Rob Murray: I’m speaking with Dave Crewe from local band Northern Quarter. A huge honor for you this past weekend – Group of the Year at the YYC Music Awards. Congratulations!

Dave Crewe: Thank you very much. We’re all elated.

RM: How did you feel your chances were going in?

DC: We actually did not think that we were going to win at all. There were a lot of strong people in that category. All fantastic musicians and fantastic groups. We didn’t expect to win whatsoever.

RM: What do you attribute your recent success to?

DC: Strong songwriting. I’m not taking credit for that. Kerry Hunter is our principal songwriter. I think she wrote some amazing songs and continues to do so. Also, I think just a lot of hard work, trying and get the name out there and trying to push the music as much as we can.

RM: What are you working on right now?

DC: We have our second EP in the works. COVID has delayed that quite considerably. We were aiming for release at the beginning of the year. We were waiting to see what would happen with like music and so on. There doesn’t seem to be much movement in that area so, spurred on by this award, we’re probably going to start to look at trying to release that before the end of the year.

RM: Is that the one your new song Fighting for You is from?

DC: Yeah, we’ve already released Fighting for You and Trainhopper. They’re both going to be on that EP. There’s going to be another five songs, I think, added to that.

RM: This must be a real challenging time for you. You’re one of the staples on the local music scene. You usually play a lot of shows and various venues around town. Have you had the opportunity to perform live music here recently?

DC: We did the date on the PD3 bus, which was fun. We were outside anyway and it was quite away from the crowd, so that was all within regulations. Then we did a date on the Rose & Crown patio two weeks ago. We also did a stream direct from our jam space to HY5. We had the camera from HY5 piped straight to our rehearsal room so we could see the people in the bar as well and kind of interact. It was fun, and it’s something we want to try to do again, and we want to try to do it with other bands as well in the Valley because everyone’s struggling to find any gigs whatsoever.

RM: It sounds like it’s just a matter of sort of doing what everyone else is doing – adapting, trying to figure out new ways of doing things, getting a little creative to be able to get your music out there.

DC: The regulations changed recently. Singing is now allowed indoors, but with a mask on. We have some experimentation to do on that because singing two hours with a mask on might be problematic from a breathing perspective as well as an audio perspective, because it’s not going to sound the same.

RM: I have a hard time just talking wearing a mask. I can’t imagine trying to sing wearing a mask. That must be really challenging for Kerry.

DC: Yeah, so we’re going to see how that goes. Then maybe we can talk to some of the venues about what’s happening, but from what we can tell, even if we could get in with a gig, trying to stop people dancing is one thing that the venues are concerned about as well.

Filed under: Canmore, Local Music