For this True North Tale, I got to sit down and have a great chat with some of the members of the local rock band Gnarwhal And I always love getting the chat with bands and local artists getting to find out how the band came together because that can either be a really hard process trying to find that one last band member you need or sometimes it just all comes together perfectly. So when I got to sit down with Benji and Jer from Gnarwhal one of the first things I got Benji to tell me was how the whole band came together.
“I guess Gnarwhal started in like fall 2020 Summer 2020 myself and our singer Mark. We had the opportunity to get in on a rehearsal space and Yellowknife and we’re both musicians so we decided to do that. Rehearsal spaces are pretty or jam spots are really hard to get so we just started renting a space and had some guitar amps and a drum kit with just the intention of jamming. And Jer came back to town from working shift work so he was a little bit more consistent around and joined us and then yeah, the drummer piece like you said, it’s kind of tough. We didn’t necessarily put ad out but Lane joined us in I guess, early summer last year 2021.”
– Benji from Gnarwhal
And it wasn’t long after the band got their jam space that Benji would show the rest of the group the outline that he had made for what would become their single The Outlier.
“Really when we got the jam space. We just started playing music together. It was really just the intention of like playing covers and just yeah, really nothing too formal. But I think once we started playing together, we decided to write some music and I think I wrote kind of the demo part, the main guitar part for The Outlier in maybe December January, January 2021 or December 2020. So there’s just kind of always in the back pocket and I shared it with the guys and then it’s kind of snowballed from that “
-Benji from Gnarwhal
“Was the first one
I think we did right. The first original”– Jer From Gnarwhal
“Yeah, I think is actually the first original I think when we just decided we wanted to actually record a signal it was just what we were most comfortable with”
– Benji from Gnarwhal
To finish off my chat with Benji and Jer from Gnarwhal. Jer tells me how the band takes small simple outlines and turns them into full complete songs
“That’s a pretty easy process Benji whips up his demos with drum tracks and baselines and we listen to them and Mark comes up with lyrics pretty quickly for each song pretty easy for me to come up with a baseline and then we just rehearse over and over and over again.”
-Jer from Gnarwhal
Listen to the full TNT here!
