CMW 2017 Interview: The Honest Heart Collective
Early in the week, we had a chance to chat with The Honest Heart Collective before their Canadian Music Week opening night showcase. Thanks to Kevin Heerema and Ryan MacDonald for taking time between sound checks and all that other stuff bands do before a show, to talk to us.
It was a busy time and we were briefly and happily interrupted by the arrival of 3/4 of Silver Love Club, hugs and hand shaking commenced. Next, sound check proved too loud for us to hear over so we headed outside into the sunshine to continue. Let me just say, I love this stuff.
We started out with an icebreaker question, pulled straight from their bio which claims they guys have an affinity for Irish Whiskey. Let’s get started!
Q1: What’s your favourite whiskey?
KH: Highland Park
RM: Select Reserve Jameson
Q2: What artist/band would you most love to have on a dream bill with you?
RM: Silver Love Club
KH: Catfish and the Bottleman
RM: The Killers
KH: Against Me, this almost happened, and City and Colour.
There are definitely some great choices here. And the guys kinda gushed about Silver Love Club. We get it, we love them too. We’re definitely going to have to follow up on this, almost happened, story!
At this point, the conversation went totally off the rails and the guys went to …Ariana Grande and Taylor Swift, of course.
Q3: What’s your favourite thing about CMW?
RM: 4:00 am last call and Sneaky Dee’s after the show.
What’s not to love about late night Sneaky Dee’s nachos?
Q4: What are you listening to right now?
KH: The Maine‘s New Record
RM: The New Flatliners
We talked about finding new music and playing it on repeat. These albums fit in this category. You can check out Lovely Little Lonely by The Maines and Inviting Light by The Flatliners by following the links.
Q5: What Artist/band do you think we should be paying more attention to?
RM: Texas King
KH: I was just going to say
RM: Someone local, Emily Kohne . “She has a great voice, she’s a great songwriter, and she plays better guitar than me.”
Texas King has been on our radar for about a year and we have to agree that they’re one you should pay attention to. Emily Kohne is new to us so we looked her up, listened to some songs, and we love her voice and her guitar skills.
Q6: Have you had one of those breakthrough or aha moments?
RM: No
KH: Not Yet
The long answer, they’ve had a few things happen where it’s starting to feel like something. A show last year at Rivoli sprang to mind but they’re still waiting for that big “moment” to happen.
They talked about how hard and convoluted the process is for bands. “There’s so many bands out there trying to do this. You have to work really hard. I kinda feel like us being from Thunder Bay means we have to work harder. I mean we live 17 hours away from here. We haven’t had an aha moment but we’ve been grinding the whole time.”
Q7: What’s the first concert you remember going to?
RH: “Great Big Sea, they played at the Thunder Bay Community Auditorium. My dad took me and it was, it pretty much changed my life. It was sold out, there were 1,500 people singing along. But that wasn’t the one that changed my life. It was the second concert I ever went to. It was Colin James and watching that guy play guitar, made me wanna play guitar. I mean, I Just Came Back to Say Goodbye.”
Kevin prefaced his answer with a “My answer sucks.” We disagree, we think his answer is awesome!
KH: “My first actual, big production concert was N’Sync. It sucked! I got dragged at 7 years old. I was already into punk and rock music and everything but I had to. And then the next shows, I got my mom to take me to Sam Roberts. I was probably like 10. He played on my birthday. That really got me into, that looks really cool up there, that would be fun. And my very first show at a bar in the music scene, listening to hardcore punk was Protest The Hero and a couple of other metal bands and that got me thinking, this is where I want to be.”
Q8: What’s up next for the rest of 2017?
They’re working on a new record. There’s no working title, that they can tell us yet. They’re in the demo stage, with two more demos to cut and then they’re ready to move forward. The guys are hoping to get into the studio in the early summer and get a new release out by fall.
Additionally, they’ll be finishing up this tour, then it’s home to work on the album. There will be lots of time tracking in the studio. They’ve also got some smaller festival shows coming up. So watch for those!
Thanks to Kevin and Ryan for the chat. We’re anticipating that “aha moment” is coming soon!
Find the Honest Heart Collective online at the following locations!
The Honest Heart Collective
Twitter || Facebook || Instagram || YouTube
Bandcamp || iTunes || SoundCloud
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Toronto Music Blogger
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