Southern Ontario rock and roll band The Folk want to take a look at the way we communicate with each other. Approximately three years ago, the band released the You Say I Say EP, the first of three releases in The Communication Series, a conceptual trilogy of music that focuses specifically on how we interact with each other.
The Say It Again EP followed in 2012 while earlier this year, the trilogy was brought to a close with the release of We All Say, the group’s first full-length record.
Moncton native and The Folk drummer Patrick Rody says that despite the songs all sounding very different from one another, there is a cohesive thread that brings together each of their three releases.
“Everyone in the band loves writing songs. So when you’ve got a number of dominant writers in a group as we do, everyone throws their hat into the ring and you end up with a varied sounding bunch of songs,” Patrick says.
Virtually any band that is in the business of playing live or making records will tell you that they make music for themselves first and foremost. The variable in the mix of making and recording new music is the fan reaction to new music.
Patrick admits that The Folk – also consisting of Sara Bortolon-Vettor, Emma Bortolon-Vettor, Mark Ferrari and Liam Magahay – is no different, pushing musical boundaries on We All Say that has left some fans scratching their heads in the wake of its release.
“There seems to have been a divide amongst our fans. We have run into people that supported in the past that freely admit that they don’t necessarily get what we are doing with this record while others are fully on board with what we have done.
“There are many people out there however who believe that bands should stick to a specific formula and sound and do not want you to deviate from that at all. But each of us in the band takes a lot of influence from the album format days of music, where every song used to be a little different from the one that came before it. That is the idea that we pursued with We All Say and we couldn’t be happier with the end result.”
Mentioning that The Folk had briefly considered making We All Say a double record, the group ultimately decided to press forward with a 10-song release instead. They released their new album via digital download as well as on vinyl, forgoing the compact disc format altogether.
Even though there has been a huge resurgence in the vinyl format over the last few years, Patrick says that they simply wanted to do their part in helping keep the album format alive as opposed to jumping on any bandwagons.
“When I was growing up, my father had records and cassettes. I would sit down and listen to the whole thing from start to finish. I do think the album format is a bit of a lost art but releasing We All Say on vinyl was more a matter of us wanting people to hear the record as we would want to hear the record. We feel it brings so much more to the experience,” Patrick says.
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