Although Halifax band Steady Hills is comprised of only two members, what a glorious sound the duo of Chad Harrington and Andrew Dahms make. A diverse set of influences rears their heads throughout the group’s latest effort, Alone In The Marquee. So if you’ve ever wondered what Johnny Cash, The Black Keys, The Decemberists along with a pinch of Dan Mangan might sound like, look no further than Steady Hills.
The band is set to perform at Moncton’s Plan B Lounge (212 St. George Street) on Wednesday September 18. Show time is scheduled for 9:00 p.m.
Steady Hills guitarist-vocalist Chad Harrington spoke with Here Magazine earlier this week about the group’s latest music video (the haunting Dark Room), sharing precisely what it’s like to make a video with zero budget.
The video for Dark Room certainly isn’t your run of the mill video. From where did the idea for the video come?
To be honest, it all started when visiting [Merchant Cooperative] Plan B in Halifax. They have an amazing room in the back filled with weird taxidermy rabbits, bones, old radios and all kinds of other cool, old things. It’s the kind of place where you might find a Mogwai for sale. It seemed like the kind of eclectic chaos that might be in the Dark Room. The original plan was just to do a live acoustic video shoot there but we eventually decided to shoot more footage to see what I could do with it. The video grew from there.
Did having little to no budget to make the video force the creative ante to be upped?
Spending money on the video wasn’t really an option; the way we went about it really seemed like the only choice. I have a Canon Rebel camera and taught myself how to edit and shoot video. When we decided to make the video, I already had a good grasp of how to go about it. It was then just a matter of finding some good locations to shoot. There was nothing in the way of time restrictions so the shoot happened rather organically over a period of three months.
Are you working on new songs to follow up Alone In The Marquee? If so, how are they sounding?
We are going to be recording in the next few months. The new songs we’ve written are a little less rock and a little more folk sounding. The songs are a little more polished and playful. There is still some darkness to the songs though; I don’t tend to write happy songs.