell: To me, the song, I mean, you, you obviously have to have compelling music, I always felt that that's like one part a main, uh, definitely the main thing.
43:44
Lyle Bell: You can't really necessarily polish a turd, although I also somewhat argue I've had a career tur as a turd polisher.
43:52
Lyle Bell: but the, the idea of like how you're gonna present it and in a way it's better to be polarizing.
43:58
Lyle Bell: Like doing something that if you buy into it, you're all in, you can get behind it.
44:04
Lyle Bell: that is not cool to you, you're gonna like hate it.
44:07
Lyle Bell: Like,
44:07
Glen Erickson: Yeah.
44:07
Lyle Bell: have that re reaction, like, um, trying to always think of it from an artistic point of view and how it will stand out.
44:16
Lyle Bell: how you can have an edge other than just from the musical point of view.
44:20
Glen Erickson: Yeah,
44:20
Lyle Bell: so yeah, that, that sort of bombastic thing always played into the, the equation.
44:26
Glen Erickson: and I'm always wondering how many people aren't doing it just because it's so much fucking work.
44:31
Glen Erickson: Like you said, I spent a whole day cutting wood blocks so we could try to pull off this wild idea of crowd participation, music, video.
44:41
Glen Erickson: I mean, I just know so many people it feels like I might be prejudging.
44:45
Glen Erickson: It just feels like a lot of people just wouldn't think it's worth it.
44:47
Glen Erickson: Right.
44:48
Glen Erickson: It's like there's no value in it unless you see the value in it.
44:53
Lyle Bell: Yeah.
44:53
Lyle Bell: Oh, oh man.
44:54
Lyle Bell: So there are, there are more, more examples of this kind of thing, like, um, the, the video for coming home.
45:01
Lyle Bell: Uh, this is shout out, uh, shout out video with, uh, cadence Weapon as well.
45:07
Glen Erickson: Yeah.
45:07
Glen Erickson: Yeah.
45:08
Lyle Bell: song called Coming Home, but if you look in it, we're, we're on fire and the synthesizers are burning.
45:14
Lyle Bell: But I had, I stayed up, it took me a week to make exact replicas of our synths.
45:19
Lyle Bell: And, and like a thousand dollars buying like fake, like knobs from, uh, from like small bear glue hot gluing it.
45:27
Lyle Bell: Like, uh, Kim also helped me because we were desperate.
45:30
Lyle Bell: We, we pulled basically an all-nighter, all these knobs, and I silk
45:34
Glen Erickson: Oh my.
45:35
Lyle Bell: So when you see those, those synthesizers burning, they look really authentic.
45:39
Lyle Bell: Like they're, they're modular synths, all patched in and they're on fire.
45:43
Lyle Bell: And, uh, I mean we did that.
45:45
Lyle Bell: We burned those, those were up since.
45:49
Lyle Bell: So that's the kinda, that's the kind of thing like in my mind, that'll look super cool.
45:53
Glen Erickson: Yeah.
45:54
Lyle Bell: and that, that like almost destroyed my mind that that week, same thing, the wet secrets video of, um, floating in the sky.
46:03
Lyle Bell: It's sort of buried towards the end, but the end half of the video were on a giant tennis racket.
46:08
Lyle Bell: The first half were actually
46:10
Glen Erickson: Oh yeah.
46:10
Glen Erickson: Yeah.
46:11
Lyle Bell: metaphysical tennis as it was.
46:13
Lyle Bell: This was sort of the concept.
46:15
Lyle Bell: so the whole thing is a metaphor, but in the end, we're actually on this, an exact replica of the tennis racket that I had.
46:22
Glen Erickson: You built a giant.
46:23
Lyle Bell: that in my living room halves and then took it outside and, uh, know, strung it up with, with rope, that's another thing.
46:33
Lyle Bell: Or, or building like a 30 foot high marching band outfit for Golden West Music Fest that got lit on fire on
46:40
Glen Erickson: Oh yeah.
46:41
Lyle Bell: we were done playing.
46:42
Lyle Bell: So that's in the, in the Hammer video.
46:45
Glen Erickson: That's incredible too.
46:46
Lyle Bell: And that was, that was Kristen and I going out there with Kevin Bowman to where they held the festival.
46:52
Lyle Bell: And
46:52
Glen Erickson: Yeah,
46:52
Lyle Bell: also helped us build this thing.
46:55
Lyle Bell: Took like a couple days, uh, I nearly dod falling off the top.
46:59
Lyle Bell: I'd had a couple beers and, uh, I actually don't, I.
47:03
Lyle Bell: don't really like pot, but I was convinced to have like one little toot with Bowman before we started this thing.
47:09
Lyle Bell: And
47:10
Glen Erickson: before you started
47:11
Lyle Bell: I,
47:11
Glen Erickson: the thing.
47:12
Lyle Bell: before I had to go up and put the final cladding on the roof, and that was the worst mistake.
47:17
Lyle Bell: I almost fell off, um, just sort of a miracle.
47:21
Lyle Bell: The, this is like 30 feet up and I had a circ saw and as I was cutting ladder slipped off the top, but it caught on a nail.
47:31
Lyle Bell: It somehow caught on a nail
47:32
Glen Erickson: Oh,
47:33
Lyle Bell: like,
47:33
Glen Erickson: that's like
47:34
Lyle Bell: and it,
47:34
Glen Erickson: Chevy Chase,
47:35
Lyle Bell: It was like,
47:36
Glen Erickson: national Lampoon kind of a coincidence.
47:39
Glen Erickson: Yeah.
47:39
Lyle Bell: it was one of those moments I came down, I was like, I had to take like a 20 minute break.
47:43
Lyle Bell: I was like, so shaky.
47:44
Lyle Bell: I was like, oh.
47:45
Lyle Bell: Sort of saw, saw
47:46
Glen Erickson: Uh, yeah, a couple, a couple beers and a toot.
47:50
Glen Erickson: And I'm gonna take a saw three stories up and have at her.
47:54
Lyle Bell: Even before I was doing that, I'm like, this is dumb.
47:57
Lyle Bell: What am I doing?
47:58
Lyle Bell: So I knew better.
47:59
Lyle Bell: Again,
48:00
Glen Erickson: Yeah,
48:00
Lyle Bell: older, I think like your mortality sort of, uh, looms larger
48:05
Glen Erickson: yeah,
48:05
Lyle Bell: I don't think I would do that again.
48:06
Lyle Bell: But, uh, but anyway, going that, that kind of distance, like, uh, also building the, the lights like shout out.
48:12
Lyle Bell: we have this, this, the shout lights.
48:15
Glen Erickson: yeah, yeah.
48:16
Lyle Bell: what would be another bombastic thing that we could do is like, build these lights and then have a, the lighting controller guy have control over each of the, of the thing.
48:25
Lyle Bell: So it's like shout and then out, out, out
48:28
Glen Erickson: I was running those lights during that, that video for playground.
48:31
Glen Erickson: That was my job.
48:32
Lyle Bell: Right.
48:33
Glen Erickson: Yeah.
48:33
Glen Erickson: Yeah.
48:34
Glen Erickson: It's pretty sweet, sweet setup.
48:36
Lyle Bell: of pulsing them.
48:37
Lyle Bell: Uh, yeah, those are, those are downstairs in my basement, uh, awaiting we have the, the 20th anniversary show, which was, uh, in, in very typical shout out fashion.
48:48
Lyle Bell: We are late for our 20th anniversary show as well.
48:52
Lyle Bell: It was supposed to happen in the fall.
48:53
Lyle Bell: And, uh, and then Clint was also busy.
48:56
Lyle Bell: He's in the band home
48:58
Glen Erickson: Hmm.
48:58
Lyle Bell: They're recording with Nick, as we were talking about.
49:01
Glen Erickson: Yeah.
49:01
Lyle Bell: um, they're often we'll get to it at some point, I'm sure.
49:05
Glen Erickson: Yeah.
49:05
Glen Erickson: Well, I mean.
49:06
Lyle Bell: is, is like all of these bands I've been, I've been in, I've been lucky, I think so many bands end up breaking up.
49:13
Lyle Bell: Like there's un asshole or multiple assholes that are like, you know, fractions that break off.
49:18
Lyle Bell: I've been really fortunate that, all the bands that I've been in, I'm still friends with.
49:23
Lyle Bell: With everybody that was in all of these bands.
49:25
Lyle Bell: So shout out, uh, yeah, we're all still pals.
49:28
Lyle Bell: All the wet secrets.
49:29
Lyle Bell: yeah, it's sort of a, it's been cool.
49:32
Lyle Bell: I don't wanna say it's been a cool ride.
49:34
Lyle Bell: I just watched walk
49:35
Glen Erickson: That's pre Oh yeah.
49:36
Glen Erickson: There you go.
49:37
Glen Erickson: Well, I mean, that's, that's really, that's a fantastic statement though, because I mean, that happens a lot and that makes it hard to sustain a career with one band, let alone you know, a few to five to people that you can play in multiple.
49:53
Glen Erickson: Acts like this over time.
49:54
Glen Erickson: I mean, I, I thought at one point it would be funny, but it's not funny.
49:59
Glen Erickson: I thought about it afterwards to just try to make you, like, ask you on the spot, like, which one was your favorite.
50:04
Glen Erickson: But I pretty sure you won't answer like, which one's your favorite.
50:08
Glen Erickson: But maybe the better question is like,'cause I don't like, sometimes these stay open-ended.
50:13
Glen Erickson: This is kind of the curse of Edmonton.
50:15
Glen Erickson: It feels like none of the bands officially break up.
50:17
Glen Erickson: They just sort of disappear and then come back and play a reunion show.
50:21
Glen Erickson: But, which one, instead of asking which is your favorite, which, which ones felt the hardest to step away from?
50:29
Lyle Bell: Oh boy.
50:30
Lyle Bell: Um, each one has both monumental, like top 10 moments, life moments for me, and also heartbreak moments.
50:40
Lyle Bell: So it's sort of hard to, hard to know which is which again, out, um, was maybe one where I, by the time shout out, really took off.
50:51
Lyle Bell: I had already been through, through the ringer a couple times, like with Molly's Reach and touring with Whitey a bunch.
50:57
Lyle Bell: And, and uh, it just seemed like we were getting up to that next level and we of did it to ourselves.
51:04
Lyle Bell: I feel like we had it in the palm of our hands and didn't maybe work hard enough.
51:11
Lyle Bell: Uh, there were other factors too, but there were, there were definitely heartbreak moments with,
51:16
Glen Erickson: Yeah.
51:16
Lyle Bell: uh, with shout out and, and also some of the, my favorite, just most monumental, monumental shows that I've played, looking out and just kind of being, you know, tickled personally to
51:28
Glen Erickson: Yeah.
51:29
Lyle Bell: what I'm witnessing.
51:30
Glen Erickson: Yeah.
51:31
Lyle Bell: yeah, I don't know.
51:32
Lyle Bell: It's, uh,
51:33
Glen Erickson: Well the heartbreaks especially,
51:35
Lyle Bell: yeah,
51:35
Glen Erickson: mean
51:36
Lyle Bell: mean,
51:36
Glen Erickson: like that's the thing is like the heartbreak, this is different than asking which is your favorite.
51:41
Glen Erickson: Because I feel like when you think about like the heartbreaks,'cause you're not solely responsible for those like you just alluded to.
51:48
Glen Erickson: Like there's real factors that are coming from within and then there's outside factors that might also be playing into it.
51:55
Glen Erickson: 'cause the way you described that just made me think of, you know, my band, the wheat pool in everybody's perception, you know, two and a half records out where the trajectory was still like clearly going up.
52:08
Glen Erickson: Hill and yet we're sitting, we're sitting around, uh, Royal Pizza, doing this kind of soul sucking charity gig and, and asking ourselves like, are we, are we going back into the next cycle?
52:20
Glen Erickson: 'cause Right.
52:21
Glen Erickson: We were talking'cause we know what the cycle, it's not just, are we gonna keep going as a band?
52:26
Glen Erickson: It's like the literal, like, I know how much work.
52:29
Glen Erickson: This is an 18 month grind again, at least.
52:33
Glen Erickson: And are, you know, does anybody really care?
52:35
Glen Erickson: You're asking yourself those questions.
52:37
Glen Erickson: Right.
52:37
Glen Erickson: Um, is the next level really there?
52:41
Glen Erickson: I just kind of heard that in the way you answered that question.
52:44
Glen Erickson: Yeah.
52:44
Lyle Bell: of course.
52:45
Lyle Bell: I mean, everyone always wants the trajectory to be up.
52:49
Lyle Bell: and you're always looking, I know that I've always been, you know, like eyeballing the next rung up on the ladder, not being thankful that I'm not at the wrong below.
52:59
Lyle Bell: Like, I'm always like, why are we not getting those shows?
53:01
Lyle Bell: You know, like
53:02
Glen Erickson: Yeah, yeah,
53:03
Lyle Bell: we'd get that.
53:03
Lyle Bell: later on I've, I've been able to sort of be more appreciative for what we did accomplish
53:08
Glen Erickson: yeah.
53:09
Lyle Bell: all of these things.
53:09
Lyle Bell: I was actually gonna ask you, but you had alluded to earlier about, uh.
53:13
Lyle Bell: Making that Toronto jump, like did you and Rob almost move?
53:17
Lyle Bell: Like did we pool
53:19
Glen Erickson: We talked about it.
53:20
Lyle Bell: Toronto?
53:21
Glen Erickson: Yeah, we did.
53:22
Glen Erickson: I mean, obviously I, I had a family and I didn't know how that was really gonna be possible, but at the same time, it was so important that I wasn't shutting the conversation off.
53:33
Glen Erickson: because this was all I ever wanted, right?
53:35
Glen Erickson: This is all I ever wanted.
53:36
Glen Erickson: And, you know, Rob and Mike were single guys.
53:39
Glen Erickson: They had way more flexibility to consider those things for sure.
53:43
Glen Erickson: The brothers, uh, Stefan or drummer maybe had a little more, uh, set of other considerations with, uh, his partner and his career and stuff like that.
53:52
Glen Erickson: But, um, yeah, we've, we had those conversations and we felt that pull and, I was trying to get, you know, Shauna's attention at six shooter.
54:01
Glen Erickson: all these things were happening, but I, I, I went through it once.
54:05
Glen Erickson: I guess the reason I wanted to ask you is like, you've gone through it four or five times.
54:09
Glen Erickson: You must be an incredible optimist
54:12
Lyle Bell: I guess I've always felt that, um, I love the, the process of making music and playing music sort of almost equally, and all the rigamarole bullshit in between.
54:25
Lyle Bell: I enjoy it.
54:26
Lyle Bell: Even like, like we were talking about the, the drive, the long drive, all of that stuff.
54:31
Lyle Bell: weirdly appealing to me.
54:32
Lyle Bell: So I never, I never really had that.
54:34
Lyle Bell: Uh, I think a lot of people get to a point where they're like, you know, fuck this.
54:39
Lyle Bell: Like,
54:40
Glen Erickson: I'm too old for this shit, but
54:41
Lyle Bell: too
54:42
Glen Erickson: yeah.
54:42
Lyle Bell: shit.
54:42
Lyle Bell: But I, I am like, I don't, uh, I feel like I'm still like 21 inside.
54:49
Glen Erickson: Yeah.
54:49
Lyle Bell: will, my knee will tell me differently every morning.
54:52
Lyle Bell: um, you know, I don't know.
54:54
Lyle Bell: I, still, I still have like, I wake up with tons of musical ideas.
54:59
Lyle Bell: I have tons of,
55:00
Glen Erickson: Hmm.
55:00
Lyle Bell: write tons of songs still.
55:01
Lyle Bell: I'm, I'm like obsessive, with, uh, with like as well.
55:07
Lyle Bell: Like these things I
55:10
Glen Erickson: Yeah.
55:10
Lyle Bell: never looking back with.
55:12
Lyle Bell: Uh, and, uh, and regretting things that there's so much more stuff on the horizon and other little projects that are, that are.
55:21
Lyle Bell: and things that I've done that are, you know, still need
55:24
Glen Erickson: Yeah.
55:25
Lyle Bell: don't know.
55:25
Glen Erickson: Well, I mean, that sounds, I mean, I love hearing that, it's so easy to just do the retrospective and like high fly and overlap all of these things, and that's how most people, you even referenced it early when you said, you know, I've been involved in all these things and a lot of them have done really well and people might not actually know me personally because you've been attached to these other things.
55:48
Glen Erickson: But, so it's really easy to just look at a music career just based on all of those events and all those things and stuff.
55:57
Glen Erickson: And I've tried, you know, you've been really gracious talking a little more about your own personal experience though, of like trying to sustain the career and the ups and the downs.
56:05
Glen Erickson: I think a big part of it is like how people keep themself afloat if you haven't hit that place.
56:12
Glen Erickson: Where it's quote unquote, what everybody says is like, I'd love to do music as a career.
56:17
Glen Erickson: And what they always mean is, I would love this to pay my bills and be my job.
56:22
Glen Erickson: And, and that is such a small percentage of people that if they are at it for 30 years like you have been, that that's gonna be the case now because I did want to talk to you about, you have such an incredible career as a photographer, like your specific art with photography and video.
56:40
Glen Erickson: Uh, I love it.
56:40
Glen Erickson: I find it inspiring.
56:42
Glen Erickson: You get a lot of, I know a lot of people like use you almost exclusively.
56:46
Glen Erickson: and I'm sure you were doing that hobbyist into finding now you could charge for it.
56:52
Glen Erickson: but you've probably had other jobs along the way to try and keep all this ambition afloat.
56:57
Glen Erickson: I, I just, I'm curious what that.
56:59
Glen Erickson: Process of your career has been like, what kind of things have you had to do to keep all the ambition going?
57:06
Lyle Bell: I guess there.
57:07
Lyle Bell: There have been other side side jobs that I have done and still do.
57:12
Lyle Bell: I have painted, I've, I, I have always done like, uh, lots of painting, like industrial, painting.
57:19
Lyle Bell: I act actually also worked with, um, a, a guy here in town, Dallas Whitley, who's now lives in Vancouver.
57:26
Lyle Bell: But we did, um, we did, uh, you know, wallpaper and vinyl wall coverings hanging those, uh, so we did like casinos and that kind of thing, but I, I also like that work weirdly, like, that wasn't, wasn't like me hating that job.
57:43
Lyle Bell: So I still, actually still take, uh.
57:45
Lyle Bell: An occasional painting job because I like it.
57:48
Lyle Bell: it's usually, so my wife works for Sabor, the restaurant Sabor, if they're opening up a new restaurant, I will often be the one painting the in and,
57:58
Glen Erickson: Mm-hmm.
57:59
Lyle Bell: uh, masking off and painting the, spraying their big, like feature walls and whatnot.
58:04
Lyle Bell: So there are things like that that I've done all the way along, for extra money this point.
58:09
Lyle Bell: Uh, like currently I am, I've been on the road, um, I, I have on and off worked for Six Shooter, either as a staffer or so six shooter records, uh, and with all of the bands, maybe not all the bands, but a number of artists on that label doing video work and photo work and design work.
58:29
Lyle Bell: Um, I have been out in the last little while and with, uh, the band of the Dead South.
58:34
Lyle Bell: And I've also
58:34
Glen Erickson: Okay.
58:35
Glen Erickson: Chris Wynters band.
58:36
Glen Erickson: Yeah.
58:36
Lyle Bell: yeah.
58:37
Lyle Bell: He is their, their manager.
58:38
Glen Erickson: Yeah.
58:39
Lyle Bell: that is currently the thing that, uh, like again, I get, I get obsessive about this.
58:43
Lyle Bell: Like I want it to be, I definitely, in anything that I do, I try not to like phone it in.
58:48
Lyle Bell: Like I, I don't wanna work anything that is like, uh, if I
58:51
Glen Erickson: Yeah.
58:51
Lyle Bell: doing it, I'm not gonna do it.
58:53
Lyle Bell: So this
58:53
Glen Erickson: Yeah.
58:54
Lyle Bell: still continue to do the occasional painting job.
58:57
Lyle Bell: I actually painted my mom's condo when we were selling it just'cause instead of hiring someone, which would've been smart at the time, I was like, ah, I can do that.
59:04
Lyle Bell: but uh, yeah, I don't know, like leaning in and, and trying to take the best photos, trying to be the best live photographer ever, you know,
59:12
Glen Erickson: Yeah.
59:12
Glen Erickson: I mean that overlaps with what you said though, like, uh, going on the road with the band to be, to be in that role.
59:19
Glen Erickson: 'cause they want to capture all that.
59:21
Glen Erickson: you know, a lot of people might still be the place where they're like, I'm too old for that shit because that's still being on the road.
59:28
Glen Erickson: Um.
59:28
Glen Erickson: And you're clearly not.
59:31
Lyle Bell: I, I had one little, uh, one little silver tear roll down my cheek when, when everyone realized that I'm the, I'm the oldest guy on the tour.
59:41
Lyle Bell: Yeah.
59:42
Lyle Bell: Outside of the driver.
59:43
Lyle Bell: The, the bus driver is,
59:44
Glen Erickson: Oh, yeah,
59:45
Lyle Bell: was older than me, but yeah, I'm like of the crew.
59:47
Lyle Bell: I'm the old, I'm the old guy.
59:49
Lyle Bell: Old man of the crew.
59:50
Lyle Bell: But
59:51
Glen Erickson: yeah,
59:51
Lyle Bell: saying before, I really don't feel, I don't know, I don't feel, uh, I still feel like a, like a tweenage
59:58
Glen Erickson: yeah.
59:59
Lyle Bell: and I'm still, as long as I'm, as long as I can, I still want to like.
1:00:03
Lyle Bell: Role.
1:00:04
Lyle Bell: Like I, I was getting up and running, with those guys, like everyone in is training to like run a half marathon now, or a 10 K.
1:00:13
Lyle Bell: So,
1:00:14
Glen Erickson: Hmm.
1:00:14
Lyle Bell: I was like running shooting all day and editing, like staying up all night editing
1:00:18
Glen Erickson: Yeah.
1:00:19
Lyle Bell: on a couple of o of occasions.
1:00:20
Lyle Bell: 'cause we were out with, uh, kb, KB l and the Hurt and Albertans in the UK as well.
1:00:25
Lyle Bell: So staying up, like doing all that and then staying up till like three in the morning with those guys, a, having a beer at a pub or something to I mean again, this is why it's certainly not, some people would see that as work as like absolutely exhausting work, but all
1:00:41
Glen Erickson: Yeah.
1:00:41
Lyle Bell: fun.
1:00:42
Glen Erickson: Yeah,
1:00:42
Lyle Bell: is fun to me.
1:00:43
Lyle Bell: And so it is work.
1:00:45
Lyle Bell: It's a lot of work, but I don't ever view it as like, oh, I hate this
1:00:49
Glen Erickson: yeah,
1:00:49
Lyle Bell: I don't know.
1:00:50
Lyle Bell: There, there are other jobs that would be hell to me that other people I think would love.
1:00:54
Lyle Bell: So for me that's like a, a comfortable spot to be in.
1:00:57
Glen Erickson: yeah.
1:00:58
Glen Erickson: Uh, that's really cool.
1:00:59
Glen Erickson: I mean, I find, relatable at this point, especially, I, I mean, I've been asked a few times, you know, how's your new podcast going with this endeavor?
1:01:08
Glen Erickson: And is it a lot of work?
1:01:09
Glen Erickson: And I'm like.
1:01:10
Glen Erickson: Yeah, I have a job with like, that's like real big boy pants and uh, a family still.
1:01:16
Glen Erickson: And then this takes way more time than I thought it would, and I haven't regretted a second of creating something that you really love and staying up to all hours editing, like you said, and all those things.
1:01:28
Glen Erickson: It's very relatable for me, but, um, inspiring to hear someone else say it for sure.
1:01:35
Lyle Bell: a, a creative endeavor.
1:01:37
Glen Erickson: Yeah, absolutely.
1:01:38
Lyle Bell: it.
1:01:39
Lyle Bell: Yeah.
1:01:39
Lyle Bell: I mean, you get going on these kind of things.
1:01:41
Lyle Bell: Like starting a podcast isn't easy.
1:01:43
Lyle Bell: It's the same thing as starting a band.
1:01:46
Lyle Bell: if you have any ambition to make it bigger than just taking the occasional show, it takes a ton of work.
1:01:52
Glen Erickson: Yeah.
1:01:53
Lyle Bell: I mean even like that whole thing how to, how to carve out a,
1:01:56
Glen Erickson: Yeah.
1:01:57
Lyle Bell: like right at the beginning I was saying that I'm still a guy in the trench, in, in
1:02:02
Glen Erickson: Yeah.
1:02:02
Lyle Bell: you know, like I'm still, uh, still like, I wouldn't say I, I have, uh, it has ever been easy.
1:02:09
Lyle Bell: Like, I'm still, I'm, you know, ups and downs the whole way.
1:02:13
Glen Erickson: Yeah.
1:02:13
Lyle Bell: bands and many different things like, um, many creative endeavors, but have been able to carve out a little niche anyway
1:02:21
Glen Erickson: Yeah,
1:02:22
Lyle Bell: that works for me that I'm comfortable in.
1:02:24
Lyle Bell: And, uh, I have talents.
1:02:25
Lyle Bell: I, I also, as I get older, I certainly, I recognize what my talents are, what my gifts are, and what I'm terrible at.
1:02:34
Glen Erickson: yeah,
1:02:35
Lyle Bell: yeah, there are, I try and do things that are appropriate for my set of talents, you know, and my lane.
1:02:42
Glen Erickson: yeah.
1:02:43
Glen Erickson: Well, I think it's,
1:02:44
Lyle Bell: as much as possible.
1:02:45
Lyle Bell: Yeah.
1:02:46
Glen Erickson: yeah, I mean, that's really the thing.
1:02:47
Glen Erickson: I mean, I guess what I love about hearing that from you is, A, I I already said it.
1:02:54
Glen Erickson: Your optimism just in your expression is refreshing.
1:02:58
Glen Erickson: And that having been at it so long on the road, and for you to still feel that way, I find very impressive and inspiring as well.
1:03:07
Glen Erickson: anyhow, I, I appreciate all of this and I appreciate the story, but
1:03:12
Lyle Bell: glad you say it because to other people, it, it seems like madness where you're doing the same thing, like you're still, you're still on the road.
1:03:21
Lyle Bell: Like what the hell?
1:03:22
Glen Erickson: yeah, I can get that.
1:03:24
Glen Erickson: Like, I can, you know, some people, I mean, almost like a diss, it might almost make you feel shitty or something like, um, you know, I guess there's different ways to take it, whether it's a backhanded compliment or a observation or I don't know.
1:03:36
Glen Erickson: But I dunno, I don't know how you, you, you seem to not take that personally.
1:03:41
Lyle Bell: I
1:03:42
Glen Erickson: Yeah,
1:03:43
Lyle Bell: I don't at all.
1:03:44
Glen Erickson: yeah,
1:03:44
Lyle Bell: It's a comfortable, I feel like it's a comfortable spot for me.
1:03:47
Lyle Bell: Uh, so, and I, and I love it again, like leaning in and just never trying to just phone it in, like always trying to learn.
1:03:55
Lyle Bell: I've also, I mean, every day I feel like I'm learning stuff every day.
1:04:00
Lyle Bell: And there's always something more to know, especially like you dig deeper into photography and photography techniques, editing techniques, video, uh, how to use the software more efficiently.
1:04:14
Glen Erickson: I.
1:04:14
Lyle Bell: um, yeah, it's like always something new to learn.
1:04:17
Lyle Bell: And, and same thing with musically, I've been practicing guitar again, like I was 14, like kind of learning to shred, trying to, trying to sweep pick Like as a 50-year-old, I'm like, oh, I can't do this.
1:04:29
Glen Erickson: Yeah.
1:04:30
Lyle Bell: uh, but it's, it's fun.
1:04:31
Lyle Bell: I mean, it's fun.
1:04:32
Lyle Bell: It's
1:04:33
Glen Erickson: Yeah,
1:04:33
Lyle Bell: continuing to try and learn the entire way,
1:04:36
Glen Erickson: yeah.
1:04:37
Lyle Bell: Yeah,
1:04:37
Glen Erickson: agree.
1:04:38
Glen Erickson: It's super fun.
1:04:39
Glen Erickson: Um, I appreciate you taking the time outta your day to chat with me about your, career and life.
1:04:45
Glen Erickson: the inspiration.
1:04:46
Glen Erickson: I know this city has really benefited.
1:04:48
Glen Erickson: I don't know if anybody's bothered to say it to you that way, so I will, I really think Edmonton has really benefited from having you as a primary citizen all this time in the arts, but so
1:05:00
Lyle Bell: Well, thank you.
1:05:01
Glen Erickson: Yeah.
1:05:01
Lyle Bell: uh, I don't know that I have ever heard that.
1:05:07
Lyle Bell: I mean, you, you always see these like, uh, under 40 lists
1:05:13
Glen Erickson: Oh yeah.
1:05:14
Lyle Bell: I
1:05:14
Glen Erickson: Magazine.
1:05:15
Glen Erickson: Yeah.
1:05:16
Glen Erickson: Edify.
1:05:16
Lyle Bell: a, uh, 90, over 90 list, so I'm just waiting, hoping I make it to, to 90 be on the 90, over 90 list.
1:05:24
Glen Erickson: Yeah, well, we'll see.
1:05:26
Glen Erickson: We'll see if we get it together, but, okay.
1:05:27
Glen Erickson: Well thanks for your time.
1:05:28
Glen Erickson: Uh, I really appreciate you and taking the time and everything about it, so,
1:05:32
Lyle Bell: of course.
1:05:33
Lyle Bell: My pleasure.
1:05:34
Lyle Bell: My pleasure.
1:05:34
Lyle Bell: Yeah, it's
1:05:35
Glen Erickson: okay.
1:05:35
Lyle Bell: Great to electronically see you again
1:05:38
Glen Erickson: Absolutely.
1:05:38
Glen Erickson: Absolutely.
1:05:39
Lyle Bell: Okay,
1:05:40
Glen Erickson: thanks la.
1:05:40
Glen Erickson: I really appreciate it, bud.
1:05:41
Glen Erickson: Okay,
1:05:42
Lyle Bell: Talk to you
1:05:42
Glen Erickson: take care.
1:05:43
Glen Erickson: You bet.
1:05:51
Glen Erickson: Hi, good evening.
1:05:52
Glen Erickson: Have you noticed bright it is now?
1:05:56
Glen Erickson: The seasons change as we do our podcast, and it used to be in the dark whenever we did this, but not,
1:06:02
alexi: Yeah.
1:06:02
Glen Erickson: tonight.
1:06:03
alexi: First episodes were my LED lights and my big light in my room, and now it's just my window.
1:06:10
Glen Erickson: Yeah.
1:06:10
Glen Erickson: And as we plan for whatever we plan for in a second season that we want to do, who knows what it'll be.
1:06:17
Glen Erickson: Right.
1:06:18
alexi: Yeah, it'll be nice to have late though.
1:06:20
Glen Erickson: It will be nice.
1:06:21
Glen Erickson: Okay.
1:06:21
Glen Erickson: You have, you have one exam left.
1:06:23
Glen Erickson: I'm gonna keep
1:06:24
alexi: Cool.
1:06:24
Glen Erickson: for you.
1:06:25
Glen Erickson: I am like so for you, still choosing to take the time to do this.
1:06:30
Glen Erickson: So, before we start talking about Lyle Bell and the episode, because I was really, happy with this conversation.
1:06:37
Glen Erickson: I, I think I told you I wanna do some local heroes, some people in my backyard, so to speak, who really I feel have had inspiring versions of careers.
1:06:47
Glen Erickson: Yeah.
1:06:47
Glen Erickson: So before I do that, I wanna just tell you one quick story, which was awesome.
1:06:51
Glen Erickson: So, at work, I'm, I think I'm the oldest guy, and, it's, you know, it's in digital marketing websites, all that stuff.
1:06:59
Glen Erickson: So, but one of the youngest guys who was an intern and I think now not an.
1:07:04
Glen Erickson: anyhow, now he's like gonna be full-time, but he's this young guy, he is really cool guy named Josh.
1:07:08
Glen Erickson: and we, he likes talking about music sometimes.
1:07:11
Glen Erickson: He showed up once with a crate full of vinyl that he had bought from a, a guy's garage sale across the street from
1:07:16
alexi: Love that.
1:07:18
Glen Erickson: of like gems and he didn't know any of them.
1:07:20
Glen Erickson: So we're introducing him to some of these.
1:07:22
Glen Erickson: Uh, but he is so great.
1:07:23
Glen Erickson: He is got an open mind.
1:07:24
Glen Erickson: he, when I got there, I could hear the chatter at the other end of the hall that he was gonna take over the Sonos and play music.
1:07:31
Glen Erickson: And I think that's the first time.
1:07:33
Glen Erickson: So at first of course, I think of some joke about, you know, not trusting him with the Sonos.
1:07:38
Glen Erickson: He, you have to a certain number of years or something.
1:07:41
Glen Erickson: Anyhow, um, I didn't make the joke.
1:07:44
Glen Erickson: song he cues up was California Stars by Wilco, was off the
1:07:49
alexi: Oh
1:07:49
Glen Erickson: Wilco and Billy Bragg record called Mermaid Avenue Volume One, which was one of my favorite Wilco songs ever, which was a song that the wheat pool used to play in our enco, or any time that we had to, you know, fill extra time, do
1:08:04
alexi: yeah.
1:08:05
Glen Erickson: It was one of our favorite songs as a group to cover
1:08:07
alexi: It's so fun.
1:08:08
Glen Erickson: Yeah, so right off the bat I was like, okay, star for Josh today.
1:08:14
Glen Erickson: But what a pleasant surprise that
1:08:15
alexi: Yeah.
1:08:16
Glen Erickson: Anyhow, it was fun.
1:08:17
Glen Erickson: Fun, fun Fun music day at work for me.
1:08:21
Glen Erickson: That's my story, yeah.
1:08:22
Glen Erickson: So, so Lyle Bell.
1:08:24
Glen Erickson: There's all kinds of things I loved in, in that conversation.
1:08:27
Glen Erickson: He's a funny guy.
1:08:28
Glen Erickson: He's got a fun energy.
1:08:30
Glen Erickson: He always has.
1:08:31
Glen Erickson: He has always amazed me to have so much success with every band that he was in.
1:08:37
Glen Erickson: just to hear him sort of just tell.
1:08:39
Glen Erickson: Talk through that whole thing.
1:08:40
alexi: Mm-hmm.
1:08:41
Glen Erickson: but you know, he said these little golden statements of like, there was lots of reasons to stay here whenever we talked about Toronto or trying to move and that big pull for a, you know,'cause think I said in there, like, I went through that once, most people will go through it once where you're, where you're banned.
1:09:01
Glen Erickson: Your one band that you're in, out of all the bands you're in finally hits that groove
1:09:07
alexi: Yeah.
1:09:07
Glen Erickson: cus you're on the cusp of what do we have to do to hit the next level?
1:09:11
Glen Erickson: Is it in Canada?
1:09:12
Glen Erickson: Is it moving to Toronto to be around the industry closer?
1:09:16
Glen Erickson: he's done it like three times,
1:09:19
alexi: Yeah.
1:09:19
Glen Erickson: you know, four times.
1:09:20
Glen Erickson: I dunno.
1:09:21
Glen Erickson: I found that and the way he talked about that he didn't.
1:09:25
Glen Erickson: Really need to leave
1:09:27
alexi: Mm-hmm.
1:09:28
Glen Erickson: Anyhow, I loved that.
1:09:29
Glen Erickson: I loved that part
1:09:30
alexi: You just answered my first question, so that was perfect.
1:09:32
Glen Erickson: What
1:09:33
alexi: Mm-hmm.
1:09:33
Glen Erickson: Shoot,
1:09:34
alexi: Well, listen, no, not sorry, because that's like the perfect answer.
1:09:38
alexi: I was gonna say like, I have them written, I'm, I'm not being distracted.
1:09:42
alexi: Um, but I was gonna ask like out of, because I listened to the episode and there's been other episodes previously where, you know, there's the one or two things that stand out.
1:09:54
alexi: Then you or I bring them up and we chat about them.
1:09:57
alexi: But I listened to the episode and I was just like, I finished the episode and I didn't have any like specific point drawn out.
1:10:04
alexi: And I was like, oh, that was just like a good episode.
1:10:07
alexi: Like that was just like fun to listen to.
1:10:08
alexi: And then you were talking about it and you're like, oh, that was just like a fun conversation.
1:10:12
alexi: And you came out and you were just talking about like the overall conversation and I'm like, that's so accurate.
1:10:18
alexi: But then I was gonna ask like.
1:10:20
alexi: If there was like a one thing part of like the conversation that, like stuck with you after the conversation or like something you kept thinking about?
1:10:27
alexi: yeah, kind of like if there was like one thing that stood out.
1:10:29
alexi: But I think for you, from what I've gathered from our conversations is kind of that, that point is like that he's a, been so successful in all these different realms.
1:10:39
alexi: So impressive, but also that, yeah, like he three times over.
1:10:42
alexi: I didn't feel the need to move, and was content, but that does go into my second question if you're up to answering it.
1:10:49
Glen Erickson: I'm so up to answering it.
1:10:50
Glen Erickson: Yep.
1:10:50
alexi: Oh, love it.
1:10:51
alexi: Okay.
1:10:52
alexi: Um, I wrote down, I listening, um, and listening to you and i's chat and you calling him kind of like a hometown hero and that kind of theme.
1:11:01
alexi: he has.
1:11:01
alexi: So much art and music that's been produced here.
1:11:06
alexi: Um, so how does that art music reflect the spirit or vibe of Edmonton?
1:11:11
alexi: Is what I was gonna ask you.
1:11:12
alexi: Like, do you think he reflects kind of the art music scene here, or do you think he's just kind of like a good representation to come out of Edmonton or.
1:11:21
Glen Erickson: Yeah, that's a really, really good question.
1:11:23
Glen Erickson: So I think there's really two levels of answers.
1:11:27
Glen Erickson: 'cause you sort of alluded to the vibe.
1:11:29
Glen Erickson: So I think there's a vibe or a.
1:11:31
Glen Erickson: Spirit or an ethos kind of version of that answer, which is a little different than maybe specifically his art.
1:11:38
Glen Erickson: Like how does his art reflect Edmonton?
1:11:41
Glen Erickson: So, have a harder time answering how his art reflects Edmonton, other than I think the fact that it was always being made with his friends and that it was.
1:11:55
Glen Erickson: Definitely, you know, he was creating things that he, uh, that he just really wanted to do or that him
1:12:02
alexi: Yeah.
1:12:03
Glen Erickson: just really wanted to create.
1:12:05
Glen Erickson: this, uh, this goes to the vibe too.
1:12:07
Glen Erickson: So specifically the art.
1:12:09
Glen Erickson: I don't know, like he, his photography, I was telling you, his live music photography, he's created a style,
1:12:16
alexi: Yeah, I was looking at it.
1:12:17
Glen Erickson: Um, it's very, it is just like, it's when somebody.
1:12:21
Glen Erickson: Decides that instead of just being, trying to know how to do all of the tricks
1:12:27
alexi: Mm-hmm.
1:12:27
Glen Erickson: some version of a discipline, they decide I'm just gonna be really good at this one
1:12:32
alexi: Yeah.
1:12:33
Glen Erickson: I don't have to be all the other versions of a photographer.
1:12:36
Glen Erickson: that's, that's definitely him.
1:12:38
Glen Erickson: And, and it's paying off for him.
1:12:40
Glen Erickson: so I guess, I guess the only way I could probably answer is his vibe is so Edmonton to me, and I'll, I'll
1:12:46
alexi: Mm-hmm.
1:12:46
Glen Erickson: this way.
1:12:48
Glen Erickson: remember, and I don't know if I've ever told you this story, but, uh, I've told other people, I sort of never forget, there was one tour in particular where our band was doing the typical Ontario tour where we would fly in to Toronto, we would backtrack, drive all the way to Windsor, which is on the border with Detroit, across the river, and we would just start going down the 4 0 1 highway and make ourselves and try to go all the way to Ottawa.
1:13:12
Glen Erickson: And, um, and play as many shows in those cities as we could.
1:13:16
alexi: Yeah.
1:13:16
Glen Erickson: 'cause there was way more we could do in a two week span than we ever could in Western Canada.
1:13:21
Glen Erickson: And, and it was one of those, and I had lined up a whole bunch of like, press promo, like stopping at the college radio stations and we
1:13:29
alexi: Oh yeah.
1:13:29
Glen Erickson: I remember being in Toronto, I remember being in Guelph, I remember in University of Toronto I should say.
1:13:35
Glen Erickson: But then there was also like this Ryerson, I think, and a another guy who was a radio guy.
1:13:41
Glen Erickson: I remember being asked the question multiple times, for some reason on that one tour of, what is your scene like in Edmonton?
1:13:50
Glen Erickson: 'cause they had no idea, right?
1:13:52
Glen Erickson: And they wanted to get a sense of like, what, represents the scene in Edmonton?
1:13:58
Glen Erickson: What makes it cool?
1:13:59
Glen Erickson: And I answered the same thing every single time, which was.
1:14:02
Glen Erickson: That blue collar ness of Edmonton compared to places like I felt and this, and my Calgary friends are gonna hate this'cause it's gonna sound like I dissed them, but like, I feel like Calgary wants to be Vancouver often in our music scene.
1:14:16
Glen Erickson: Or Vancouver wants to be Toronto.
1:14:18
Glen Erickson: Like there's just that little bit of envy of the bigger.
1:14:21
Glen Erickson: Center that attracts more things and, and, and rightfully so, like in those cultures that they just kind of want more, they want to be known for what makes them great
1:14:32
alexi: Mm-hmm.
1:14:32
Glen Erickson: as a great city the same way.
1:14:34
Glen Erickson: So there's always that step up, envy.
1:14:36
Glen Erickson: And I just felt Edmonton never had a step up envy.
1:14:39
Glen Erickson: I felt like we were used to being the northern isolated, potentially even ignored like community.
1:14:46
Glen Erickson: And that people here make their art like it was their way out.
1:14:53
Glen Erickson: People made their art for art's sake out of their love, their passion.
1:14:57
Glen Erickson: Some people have joked it's our way to endure the winter.
1:15:00
Glen Erickson: you know, like, yeah.
1:15:03
Glen Erickson: And I feel like his vibe is that he kept making great art for art's sake
1:15:09
alexi: Mm.
1:15:10
Glen Erickson: and.
1:15:11
Glen Erickson: You know, and it just sort of proved an ethos, proved the vibe true with every single band he was in, which is, the way he talked about it, he's like, they would work on every little aspect.
1:15:24
Glen Erickson: It had to be more than just writing a song.
1:15:27
Glen Erickson: He wanted
1:15:27
alexi: Yeah.
1:15:28
Glen Erickson: to do all of it.
1:15:29
Glen Erickson: And, and yeah, that's the vibe that I feel like he
1:15:32
alexi: I love that.
1:15:33
Glen Erickson: makes sense.
1:15:33
Glen Erickson: Yeah,
1:15:34
alexi: Yeah,
1:15:34
Glen Erickson: that's a great question.
1:15:36
alexi: thanks.
1:15:37
Glen Erickson: Lexi.
1:15:38
alexi: Love it.
1:15:40
Glen Erickson: I, it's a good question because to me, the summary of that conversation was me feeling really inspired, I guess since you asked me what I take away afterwards.
1:15:50
Glen Erickson: I felt very inspired because we're the same age.
1:15:52
Glen Erickson: that he just keeps, like he said at the start and at the end, you know, I'm a guy in the trenches.
1:15:58
Glen Erickson: I'm still in the trenches, but then he would also say, I still feel like I'm inside this body, like
1:16:04
alexi: Mm-hmm.
1:16:05
Glen Erickson: with the same energy and aspirations and obviously consistent creative energy coming out of him
1:16:13
alexi: Yeah.
1:16:14
Glen Erickson: and all that kind of stuff just really and speaks to me personally.
1:16:18
Glen Erickson: So.
1:16:18
Glen Erickson: You know, I don't know about anybody else who will listen, but I know for me it was a cathartic, uh, valuable conversation.
1:16:25
Glen Erickson: So I loved it.
1:16:26
alexi: I like that.
1:16:27
Glen Erickson: I like it too.
1:16:28
Glen Erickson: Well, thank you for listening and coming up with some good questions.
1:16:32
Glen Erickson: I like
1:16:33
alexi: Oh, it's easy when the podcasts are good.
1:16:37
Glen Erickson: you're sweet.
1:16:37
Glen Erickson: Uh, I'm not gonna belabor anything.
1:16:40
Glen Erickson: I'm gonna let you get back to studying.
1:16:41
alexi: Yeah.
1:16:42
alexi: And then we're done.
1:16:42
alexi: And then
1:16:43
Glen Erickson: and then when we come
1:16:44
alexi: summer.
1:16:44
Glen Erickson: yeah, when we come back, then you won't have any of these pressures and it'll be so wonderful,
1:16:50
alexi: Yeah.
1:16:50
alexi: I'll have life back in my eyes.
1:16:52
alexi: Maybe be a little bit more interesting again.
1:16:54
Glen Erickson: The light will return to your eyes.
1:16:56
Glen Erickson: That's
1:16:57
alexi: Yep,
1:16:57
Glen Erickson: Okay.
1:16:58
Glen Erickson: Okay.
1:16:58
Glen Erickson: Thanks for your time.
1:16:59
Glen Erickson: Appreciate you.
1:17:00
Glen Erickson: Love you.
1:17:01
Glen Erickson: Okay.
1:17:01
Glen Erickson: Bye.