Will Currie Sends Thanks To Sloan

If you are ever privy to discussions around the indie-pop music scene in Canada, the name Will Currie and the Country French should ring a bell. The group, formed in 2008, was taken under the wing of Canadian pop legends Sloan early in their career. The latter group lent Currie and the Country French a hand by helping to release their debut EP A Great Stage as well as giving the group an opening slot on a national tour.

From these unique experiences emerged a bolder and arguably wiser Will Currie and the Country French and nowhere is that growth more evident than on their full-length debut effort Awake You Sleepers!, released last October on Vancouver indie label File Under: Music.

The members of Will Currie and the Country French met while studying at Waterloo’s Wilfrid Laurier University. Currie had been offered the opportunity to open a show for Tokyo Police Club in Toronto and asked the members of the band to back him up for what they anticipated would be a one-off show. The fact of the matter was, they had such a blast, they decided to keep at it once the show had come and gone.

“We still have the same six members today that we did then,” Currie says. “We have a pretty good sense of chemistry.”

With a couple of years experience on the road under their belts supporting Sloan, Our Lady Peace and Hey Rosetta! among others, Currie says that the most noticeable difference between Awake You Sleepers! and their EP was the fact that the group was able to deliberately plot out the direction of their full-length.

“Our debut EP was a little more thrown together,” he shares. “We had recorded it ourselves without knowing it would be released across the country. At the time, it was a recording of literally all of the songs we had at the time. When it came to the making of Awake You Sleepers!, we were able to take our time and really plan things out well in advance of recording it. It works really well as a whole album because we wrote the songs in a way that they are connected to one another.”

Currie shares that despite the members of Sloan not lending a direct hand to the group’s newest records, he feels his group is indebted to Sloan for having given them such a great Launchpad in the early days of their career.

“We had met Jay Ferguson from Sloan at a time that their label Murderecords was looking to sign some bands,” Currie says. “Awake You Sleepers had actually been set to be released via Murderecords but Sloan ended up parting ways with Sony/BMG so the record eventually landed with the File Under: Music label from Vancouver. They are a pretty incredible label to be working with so it was a blessing in disguise in a way. That being said, we owe so much to Sloan for everything they did for us in those first couple of years.”

Article published in July 6, 2012 edition of the Times & Transcript