Coming from a home where music was an integral part of everyday life, it should come as little surprise that brothers Andy and Kyle McKearney would take up music as not only their passion but their vocation.
The dynamic creative duo were born and raised in the small town of Fort St. John, British Columbia, just across the border from Alberta? Loving the music they heard around the house and on the radio. So that means a lot of Beatles, but also a lot of country music and heavy metal.
“Our dad is a musician. He spent eight years in Nashville as a country singer and writer. We had a studio in our backyard our whole life, so we were in and out of there every day. His dad, our grandfather, was a musician and our grandmother was also a musician. We’ve also learned that our great-grandfather was a musician as well. He came over from Ireland and was a pretty good fiddle player. So we’re like fourth generation musicians,” said Kyle McKearney, the band’s vocalist.
“For me, what first got me interested in music was The Beatles. I was really, really into them when I was younger. I got the Anthology and all the re-releases when they came out thanks to my dad. And coming from Fort St. John and there was either Country or Metallica around when we grew up, and it seemed like nothing in between. It was what everybody listened to. So we listened to a lot of Metallica and also Nirvana, Offspring and Green Day, so all the grunge and hard rock stuff at the time. And it’s funny, we were so far behind what was trendy, but that’s what happens when you live in a small town.”
He said that it was the pop sensibilities, the melodies and hooks of all these bands that really seemed to stick with him and his brother Andy, leading them to create original music that reflected that aspect of their influences when it came to making original music.
“We were covering Beatles songs and pop songs from the radio when we were in high school bands. It was basically all Top 40 stuff. But when we started to put this band together we were never just straight pop. Because of all the music we loved as kids and teenagers we also have a real alternative feel to our music and I think that’s a big part of it to this day,” said McKearney.
“We fell in love with lots of the music that was happening at the time once we moved down to Calgary and got sort of caught up with what was popular in the clubs. So now we’re really into The 1975 and when we were writing the songs for our EP we were listening to Imagine Dragons, Capital Cities and even Maroon 5. So I think we’re a pop-alternative band. It’s not disposable pop music, that’s for sure.”
After playing the Calgary scene for a little while in various incarnations of what would become The New Electric, the McKearney brothers essentially decided to go for broke and recruited who they felt were the best musicians they could from contemporary bands to build a Calgary pop/rock supergroup.
“We were in four of five bands together and we just met the other guys are the right time. Both Adam [Casey, drummer] and Chris [Doi, bass/vocals] were from Calgary and we sort of cherry picked them from other bands that we had known over the years. We decided to take some of the songs from our previous band and wrote some new songs and just started playing and recording with Adam and Chris and things just kind of took off,” said McKearney.
The EP mentioned above is called Living Loud and was released on iTunes on Oct. 28. The five-song project comes on the heels of the band’s debut single Life’s What You Make It, which came out in late 2015, a year after the band formed. Not long after its formation, The New Electric was scouted by music industry heavyweights Kevin ‘Chief’ Zaruk and Jeff Ojeda of Chief Music Management, best known for managing Florida Georgia Line, Joey Moi, Dallas Smith and Chris Lane, as well as producer Brian Howes (Hedley, Simple Plan.)
“We did a showcase for Chief and Brian Howes at the same time in Vancouver. They had kind of heard about us and asked for a showcase. We tried to get them out a few times and it didn’t work out when we were passing through. But we just kept touring and touring and finally they were both able to make a show and they checked us out and loved it,” he said.
“It’s pretty amazing and really cool to work with them. We are super lucky, super fortunate and it’s kind of surreal in a sense because of who they are and who they’ve worked with. All of a sudden we’re doing all these cool things and we’re releasing a song to radio and it’s a hit and then going on tour with people like Nick Carter – yeah, it’s nuts.”
The tour with the member of the Backstreet Boys begins in Ontario on Nov. 8 with a show at the Capitol Centre in North Bay, then hits the Danforth Music Hall in Toronto the following evening, then Maxwell’s in Waterloo on Nov. 10 before heading east on Highway 401 for a show at the Empire Theatre in Belleville Nov. 11. November 12 sees the tour move back westward to Sarnia for a show at The Station Music Hall before wrapping up the Ontario leg in Thunder Bay Nov. 14 at Crocks. The remainder of the tour sees The New Electric and Carter traverse through the prairies before finishing at The Venue in Vancouver on Nov. 23.
“Getting a tour like that, and having people like Chief and Brian Howes backing us, gives you confidence in your art and in your approach to doing it from a place of honesty and raw artistry instead of chasing things and trying to create things that you hope are going to do well. Our music is not contrived. It’s about pushing all that aside and saying ‘what do we want to create here? What do we want to say? And what do we want to feel?’ And then we make some music and see what happens,” McKearney said, adding that he believes he and his bandmates have become a much more cohesive songwriting team over the process of creating the Living Loud EP.
“Because we’re so new we had to go through different processes and experiences and different ways of doing it. There are so many different ways that people in the industry write music. Each person likes their own way, so I have been through the process of going around and writing with a whole bunch of different people and then just co-writing with one producer and doing a whole project with them. That’s kind of what we did with Brian on this one. And then we started writing together just as a band and jamming things out and even just recording and producing stuff ourselves as well.
“We’ve discovered that writing together is the most fulfilling and it’s the method that gives us the biggest connection with the song when we go and play it live. It’s definitely my favourite way. It just takes a long time to get to the point where you can write a song well enough together. But we’re going to start doing a lot more of it because that’s our preference for sure.”
The first single, Life’s What You Make It, was featured on both Corus Radio’s Next Big Thing and Bell Media’s Future Star features and made the Canadian Hot AC, Top 40 and Main AC radio charts. A video made the rounds on MuchMusic and Musique Plus as did the band’s second single, Inside Out, released in February 2016 as a prelude to the release of the EP, which will also include Life’s What You Make It.
“My wedding was coming up and I wrote Inside Out a week before that happened. It’s just something that spilled out onto the paper. It’s about my wife and it actually became my wedding vows to her. It’s saying that I accept every part of her and that I love everything about her. I am telling her that I don’t want her to be anything other than who she is and that I love her for who she is,” said McKearney.
The latest single from the new EP, Ride This Feeling, has also created a serious music industry and radio buzz.
“It’s a simple, feel-good song. It’s a song that’s saying to enjoy things when they’re going good in your life, because it’s not always going to be good. When it is good, you’ve got to just roll down the windows and ride that feeling. When I was writing the song I was thinking of that feeling of meeting someone for the first time and there’s that new love excitement and those emotions you feel and that euphoria that you have when it’s in those early stages with a new love,” McKearney said.
The New Electric is a pop act that comes across more like a rock band on stage with their musicianship and showmanship that is highlighted by a lack of reliance on hidden tech to help them get through the concert.
“If you come to our show, you’re going to see a live band. We’re truly a band, we’re actually playing everything. There are real instruments and real harmonies and guys running around doing high kicks and guitar spins and everything. It’s a real live music show for sure,” McKearney stressed.
For more information on The New Electric, the Living Loud CD and the tour with Nick Carter, visit http://thenewelectricmusic.com.
- Jim Barber is a veteran award-winning journalist and author based in Napanee, ON, who has been writing about music and musicians for a quarter of a century. Besides his journalistic endeavours, he now works as a communications and marketing specialist. Contact him at jimbarberwritingservices@gmail.com.
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