When Nashville quartet Say Kids decided to hold off on releasing music in 2020, they instead put all their energy into making an album that meant something to them.

“We each take our own badge of honor having survived [the pandemic] and still sticking together,” frontman Peyton Smith said. “I know I'm super happy to have them around. We’re all best friends so it wouldn't change even if we weren't playing together.”

Writing songs and practicing their instruments happened on a daily basis during quarantine, but it was their optimistic attitude that kept them going. They knew there would be a day when the world would begin to heal, when live music would find its way back, and they wanted to be prepared. Having this time to flesh out each song and perfect them for future live performances was exactly what they needed.

Their first single of the year, “Honeydew”, captures the fearfulness that comes from invalidation. Smith wrote it with the intention of expressing his fear that their first live show post-pandemic would be missing its key players - their fans.

“I was fearful that I wasn't going to hear from any of the people I saw at shows or I was going to lose some of the people in the scene that we really cared about,” he said.

Although the lyrics were speaking to his specific fear at that moment, it quickly captured the fear everyone gets from not hearing from somebody. “Honeydew” is their way of saying that even though fans didn’t hear new music from them last year, they’re still here.

“No matter how scary things are ramping up in your life, and nobody may be telling you you're going in the right direction or that you're doing the right thing or you're surrounded by the right people, don't worry,” Smith said. “It was my way of trying to be a good friend because I really think COVID separated people in so many different ways. I think musicians really felt it a lot, not being able to find that community, and it's coming back and it feels so great.”

The world opening back up means they can finally share new songs, and ultimately share the new album. They recorded 12 songs over two days at the studios at HOME (Helping Our Music Evolve) with longtime friend Adam Lochemes, and hope to have it released by the end of the year.

“We really pushed ourselves musically,” Smith said. “I think what we've all taken away from this process is, ‘oh man, we did that’. All the hard work leading up to the recording made the process really fun and stress-free. We were really able to joke around and enjoy the experience together and I think just taking away that memory is what everybody dreams of.”

Jasper, vocals: Rough times, but still inspirational - a clear message that we are walking the wrong road trying to do everything alone. No shows, no unity, social distance and a lot of ways to keep us apart. As a band, being apart means we also know what makes us whole; we feed on working together, playing together and making music together. We feed on the energy of the crowd, the words of the ones that listen to and love our music. But even though our lives changed, we keep on making music and we keep on spreading our message: together we are one. We need people and love around us to flourish.

So what do our lives look like right now? We try to keep our heads leveled, our bodies in shape and our minds clear. We keep writing music, recording songs and giving it our all. We aim to break free from the social distance hold, to reach out to the ones we love. We know we will be able to do it if we keep working hard. 

Well, where to start!? Listen, I’m a hot mess so here we go!

6:00 a.m.: Alarm goes off. I lean over, grab my phone and snooze it. 15 minutes later I do it again. It takes me about five alarms to actually get up in the morning.

I wish I could tell you a sweet story about how I go to the gym and pump that sweet, sweet iron to look cute and sexy... but I don’t. I roll out of bed, grab my phone and check my stocks to only realize I don’t invest enough money for it to actually matter. But I check it anyway, so I feel like an adult that is doing something to earn extra income.

At this point, I take a shower and start looking through my clothes only to realize that I need to do laundry because my favorite shirts are dirty most of the time (I travel a lot... try not to judge, but it’s ok if you do).

Now that I’m fully awake, I start my meditation to get centered. I put both hands over my chest and say out loud all of the things I am thankful for in that moment. “I’m thankful for fresh air. I’m thankful for my job. I’m thankful for my family.” Things like that. Honestly, if you haven’t tried it, you should! I feel so good and thankful to be alive when I’m done.

The next part changes day to day. While I would love music to be my full-time gig, I still work in film. Depending on if I have a project underway or not, I might be on a plane to a location shoot, on the computer hunting down resources for production or coordinating any myriad of details. But let’s say I don’t have a project going on. I will typically spend a few hours dreaming about what I want to accomplish. I’ll kind of make some notes on how I can help those dreams become a reality today. Let’s be real here, I am an enthusiast for life.

Speaking of being an enthusiast for life... if someone calls me with a fun time, chances are I’m there. I will never miss out on a party or a hang. It fuels me creatively. I write about experiences that I’ve lived, so the more the better. And I have lived through some experiences. Some good, and some where I’m left questioning, “Why did I just do that?”

I’m extremely ‘go with the flow’. I don’t plan out a lot of things, I just let them happen. My songs tend to come to life in the same fashion, usually pretty quickly. When a melody or lyrics come to me, I’ll whip out my phone and record a snippet, or even a video if there’s a piano or guitar nearby. My phone is a petri dish of songs that haven’t yet come to life.

But like a lot of artists, I think, I get a feeling when I strike gold. And that centers me because I will work at a good one until it’s done. Over the last year, I blew up my life - questioned my faith, ended my marriage, moved from the city I’ve lived in nearly all my life, walked away from my band to start a solo music career. It’s been a lot. And I’ve found a sort of peace with it all through my songwriting. Creating these songs has been cathartic. They’re very real, very raw and very honest, which can be a hard thing to come face-to-face with. But it’s been good for me. Challenging, yet at the same time it feels right. Like this is what I’m meant to be doing.

So for now, I’m focused on getting these songs out there into the world. I want to connect with people on that same level, let everyone know it’s okay to be who you are supposed to be. I just dropped my first single, “The Weight”, and a whole EP is coming a few months behind it.

As the world starts to settle into whatever this next phase is going to look like, I’m looking forward to finally getting back out there and playing some shows, getting that face time with people, having new experiences and discovering even more about myself.

Over the last year and a half, the Gauton brothers have had the opportunity to make sure the next release for their band, lotusbliss, was everything they wanted in an album.

The four-track EP, Bittersweet, was their pandemic project that left them with more songs than ever. From spending months at their parents’ home in the countryside to various bedrooms and studios, these songs represent the latest exploration of their lives.

“We went with a group of songs that we really all resonated with, that musically flowed well into each other, but importantly, conceptually had a thread linking them all together,” lead guitarist and vocalist Josh said.

The first track, “The Horror”, is what Josh called a “lifetime of recollection from three introverted thinkers” when we spoke to them earlier this year. The lyrics accurately describe the anxiety that comes with not being able to forgive yourself, even if everyone else already has.

The second track, “Thunder In the Room”, was also released as the second single and touched on societal structures. The accompanying music video plays off of those structures as they perform underneath a bridge and amongst nature.

“Cedar” and “Reculver” are nostalgic both lyrically and sonically. While “Cedar” speaks of places that hold significant memories, “Reculver” dives into how those memories become distorted over time.

“That thread that linked the songs was this exploration of the duality of what we perceive as reality - how our experiences and emotions colour how we see ourselves and the world around us,” Josh said. “We touched on nostalgia, forgiveness, anger and self-doubt - often not reaching conclusions but more documenting the journey of unpacking them.”

Bittersweet (Re-edits) is an alternative look at the four tracks, where instead of making a song the ‘traditional’ way, they allowed themselves to “be guided by a chain reaction of ideas inspired by riffs, patterns and musical moments in our original recordings.” Josh, Seth and Adam each reworked a song as well as their drummer, Josh Gale (also known as Single Ruin).

This time around, due to the nature of the world, Bittersweet was much more of an isolated project. Coming together to track the songs meant that most of the parts were already written and demoed, and was both an adventure and a challenge.

“We were all really pleased with the outcome, although it did feel like it took more work to get over the finish line as we weren’t able to fluidly create and bounce ideas off each other,” Josh said. “Going forward, we’re excited to spend more time jamming out ideas to see if they can develop into fully-fledged songs.”

Picture the scene: You’ve decided to start a new musical project in secret. You pick a good name, you write and produce an EP, you develop an image, EP artwork, logo designs for future merch and you are in the final stages of live show prep, including costumes, projections, click tracks, etc. World domination right?

WRONG!

Our music has really taken a back seat in the past year. We’re lucky these songs have been done and we’re prepared and ready to go, but since we’ve really been grinding we’re ready to go away for a month or two and really grind it out. We could never leave our fans without content for two months, without speaking to us and talking to us live. I truly would feel like us not going live is like not calling our parents; the longer it goes by, the worse it feels. Our fans are our family now.

I’ve become such a better man; I feel like I wasn’t a man before Pink Elefants. I think it wasn’t until Pink Elefants started to get some support from people that it did a lot for me. When we first started doing well last year we thought: how long will it last? Playing these shows live and getting tips and selling merch. We were trying to enjoy it while it lasts to be honest and I think we were trying to enjoy it while it lasts so much we’re making damn sure that it’s going to last forever.

When we went to Maine earlier this year and drove along the East Coast, we didn’t meet up in random spots. We went to our fans’ houses. We think about every aspect like that because I look at it like I do think we’re going to be a top artist. I don’t know when it’s going to be but I do believe that so when I do these things I go, ‘I want to go to their house because I want them to remember us in their driveway looking outside at their home’. It makes a difference and it goes that extra mile. Who else is doing that?

It is life changing to see you can do something like that. It makes me realize that maybe I do make a difference and we’ve been told countless times that we’ve saved individuals from their dark places. That is very humbling and it makes us feel a way that is not explainable. That’s really what we live for; we try to have a positive image, we try to develop this family relationship with our fans. We try to make it unacceptable to not try to be the best person we can be. We all make mistakes, we’re all far from perfect. I’m going to make a fuck ton of mistakes today, tomorrow, but the more great things you do in the day the less that things can seem to really affect you.

We’re in the process of doing everything ourselves. We didn’t realize that it was a possibility but I will tell you this: in the past, when we were working on music videos or working on production, we’ve always been self-reliant. We’d always been pretty well-equipped to do it ourselves and now that we have some funds to be able to build a studio and do these things, I think we don’t know what’s to come because we plan on doing it all ourselves. It’s that simple because the people that I really look up to working with, we just aren’t there yet and I think it’s up to us to get there.

You can’t let anybody stand in your way. As much as I want to work with Benny Blanco and all these producers that do a lot of these top songs - I’m not the kind of guy who thinks I can do it without them - I just know the only way we’re going to be able to work with these guys is if we earn our own spot.

We spend all the money we make; we invest it into things like the studio we’re building. It doesn’t feel like an investment. If I blow money it’s because I bought a synthesizer or something that I probably shouldn’t have bought but we’re going to use it and we’re going to make sure it’s in a song and hopefully it pays itself off. We look at it as an investment and if it doesn’t work out, at least our fans got to see us fuck around with a synthesizer. I just think that alone is worth it. You really need to care about the entertainment value of what you’re putting out.

Photo courtesy of Dana Gorab

I first heard of Rihanna the summer I turned 17, when I was working as a ranger in an all-girls forestry program in Northern Ontario. On one of the last days of the program, the coolest girl at the camp told me that she liked Rihanna, and that was it; my life was changed.

Six years later, in 2012, I was in my third year of university for music. Studying pop production and singing, I had no shame in the Rihanna posters taped up on my wall. Not only had I devoured all of her music, but I was a true fan of her brand. Her seemingly badass confidence inspired me to no end. I channeled Rihanna in every song I produced, every show I performed and in every spit-spackled scolding I gave to the boys vying for my affections. Rihanna was the spirit I called on to propel me through the tumultuous first few years away from home.

So, when Rihanna announced Toronto tour dates for March 2013, I was ready. I scraped together every dollar (and I mean scraped) in order to pay for the most expensive concert tickets I had ever bought - only my idol could conjure such lavish expenditure from me, which I planned and bought months in advance.

And then, out of nowhere, I won a pair of tickets for Rihanna's surprise 777 Tour that November.

A Facebook contest I entered had paid off...

So I cried!

I cried from shock. I cried because I was so broke that I couldn't imagine being able to afford seeing Rihanna twice in the span of a year. I cried because the show was the next day. I cried because I could invite a +1. And I cried because I was finally going to see my idol, who in large part had influenced my entire career path, and I was seeing her in person tomorrow.

That night was a whirlwind. I called my biggest Rihanna-loving friend and we made a plan to ditch our music improvisation lecture to go stand in line early the next day at the Danforth Music Hall. I barely slept, and the next day we dressed our best and made our way down to the venue two hours early so we could be first in line.

Pushed up against the stage, I remember seeing Rihanna walk out like a god. She was like the living manifestation of all of my hopes and dreams. And when she sang her hits, notably "Cockiness", “Birthday Cake", "Diamonds" and "We Found Love", we sang along every word. I touched her hand as she waved it through the crowd, and I beamed with happiness.

Months later, when we saw her at the ACC, thousands and thousands of fans surrounding us this time, we laughed and cried again.

It's surreal to think of it now, so many years later. It feels like I'm explaining the moment that I met a Messiah. But for me, it was truly a life-changing concert, and I'm in awe looking back on that once-in-a-lifetime moment.

The time that I won tickets to see my biggest musical inspiration, Rihanna.

COVID and the pandemic has caused everyone to reexamine how we do the things we do daily, and learn to either adapt, pivot or reinvent the processes and strategies we used pre-pandemic. If anything, this past year has taught us all a lot more compassion and mindfulness about others and health - nothing to take lightly.

One of the hardest things about being an artist during COVID for me is the lack of in-person, face-to-face collaboration with other creatives due to isolation. Everything from producing, recording, performing and shooting music videos has changed. I love writing with other people, and bouncing ideas back and forth is one of my favorite things about being a songwriter. The other hardest part of the pandemic as a performer is the inability to perform live concerts.

Traveling and the live music business completely shut down, and it’s still not back 100%. As an artist, not only is traveling and performing an important part of expressing yourself, but it is another way of marketing yourself besides social media. When I launched my first single in early February 2020, I expected to hit the road with my music, but was quickly let down when the pandemic started.

I as well as my entire family have been fully vaccinated and we continue to follow all current CDC protocols to keep our friends, associates and collaborators safe. There’s no telling when or if things will ever return to the way we once knew…but you can bet, nothing is stopping me from continuing to write, record and produce great songs. And I cannot wait for you all to hear what’s coming up next! Stay safe and stay strong friends.

Photo courtesy of Alisha Kabir