When you are camping in the woods on a Canadian summer’s night there may be moments, however brief, when you get spooked. You know that, under a bright harvest moon, you will at some point find yourself in a situation that will draw you away from the safety of your campsite and into the deep dark woods. Perhaps you’re looking for the ideal stick to roast your marshmallows, maybe you can’t quite make it to the outhouse, or it could be that you just want to be alone with the stars on a Neil Young night – whatever the reason, you know – being that all-Canadian camper your dad taught you to be – you are exposing yourself to the lawless, animalistic nature of the Canadian wild.

Once the light of the fire is too far to see and the headlights on the highway turn into fireflies then to dust, and the canopy of trees drowns out the moon, you’re in the deep dark woods. Congratulations. You have transcended your safe family campsite reality. Now you are vulnerable, but you are eyes-wide alive. Sight is all but gone so your mind tries to fill in the gaps. A rustling fir tree branch is now a prehistoric bird, the wind that’s blowing the branch whistles for its kill, and you swear something is crawling on your leg.

Still, among the changes in perception and the uncertainty it brings, there is a sad peacefulness to those dark moments, which you learn to enjoy. Stay alone in the deep dark woods long enough and you’ll begin to ask the questions you’re deep dark mind has been waiting to ask.

Naïve Canadian camper, you thought you left the city for the woods to escape.

Canadiana’s latest addition to its list of somber but psychologically motivating folk-country outfits is Saskatoon, Saskatchewan’s The Deep Dark Woods.

Through the nerve-striking vocals of Ryan Boldt and the old time country flavour of guitarist Burke Barlow, bass player Chris Mason and drummer Lucas Goetz, the band is able to capture the suchness of their name, as like deep dark woods, they morph and change, keep you guessing and wide-eyes alive. They ask those questions you were going to get to if it wasn’t for the hustle of the city.

“We’re always changing,” says Mason, fresh off an afternoon workshop on day four of the 2009 Calgary Folk Music Festival. “If we continue to do the same thing then it’s time to move on, change the way we play our songs that are already written and write different types of songs.”

The band thrives on live performance, playing endless dates across endless Canadian highways. They see something new in each pocket of the country they visit, and have adapted their sets to suit the situation.

“We have different versions of a lot of our songs, so if you play one song a certain way so many times . . . or maybe depending on the crowd,” ponders Mason.

“I think that’s kind of our stre ngth, is our live performance,” adds Goetz.

Sure enough, there on Stage Four of the Folk Festival the Burke Barlow-less band found themselves adapting to an hour long jam with their producer Steve Dawson, soul-country outfit The Sojourners and another band that realizes the suchness of their name – The Ebony Hillbillies.

“It was a good show to play, it was just the three of us up there, we’ve never really actually done an acoustic bass, drums and then harmonies,” says Mason after the set.

Touring steady since the February 2009 release of their third full-length album Winter Hours, on Black Hen Music, the quartet is gaining ground with well-attended shows in the major cities of the West and a growing fan-base east of Manitoba.

It is their energetic and honest live show performance that comes through on Winter Hours, again, due to the metamorphic nature of the band’s let’s-change-it-up mantra.

“We didn’t know for sure how it would go going in,” says Mason of the recording process of the new album. “We didn’t know if we’d be playing the songs seven or eight times, we just set up and we only did one or two takes of each song. It’s just nice going in and doing that because it’s fresh.”

Working with Dawson, one of Canada’s premier producers and musicians, and recording at Vancouver’s staple studio The Factory, the Deep Dark Woods took a conscious departure from the way they recorded their previous release Hang Me, Oh Hang Me.

“We had done [Hang Me, Oh Hang Me] over four months, five months, and we had a little more overdubs and it’s just kind of good, when you record another album, just do things differently and you’ll get a different sound out of it,” says Mason.

“It’s more the energy, it’s a more natural energy, like a live show,” adds Goetz.

As the Deep Dark Woods make their summer round of shows they will continue to morph by adapting to their surroundings, trying to fit in with their alt-country colleagues, but at the same time try to escape the dangers of a monotonous existence by listening to their natural progression.

“If we’re in a mindset where we’re really into blues, let’s say, and we haven’t done much blues, and that’s kind of our situation right now, we’ll try to do a little more arrangements in those type of styles.”

Whatever version of themselves the Deep Dark Woods will appear as during the cold Canadian fall you can be sure that if your not satisfied, if you want new questions asked, you know you know change is going to come real soon.

Says Mason, “It’s just excitement.”

Check to see if The Deep Dark Woods are coming to your town this summer by clicking here.

       

Written by :

Johnny Elbow