The Gertrudes hope to bring fresh sounds and positive lyricism to the Kingston community following the release of their album Just to Please You.
Last week The Gertrudes band leader, Greg Tilson, spoke to The Journal about their album. The anticipated album, set to release August 18, will have refined sounds and more positive themes, and lyrics than its predecessor album Emergency to Emergency.
“Emergency to Emergency was pretty much in response to all of the crises that we were facing, and still are in many cases in the neighborhood […] we were addressing a lot of issues like addictions, mental health, and homelessness,” Tilson said.
Written as what Tilson calls a love letter to the neighbourhood, the album offers more positive themes speaking to the band’s life in the Skeleton Park neighbourhood.
Just to Please You is the band’s way of celebrating family, friends, and neighbors. The album offers a “lighter approach” through the presence of love songs on the discography.
Change in production impacted the overall sound. Emergency to Emergency was co-produced by Matt Rogalsky and Jason Mercer. Since the band’s emergence Rogalsky’s been the band’s producer. Whereas Just to Please You gave Mercer his first shot at solo producing for The Gertrudes.
“You’ll hear a lot more space on the album in of production […] I think Jason Mercer has kept us in check with how we’re more selective with the sounds” Tilson said.
A driving force of why The Gertrudes decided to change their tune from how they traditionally write and produce was attributed to Mercer’s background.
Tilson noted despite Mercer’s position as a musician he is highly versatile. Mercer worked with artists like Ani DiFranco and Ron Sexsmith, toured internationally, and is knowledgeable about the evolving music scene.
“We’re just interested in new ideas and new approaches and ing [Mercer] as a producer [whose] just getting started with his studio within the last couple of years on Wolfe Island,” Tilson said.
While Mercer was a key player for the development of this album, there’s more to the creative process.
Within the collective of creative minds, there are a lot of creative juices flowing, fueling artistic processes, Tilson said. He noted himself and his wife, Annie Clifford, are the primary songwriters bringing material to weekly rehearsals.
“[The band are] bringing, an eclectic style of music and [the] approach is just songwriting and recording. It’s just kind of always happening. It’s not something we sit down and say, ‘now we will write the album—it’s just we’re already working on the next album.’”
The band leader acknowledged their privilege—not only do they have a variety of creative minds constantly bringing new ideas—they have resources to work on their craft—a luxury not many have. Tilson said performing for free within the Skeleton Park neighbourhood is important to their artistic process.
“We’re doing a lot in the Skeleton Park neighborhood […]. [We help] organize the Skeleton Park Arts Festival. of the band help publish The Skeleton Press newspaper. We run a free concert series at Next Church where we play and where we rehearse weekly, at times, bi-weekly,” Tilson said.
“We hope to be doing this for the rest of [our lives], especially now we’ve got our kids in the band. We’re in it for the long haul, I think we’re all rooted here in the neighborhood. There’s definitely no end in sight whatsoever.”
Corrections
A previous version of this article misspelled Matt Rogalsky’s name. Incorrect information appeared in the June 26 issue of The Journal.
The Journal regrets the error
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