Music can be a salve to soothe a broken heart, a warm hug when one’s spirit feels chilled, a way to ponder the mysteries of life, love and the universe, a way to commemorate and celebrate the triumphs and blessings of existence – sometimes all at once.
The primary songwriting duo behind Fernie, British Columbia roots rockers Shred Kelly took the swirling, cascading, often contrary emotions related to a pair of life-altering experiences into arguably the most real, raw and evocative album of their burgeoning career.
Early in 2019, vocalist, band founders, and partners in life Sage McBride and Tim Newton welcomed their first child, an adorable and precocious daughter named Murphy into the world – the absolute height of joy and exhilaration. Not long thereafter, Newton’s seeming idyllic world was shattered by the sudden passing of his dad. One life lost, another brought into existence – a tumultuous time to say the least for the young family, and a time in which the ability to use the language of music to process the epically conflicting nature of these two episodes proved to be both cathartic and artistically rewarding.
The result is the album, Like A Rising Sun, which is infused with some of the most basic and primal emotions, grief, the unrestrained love of a new parent, anxiety and uncertainty. The 11 songs contained therein are a revealing snapshot into the lives, hearts, souls and minds of McBride and Newton as they navigated their way forward, using their musical gifts to craft songs that not only express their own emotional state, but which also can be brought to bear in whatever the listeners may be experiencing, good, bad or otherwise, in their own lives.
“I think what’s interesting about music in general is that everyone takes a different meaning from the songs they listen to and applies it to their own life and their own situation. That’s why music is so relatable to so many people because they can see how things they are going through in each song that they hear,” explained McBride from a self-isolating camping holiday, not far from their home in Fernie.
“We had already been working on the record and had been writing the music and we had already noticed that the songs were a little bit more personal. I think after Murphy was born [nearly 18 months ago] and Tim’s dad passed away it went even deeper. With Tim’s songwriting, he will usually compose the music first and then write the lyrics later, so he had written a lot of the music already, but was struggling, I guess, to find what the songs would be about. But then after these two really big life moments, the lyrics just started pouring out. When Murphy was about three months old, I took her to my parents for a week or so, and when I came back, Tim had finished writing all of the lyrics for any songs that hadn’t been completed yet. And they were so beautiful and so personal because he had that time alone. He didn’t really have time to process everything because so much was happening so quickly with our baby being born and his dad being sick. When I took Murphy away, he had that week to just be at home by himself and he found writing lyrics for a lot of the songs was the best way to grieve and process and celebrate. He just really had to take time to take in everything that had happened so quickly.
“I think it was a great way for him to honour his dad. Tim’s dad wasn’t really a sentimental fellow, so the songs Tim wrote for his dad specifically, were really upbeat songs, even though the lyrics are pretty sad when you listen to them. He always said his dad would never have enjoyed a mournful song written about him, so he had to keep them upbeat, because that’s how he thinks of his dad as someone who would never want to be remembered in a sad way. Take Me Home was one of those songs. It’s sort of about his mom and dad singing to each other, about how they first met. In his final days, they asked if he wanted to stay in hospital and continue treatment or if he wanted to go home and he said he’d like to go home. Tim’s mom was a nurse when she was younger, so she cared for him in his last days and he was able to pass peacefully at home. Another one is called Long Way From Your Heart, which is about when Tim first got the phone call that his dad passed. His dad used to always say to him when he was a kid that if he got hurt, it’s a long way to your heart, kid.”
Another track that aptly examines the conflagration of opposing emotions endured by Newton and McBride is the potently contemplative Underground.
“That was written after Tim’s dad had passed away. Tim was already having trouble sleeping, and was staying up at night, not being able to fall asleep. So, he wrote that song about the things that keep him up at night, especially after his father passed and then having a new baby and things like that. He was up worrying about life and the world his daughter would be raised in; he was worrying about his family and how they were coping with the loss. He wrote that song about dealing with the anxiety of the things that keep many people up at night,” McBride said.
Rising Sun, which is essentially the title track for the album, encapsulates the journey through both heartache and the fullness of one’s heart that comes from something as wonderful as the birth of a child. It reveals the inner conflict going on between sadness and joy and trying to find meaning from both death and new life.
“The entire album represents the whole experience of both a loss and a gain and how during both of those things, life kind of keeps going. Before this, I don’t think we had really experienced that kind of sadness. When we got married, it was all positive all the time, so we never had really gone through a phase in our lives when we were both the happiest we’ve ever been and the saddest we’ve ever been. It’s a weird emotional pull to be experiencing those two things at once,” McBride explained.
“Rising Sun was the last song that made it onto the album. And I think when Tim wrote it, he had to realize if he kept to the light and I think the way he was keeping the light, the way that he was keeping positive was by having a new child to celebrate. I guess it is sort of focussing on the positive, but at the same time, we were sort of given the gift of something really positive to celebrate, when we were going through something really terrible. That’s how he dealt with the pain he was experiencing.
“So, there’s no doubt that this was the most personal album that we’ve ever written based on what happened. But I think we had sort of been growing already, because we had a few member changes and they bring a different element to the group. And our musical style changes and of course life experiences make you view the world differently and that all comes out in what you create. This is definitely the album that feels closest to our hearts based on the content and what we went through, And I think that when you feel that close to something, it sort of comes through to everybody else.”
Besides McBride and Newton, Shred Kelly is comprised of Jordan Vlasschaert, Ryan Mildenberger and Ty West, all of whom excluding Mildenberger are originally from Ontario but gravitated to the Nordic lifestyle of British Columbia more than a decade ago.
“The band started in July 2009 and then Tim and I got together as a couple in December of 2009. Tim had written a handful of songs, around five I think, and then the band started, and we started playing locally. I started writing too, so we have always been the lead singers and songwriters. On our album Archipelago [2018, the band’s fourth album] some of the other band members collaborated more in bringing in songs as well, and then we would add the lyrics and sing vocals on them,” McBride said.
“Skiing was what brought three of us here, Jordan, Tim and I moved to Fernie to be ski bums for a few years. Ty was out west already, first in Vancouver and the he relocated to Nelson and that’s how we met him from playing shows in Nelson. Our other guitar player had to move back to Australia, Ty was playing in another band and we knew him as just the nicest bartender in Nelson who also happened to be a great guitar player. We asked him if he wanted to fill in and he filled in for a little while and as just a great fit personality wise, so he has been in the band since 2013.
“I guess we describe our sound as being alternative folk rock, which is another thing that’s kind of evolved over the years. When we first started, it was pretty acoustic and really raw and its definitely become more electric over the years. Ty had a really big impact on this album as well, because he spent a lot of time with the producer [and co-writer Nygel Asselin] working on his parts and on getting these cool, unique guitar sounds, so I think that also changed the sound of the band because when we first started we only ever had banjo solos. And now we had electric guitar solos. He actually wrote the music for the first single, Disconnect, and then Tim and I added the lyrics and our parts over it, so there’s a fair bit more collaboration than when we first started.”
While not related to the current Covid-19 worldwide crisis, Disconnect has exceptional resonance and emotional impact during these times of lockdowns, self-isolation and social distancing.
“We released Disconnect a few weeks into the stay-at-home order here in B.C., and we knew the song wasn’t written specifically about this situation but its completely applicable. It’s a song that definitely could have been written during this time, and that’s what is so interesting about music, how in difficult times it stays relevant, even though a song may have been written about circumstances that are completely different. I think you will always be able to find a kind of relatability to certain songs,” said McBride, who talked about the impact the pandemic has had on Shred Kelly.
“A week after the pandemic first hit, we were supposed to do a big festival here in Fernie, which is like a winter festival that has a thousand people coming for an indoor concert. We were supposed to do that and then fly to Europe the next day to open for The Dead South on a 15-date tour. Once the stay-at-home orders came, everything got shut down pretty quickly.”
The band has done some virtual shows and other types of videos and outreach through a variety of social media channels, although being able to spend time with Murphy in a more settled situation has also been an unexpected blessing for Newton and McBride.
“We played our first show five weeks after she was born and then we started touring the first summer after she was born [2019] and then we did a tour in the winter. We were still trying to get out as much as we could, and we brought a nanny on the road, or sometimes family or friends too. The pandemic forced us to stop, which is sad from the business side, because I think on that tour of Europe, we were supposed to be in front of something like 20,000 people,” she said.
“But on the other side, being able to have the time with the baby just at home and not be bouncing around everywhere has been really, really wonderful for our family. Murphy has been a pretty adaptable baby and she has been pretty easy and just seems to go with the flow. But for a kid its probably nice to not be in a car seat for hours and hours on end.”
For more information on Shred Kelly, Like A Rising Sun, and any post-Covid shows, visit http://www.shredkelly.com.
- Jim Barber is a veteran award-winning journalist and author based in Napanee, ON, who has been writing about music and musicians for nearly 30 years. Besides his journalistic endeavours, he now works as a communications and marketing specialist. Contact him at jimbarberwritingservices@gmail.com.
