97. Hey, There! The Wandering Off, Emily and Kyle Corner. Calgary, Alberta, Canada. 02/14/23

Emily and Kyle, The Wandering Off, transcend time and space from Calgary, Alberta to share how cleaning their house during lockdown lead to a pandemy album.  When Covid struck they dealt with the frustration by reconnecting with their musical selves, creating a home studio, writing a 12 song album, recording and working to release it  together.  They recognize the pandemy gave them a gift of time.  Before playing Song Title in the Form of a Pandemy Question, inspired by Nardwuar the Human Serviette, they share how they met Nard at the Vancouver Olympics in 2010. Before the interview Dave recites, Noticing, by Bertrand Bickersteth in recognition of Black History Month and the important contributions made by Black residents in the Prairies of Canada.

The Wandering Off

Shout Outs: Nardwuar, Matisyahu, LiveCity Yaletown Vancouver Olympics 2010, Warne Livesey, Blake Manning, Healthcare Workers, and the Calgary Stampede!

This episode was recorded on February 14, 2023.  In solidarity with the Women's Marches held across Canada, The Pandemy Show, remembers Missing and Murdered Aboriginal Women.

Thanks for joining us as we unite humanity through stories of hope, connection, and community in the face of the global pandemy. We are all in this together, and we’re glad you’re here together with us. Thanks for taking a moment to like and subscribe and follow the Pandemy Show on social media (Twitter, Insta, FB, and TikTok). Thanks to Giant Value for letting us know everything is going to be alright, Pieper for the art work, and Becky Nethery for copywriting and website design.

Transcript

0:25

Good day and welcome to the pandemic show stories of the pandemic for people living in the pandemic. No one is alone on the pen. Demi show Thanks for joining us. As we unite humanity through stories of hope, connection, and community in the face of the global pandemic, we are all in this together, and we're glad you're here together with us. Thanks for taking a moment to like subscribe and follow the pandemic show on social media.

dave: 0:53

Welcome back to the Pan Demi Show. Thanks for joining us as we transcend time and space to Calgary, Alberta, Canada. Who are you? We're the wandering off. Emily and Kyle, thanks so much for joining us from the Hit Band, the Wandering Off. Thanks for coming to talk to us about your music today and discuss your experiences as hardworking professionals, musicians, parents, over the last couple years during the pandemic and your latest project. Now you're gonna be releasing. Debut album 12 track album at the end of March your first single from the album is out now. Hey there, and we are recording this, podcast episode 97 on. February 14th, And I just wanna take a moment to recognize, all the missing and murdered Aboriginal women and all the women's marches that took place today across the country in North America for that very important topic. And I just encourage our listeners who wanna learn more about ending the secrecy to listen to our episode from last. With Laughing Otter Caring Woman. I am recording this interview on the Upper Canada Treaty territory In Southern Ontario. On the traditional land of the Hoone, Anishnabe and Chung Anton, people. And February's been wonderful for Black History Month, and I'm so excited to be talking with you, Emily and Kyle in Calgary. in honor of black history and to recognize black history. I'm gonna recite a poem. Perran Bicker Death from Calgary, and I like to dedicated to Dion brand, who we read one of her poems last week, and Perran is a poet from Calgary. He's a author. And this poem that I'm going to recite noticing is about black identity and the prairies, something that's often overlooked So noticing. Notice how invisible black is when you grow it in storied soil deep and dark, nurtured by an anecdotal composition rooted in glycolic, hyperbolic, and stemming from weightless whiteness. Once you go back, you will never go black from anabolic anaphora, proleptic proliferations, significant insig. Inverted visibility noticed unnoticed two. Noticing how visible black is when you grow it in storied soil. My prairie soil, my soil has no one inverse, ancient and dark. My soil grows deep and dark like the inverse. Wow. What a wonderful poem. Now the wandering off from Calgary, Alberta, Canada, Emily and Kyle, thank you for joining us here today on The Pandemic Show where we work to unite humanity with stories of shared experience. How did your lives change when the pandemic struck in 2020?

kyle: 3:54

Oh, it was, what a time. Yeah, it's, uh, it's, it's kind of strange to look back actually and remember how, uh, wild that was.

emily: 4:03

it feels like a dream that.

kyle: 4:05

Yeah, kind of time's a nightmare and time's a dream. And just, what a time. I think our lives, what really changed for us, honestly, and what we're here talking about today is, we really reconnected with, a part of ourselves in music And in a weird way, we kind of got a, a gift of some time and some reflection. Yeah. Um, and then, uh, and then we're able to channel that out artistically.

emily: 4:25

the biggest gift was time. I think that changed for us because, we live busy lives. We both work full-time jobs. And, just that little bit of time that, that Kyle had not commuting to the work, he worked from home for like, what was a year and a half, something like that. that allowed more time than you realize when you could just be right next to a guitar and, and be downstairs building a studio. It just, it all added up. Yeah, it

kyle: 4:49

was interesting.

dave: 4:50

so you used the time of the change of the pandemic to spend more time on your creative passions, and you built a home studio.

emily: 4:57

Yeah. Yeah. So we actually hadn't written a song together before the pandemic. So I have a, a background in music. I think I released my last record maybe 12, 13 years before. So I had actually lost, a little bit of that in myself, for a couple of reasons, but, it just, and Kyle, he didn't really play the guitar before that, but he picked it up. And I, it sounds so weird to say this, but like, miraculously

dave: 5:24

like,

kyle: 5:25

well, what's funny about the, the pandemic actually and, and how you say, how did it change your lives? the pandemic had hit and we kind of had a little time. We thought we better clean out the crawlspace. We should play these guitars or, or sell'em or something. And it was like, oh, we'll strum them again. And then well look what happened.

dave: 5:41

Uh, but now we have

kyle: 5:42

many more We set out on a little bit of house cleaning and purging and, and now

dave: 5:45

we've made a record

emily: 5:46

yes, the, the cleaning and the purging leading to the re discovery of the instruments and, and yeah, and a lot of steps in between that to making a record, that's for sure. But that's where it all started.

dave: 5:59

were you influenced by the Marie Condo cleaning your house out and finding value in all of your objects?

emily: 6:05

Oh, No, actually, anybody with small children knows that you just don't turn on Ray Kondo because it causes depression and anxiety. I knew right away like, that's not for me. Like there's no way you can live like that with small. Actually, I think she recently came out and said that uh, she's given up on it now that she's had kids, so I thought that was pretty awesome.

dave: 6:27

So you created a home studio. you were cleaning up some areas of your house. You had more time at home with the family together, your creativity started flowing. You used that extra time of not having to commute, to reorganize the house, build a studio, and it, did you start writing the songs before you made the studio? It, it really

kyle: 6:46

did kind of, it kind of flowed, but it, it started with just some strumming and, and just, yeah, a little, a couple of jams. And then, and then we kind of had this, oh, you know, we we're writing something here, so we thought. maybe we'll write a song for somebody someday. Yeah. And, and then maybe

dave: 7:00

songwriters. Yeah. So we better

7:02

buy

kyle: 7:02

a microphone and, so we had a sort of a really, really cheap studio. First to just maybe get a demo in, of some kind and then, As we wrote and wrote and wrote, you know, lots of

emily: 7:12

songs, different genres too. I think on some of our earlier stuff I was like rapping a little bit, like

dave: 7:18

We tried everything. We had a lot of fun. Yeah,

emily: 7:21

we had some fun. And then we, we kinda, there's always this song that's kind of like a turning point for artists. I think ours was a song called Inept. That's, uh, gonna be our third single coming out. But it just kind of was like, wow, okay, that's our. That's, it's kind of this, throwback, you know, a little bit of nineties kind of thing that we grew up listening to and, this kind of grungy vocal and, yeah, we kind of built the record off of that specific song

kyle: 7:45

and the studio for that part. Yes. Yeah. We're like, okay, we better. We better outfit this place cuz the way life works, we, we can't carve out a month to go live in a recording studio.

dave: 7:53

we're so lucky to have you here today to play song title in the form of a pan Demi question, inspired by Canada's own nard war, the human serv. Now, have either of you ever met Nard war? Oh yeah. Yes, we

emily: 8:07

have. And I'm so glad you asked because we're big fans. I've been a fan of his since I was like a kid.

kyle: 8:15

Yeah. Grew up on Nard war and on much music. That's, yeah. Nard War is like a, an

dave: 8:19

icon. He seems like a god to us. Yes. It should be a statue for him. Yeah.

emily: 8:23

He's a great Canadian, legend. But yes, we met him, actually we were working, one of the stages at the Vancouver Olympics. What year was that?

dave: 8:31

2010. Yeah.

kyle: 8:32

Live City, Yale.

emily: 8:33

Yeah, shout out to Live City Yaletown. But yeah, shout, he, uh, he was backstage and he was about to interview, Mattis, Yahoo. Yeah. who, I don't know how to describe his music, but,

wandering off: 8:45

yeah, he was, uh, he, he's a hip hoping rabbi something Yeah. Yeah. Hip hoping

dave: 8:48

Rabbi. Yeah, SHA yeah. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. It was very interesting. Fantastic. Yeah. Yeah.

emily: 8:54

So, yeah, got to shake his hand and just tell him how much I appreciate him. So,

dave: 8:59

and did you get to do, do do?

emily: 9:02

I don't think I did. I was too nervous.

dave: 9:07

Yeah. It's interesting how many people Nard has, has impacted and how he's, he's really set the bar high as, someone who interviews artists. I, I have to say that I take a lot. pride in trying to style myself after nard war with intense deep dive of research.

emily: 9:26

Well, it'd be hard for us because we're just coming out there. We're just hitting the interwebs. Like, there's not much out there. We actually hid from the internet for a good decade. I think both of us, uh, didn't have social media. Oh wow. Like, yeah. Literally just like hermits on the internet. So it'd probably be hard to find stuff.

kyle: 9:46

I work for the calorie stamps. You Google me, you'll probably see me in a cowboy hat and a plaid shirt. Yes. You know, you know, on global TV or CTV or something, talking about mini donut.

dave: 9:57

Oh, the Calgary Stampede, one of Canada's great traditions, and, and one of the, one of the many wonderful things that people can do as a tourist in Calgary Alberta, Canada, Yahoo. And that was

emily: 10:08

one of the, the funny things too is, is wow, this was all happening. Kyle was trying to plan the Calgary stampede from home that never ended up happening. it was just a real bizarre experience.

dave: 10:22

yeah. Pandemic so many ways was bittersweet and I'm, I'm so glad that we're mid pandemic. The great reopening has happened, like was the first winter in several years where it's just business as usual. and it feels good to be in that stage. People who wanted to be vaccinated or vaccin. and we are where we are and we're so lucky that all the creativity that bubbled and percolated and boiled over the, the lockdowns and those crazy times of, of Covid 19, we're just gonna listen to your song. Hey there. I really identified with what you said about how it's got a kind of a grungy nineties sound to it. I was born in the seventies, my formative years during the nineties, and I. Your music, your the songs I've listened really take me back and make me feel comfortable, and they help me transcend time and space to a very happy place. Love it. So this is The Wandering Offs first single on their new debut album coming out at the end of March. Hey, there. Hey there.

wandering off: 11:56

Show yourself how. Deserves.

dave: 15:00

Awesome. Fantastic. Emily. Kyle, I am so grateful that Kyle picked up a guitar and Emily, you started singing again and all it took was a global pandemic. Yeah,

emily: 15:11

can can your audience see you dancing? Cause I was pretty epic, dude. I have

dave: 15:15

to say Oh, you're too kind. But unfortunately this is an audio podcast for all of our friends driving around the pandemic.

emily: 15:23

Well, we're missing out on half the fun here,

dave: 15:27

And, yeah, I was dancing during that song. I found it really positive. Dancing and listening to bands and music over the pandemic at home alone kind of got me to hear, but now we're in the great reopen. and people can get out in front of bands like yours. The wandering off with Emily and Kyle from Calgary, Alberta, Canada. before we play a song title in the form of a pandemic question inspired by Nard War, can you just give us a little sense, like, are you gonna be going out and touring, getting out and doing some shows in the spring, in the prairies, or is there any plans to make it out to Ontario? I know I'm getting a little bit a ahead of.

kyle: 16:04

No, no, we, we wanna hit the road real bad and play this record for everyone coast to coast. Uh, we'll be picking up shows here, at home and, uh, and across Western Canada. Yeah. Real soon. And then, uh, yeah, we'll be ambitious and hopefully by the fall we'll be, uh, out your way.

dave: 16:18

Fantastic. And our first question here today with Emily and Kyle from the wandering off. Was there a time in the pandemic when you said, Hey, there.

emily: 16:28

So hey there. I'm actually saying, hey there, to myself. It's kind of a, a song I wrote to myself because, uh, I tend to overthink things. I tend to, you know, gear towards. Perfectionism, which is not very healthy. And I think the pandemic too just kind of taught me that, wow, you know, we can let some things go. Like, you know, at any point this could happen and, and life could change. So things don't need to be perfect all the time. and you don't necessarily need to, be nice all the time or whatever. So yeah, I was writing this song as a, as a song to myself to remind myself of those very. So, yeah, so I guess in a way I was in my own bubble saying, Hey there to myself, nice

dave: 17:11

to meet you, And as dark and terrible as the pandemic was, it really did allow, and I know myself included, all of us at time to look inside of ourselves and to see what we like, what we wanna change, what we need to get rid of. So you went in and you were looking at yourself and during this time of the pandemic, when you wrote, Hey there, and you're saying, Hey, there to yourself, and now you're saying it to the world.

emily: 17:37

Yes. I know. It's, it's so crazy. And I think again, like, that shockingness of, of the pandemic hit and it's like, oh God, like. the world could end. And I gave up on my songwriting. Well, I didn't really give up. I had some, you know, blockages where I needed to work through some, some things to get my, my voice back. And the pandemic allowed me to do that. and some of it was just pure being pissed off that at the pandemic, right. And it's like all of that boiled up into the songs and. There's a lot of different variety of, topics on our record. But yeah, there's a lot of inspiration of just, just that, ah, I need to get stuff out. You know?

dave: 18:19

And this really leads into our next question based on your, another one of your upcoming singles F Off. Was there a time during the pandemic you'd wanna talk about one? You just wanted to say F off

wandering off: 18:32

Yeah, I think F Yeah. Yeah.

kyle: 18:35

There were a few times I think that. Yeah, we, we found a productive way though. We sang

emily: 18:41

it. Yes. We, we all, we have this joke amongst ourselves that our record is like our inside voices. Coming outward it's like, oh, that was, that was my inside voice, but now it's my outside voice and y'all are gonna have to deal with that. it's interesting. And even my poor mother, you know, my poor mother, I had to explain to her that we have a song called F Off and you know you're gonna have to hear it. And

kyle: 19:06

we'll post a video of her face the first time she heard it. It's wonderful.

dave: 19:11

that's real comedy I love. Healthy that is to sing out your frustration. Cause there was so much and there still is. Like we were talking to Harry Posner, a poet from Nova Scotia and he says, yeah, we're in, we're mid pandemic, but there's still like a low level of societal depression based on the isolation. and all of those feels that have gone, that went on the last couple years. And how, how amazing and inspirational is that, that you wrote a song and sang away those frustrations and turned that negative into a positive and your indoor voice became your outdoor voice. Like, how exciting is that?

emily: 19:51

I, I call it the, the liberation, you know, of myself because yeah, I, I'm just a mom and, you know, a woman and a working mom and all those things, and, and this record is like all those voices coming out, and I think it will be relatable in a lot of

dave: 20:07

ways. Yeah. And very supportive to the people of the Emmi and how this shared experience the artists have really, I think, got us to where we are now. Artists were there, and I think it's the artists that are feeding all of our souls and giving us strength as we move into this next stage of uncertainty with the mid pandemic. And I, I should say, like just for the time capsule, We just, the world just experienced a horrible earthquake in Turkey and Syria. a hundred year earthquake, there might be aliens visiting North America. There's been a lot of un unidentified flying objects over North America.

emily: 20:44

That's not the first time. That's

dave: 20:47

Wait, wait. We might almost be having a Star Trek moment with, with first contact. Yes, so moving right along with song title in the form of a pandemic question, you have another song gonna be coming out on your album. Nick of Time, did anything happen for you? Just in the nick of time during the pandemic?

kyle: 21:04

I think Nick of time would've been Emily literally saying, don't throw

dave: 21:07

out those guitars. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Uh,

kyle: 21:11

that

dave: 21:11

was a, that was a close

emily: 21:12

call, And he, even when it came to, to recording the record in general, it was kind of crazy because, you know, just all the people that were, uh, helping us with the record, everything was nick of time. Like, we got this amazing mixer, from Toronto named Warren Lizzie. Uh, he's done a lot of amazing Canadian. music and we're like, oh, there's no way he's gonna even take our call. it's like in the nick of time, like in between projects, he had time for us and the most amazing drummer in Canada, Blake Manning. He's booked solid for like a year in advance. Oh yeah. I just happened to have time. Exactly. When the studio has time, which is also booked six months in advance. He was like this perfect week. Yeah. It was like, I almost feel like there's, there's so many things with our music that have just been almost like divine intervention, where it's like this record was supposed to happen and it was like we had all these things. Just guiding it along and it's, it's just kind of weird to think about, but,

dave: 22:08

well, it's

kyle: 22:08

cause the aliens are coming. They need something to listen to.

dave: 22:12

It's interesting, the great collab and the album sounds great. and you can tell a lot of really talented professionals worked on it. so our last song for our Game, inspired by Nard Wire, the Human Sevi yet song title in the form of a pandemic question based on a song you've just mentioned, inept, did the pandemic make you realize how inept humans can be at.

emily: 22:33

oh yeah. It, you know, it's, it's crazy to think about that because it literally, Yeah, I think it was just a cluster cause nobody knew what to do. You know, I think I, I have a lot of forgiveness now when I had anger at some things at the time, but, you know, nobody really knew what to do and how to do it. But I think just we all bumbled around and tried to figure it out and in a sense, like built a community on that.

dave: 23:00

I'm feeling that most of the time. So well you sounded great on the album. The Pandemic really made me think about, we had so many problems in before times, and it seems like, I don't know what it's like in Calgary, but in Southern Ontario, homelessness is just getting like out of control. so many people are one paycheck away, and I know from listening to 98.5 C K W R Canada's oldest community radio station in kitchen and Ontario, the first year of the pandemic, the world saw 500 new billionaires, but almost a billion people fell below the poverty line. So I'm hoping that. Now that we're getting into the great, great reopening that we can, some of these things that were big problems before the pandemic got worse, that we can really try to address them. And I feel like your album and, and just the music and the art that's getting created and bringing people back together, especially people with different perspectives, I feel like that's gonna work to our advantage to trying to deal with some of the ineptness of Before Times as we. Forward to, to make a beautiful world with lots of bump and dance floors and a lot of community safety and community music and all those types of wonderful things. Yeah, we're all

emily: 24:09

about unity and community. Like, that's, that's just at our heart. And, and we just feel, yeah, like we have this ability to, to make these songs and, I don't take that lightly that I'm able to write about the human experience. I think that that is, something I'll never take for granted and I'm very grateful for it. And, Yeah, I'm just so excited.

dave: 24:31

It's great for me because now I have some, some more music and some awesome Canadian music to play for my friends when they come over to bonfires. I like how you were singing out your frustration, you were working on yourself through your music. It's just so positive.

emily: 24:45

I have a bonfire story and it's a, it's a pandemic story. So we were in isolation with our two kids. I think it was isolation number two. Which was like a whole month long because I had covid and then they didn't have covid. We're just trying to like pass the time so we decided to have a fire outside in our backyard and Kyle can tell the rest of the story,

kyle: 25:05

oh yeah, I had a nice brand new hatchet to chop my firewood and uh, I put that hatchet right into my finger. just about took it., I had been covid positive and I had to decide if I'm gonna go to the hospital,

emily: 25:17

and so it was the only way that you could get outta isolation was going to the emergency room.

kyle: 25:22

it was a real conflict to decide like, do I leave? Do I go? So. I put on my mask and got in the truck. I got to the hospital, then I called the desk and I said, look, I feel terrible, but will you let me come

dave: 25:32

in? I have Covid and I might eat dishes. And they, they said, of

kyle: 25:36

course. Thank you. You're the first person you ever called to say you're gonna walk in with it. That's, thank you. So, it was pretty wild.

emily: 25:42

Yeah, that was kind of, we, we kind of got covid like, very early on to the pandemic, November, 2020. Yeah. Our whole family. So we were kinda like one of the first people, one of the first families to kind of come down with it. it's, it was just weird. Everybody was freaking out. We felt like a science

kyle: 25:58

experiment. Yeah. At times, the way people were asking questions about what we were going.

dave: 26:02

and parents really like shout out to parents dealing with Covid themselves. Yeah. But also nursing their children. Oh my goodness. And how did it work out with your thumb? I think obviously great. Cause your guitar work sounds amazing. they stitched it up, right? they stitch stuff and then send you back out. Yeah. what a testament to the hardworking professionals in the healthcare industry. Yes. Like they really Absolutely. We wouldn't be anywhere without them. I just think how wonderful all those people who showed up for work and yes, I mean it seems like as the pandemic wore on, some people got a little bit more. Lost their minds and maybe weren't as respectful as they would've been in other circumstances. shout out to all the healthcare workers that have supported your family, my family, all of our families the last couple years, and I, I hope they really enjoy listening to your new album, your Self-titled album, the Wandering Op. Which is coming out at the end of March, 2023, and what do you two hope, Emily and Kyle, the wandering off, what do you hope the world is like in after times? If there is an, if there is ever an after times when we're looking at this whole thing in the rear view mirror?

kyle: 27:07

I hope people, you know, really, are are more compassionate towards each other than ever before. and then we don't take for granted some of the, the great, opportunities and luxuries we have as a, as a society. And, and we take advantage of, shameless self plug here, but to show up to shows and, and spend time together and enjoy, uh, uh, some of the things we bond over, like good.

emily: 27:26

Yeah. And I would echo Kyle and, and also add that, I think just acceptance of, of different points of view that everyone has about anything. it's important to always have an open dialogue and, and have respect for each other, no matter what side you're on. And, it broke my heart to see the, divide between just family members and, and people. And it just was like, okay, we're all people like. We can all understand that we're all just trying to be safe and get out of this. So, yeah, just more compassion for each other's points of view and yeah, community, community

dave: 28:01

building and, and it does seem like we're getting to a point where there's like a return to civility where Yes. I, I mean, we're all pushed to the brink in one way or another. Like we all went through it. I, I know I had the brain fog of the isolation and all those other things, that are, that are now behind. Thank you so much for joining us here today and sharing your story on the Pandemic Show, stories of the Pandemic for the People of the Pandemic. No one's alone on the Pan Demi Show, and I hope the next time I see you too. It's in person and I am on the dance floor. Thanks for having us, Dave. Thank you, Dave.

28:36

Thanks for listening to the pandemic show. We're all in this together, and we're glad you're here together with us be a part of our community by subscribing to and sharing the pandemic show. Thanks for taking a minute to email an episode, share a link or promote us on social media. Pandemic show is on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, and Reddit stories from the pandemic for the people of the pants. Do you have an interesting pandemic story and want to share email us@pandemicshowedatgmail.com. Thanks to all our guests. Thanks to giant value for seeing us in and letting us know everything is going to be all right. No one is alone at the pandemic show.