Wes Mack, Soul Album Review and Interview
For the last four years, Wes Mack has been writing, recording, and figuring out his new album as a whole – and now Soul is here with seven songs for country music fans to listen to as a collection from the Calgary, AB artist.
Canadian country music listeners may recognize House On Fire and PBR State Of Mind from 2018 when they were released as singles. And they may also recognize Never Have I Ever (featuring Sons Of Daughters) and more recently, Best Hangover (featuring Maddie Storvold) which were also released in the lead-up to Soul. That leaves three new tracks on the album, the title track Soul along with Hideout and Just Getting Warmed Up. At 23 minutes, the album is easy to listen to without taking up too much of your time. It gives some different vibes and sounds along the way but wasn’t put together with any goal of hitting specific marks.
Related: Never Have I Ever – Wes Mack Interview & 5 Quick Questions
Wes talked about really trying to move away from the formula of creating an album that had the wedding song and the heartbreak ballad plus the party songs and making sure there were four songs aimed at radio. He feels that working within those parameters can take away his freedom as an artist to concentrate on the songs he’s really feeling and wants to record and release. He added that he wanted this album to be less of that checklist and more of an encapsulation of the last few years of his life as an artist and a person.
And while it wasn’t necessarily the plan, Wes does give the uptempo party songs like House On Fire while also including a deep and personal track like Soul that made him feel like the album was ready, and that he loved so much that it was an easy choice as the title of his second album.
Related: House On Fire – Wes Mack Interview & 5 Quick Questions
We hadn’t had a chance to talk to Wes about Best Hangover since its release, so we took a few minutes to ask about collaborating with Maddie Storvold (The Launch, Season 2). The Never Have I Ever collaboration on the album made sense in a very obvious way with Jimmy Thow co-writing and co-producing the track, as well as being a long-time friend of Wes. But Maddie’s appearance was a little more of a question mark. He told us that someone pointed her out to him as having a really cool voice that he should listen to. So he dug in and listened to songs and checked out some interviews and came away thinking, “She’s got this kind of like interesting X factor thing… and I feel like this is the addition that will make this song what it needs to be.” From there he reached out and they worked out the details and made everything happen. Unfortunately, they weren’t able to record in studio together, but the collaboration still came together and still worked and as fans of both artists (and people), we’re happy to see it and listen to it.
As we talked about Soul and the time that has passed since the release of Edge Of The Storm in 2015, Wes admitted that the first couple of years lacked focus on creating the follow-up. He was acting and writing and working, and while a lot of songs may have been written and demos recorded, he wasn’t looking at an album as the immediate goal.
Related: Edge Of The Storm – Wes Mack Album Release Party (Sept. 2015)
In a Facebook post celebrating the release of the album today, Wes said, “This album was tricky. I thought I had plan all figured out after Edge but as I mentioned in the liner notes on that record… life often takes your plans for a bit of ride. So be it. You pick up the pieces and make something new. That’s what this album is for me. It started as one thing and it became a journey for me of discovering the people and things in my life that matter the most, and of rediscovering what I love about music and why it’s a part of my SOUL. Maybe most of all it became a process of finding what I care most about in myself and how I want to show that side to the world.”
We know he worked hard to make this happen, so we’re happy for him and his excitement.
Because we’ve played 5 Quick Questions with Wes twice in the last two years, we skipped it this time around. But that doesn’t mean we didn’t ask a couple of rapid-fire queries at him.
Q. If you had to choose between a PBR and a Miller Lite (if they were both cold and available), which would you choose?
Wes. “I’d probably be fairly happy with either… (but) I feel like in my mind I’m grabbing the Miller Lite.”
Q. Who is your favourite DC comics universe super villain?
Wes. “Well obviously it’s going to be Icicle, in a very self-serving way, it’s the only one that I’ve ever gotten to play!”
Q. If you could do a cross-genre collaboration, which artist would you choose to work with?
Wes. “John Mayer immediately comes to mind, but I always say that… there’s an artist right now, Lewis Capaldi who I just love, a Scottish singer who has blown up in the last year, and I suspect by this time next year will be the biggest thing around. The guy’s got a sick voice AND is the funniest human alive on social media.”
We also went back a couple of years and asked Wes if he has one standout memory from his time touring with Shania Twain. He immediately had an answer and told us that when they played London, ON he removed his in-ear monitor for the first time to hear the cheers at the end of Party For Two, and it blew his mind. He was new to using in-ears, and while he knew they blocked the outside sound, he had no idea how loudly people were cheering until he actually experienced it. Hearing him tell us about standing beside Shania, her arm around him and thousands of people cheering after he’d finished his duet with her definitely sounds like a memory worth holding onto.
While we congratulated Wes on the release of Soul we also asked him what comes next. He told us that there were about 100 songs written while working on the album, and there are a couple that have been recorded and earmarked for album #3. He also told us that there are some acting and film projects that he’s ready to dig into (that he couldn’t give us details about). And if we were to make a guess, we’d say he’ll be directing music videos as well.
Congratulations to Wes Mack on the release of Soul. Hit play on the stream, watch the music videos in the post and scroll down for more photos from our hangout at Nathan Phillips Square in Toronto.
Wes Mack, Soul Tracklist
1. Never Have I Ever (ft. Sons of Daughters)
2. House On Fire
3. Best Hangover (ft. Maddie Storvold)
4. Soul
5. Hideout
6. Pbr State Of Mind
7. Just Getting Warmed Up
creator of content, daddy blogger, writer, coffee drinker, fan of the Batman. proud mo bro. prouder dad.
