ON STAGE
What: Funk the Halls with the Funk Hunters and Balkan Bump with Xavier (Dec. 6) and Jennay Badger (Dec. 7)
Where: Capital Ballroom, 858 Yates St.
When: Dec. 6-7, 9 p.m.
Tickets: $26.50 from eventbrite.ca and Lyle’s Place
Note: The Funk Hunters also perform tonight at The Waverley Hotel in Cumberland
When you look at the Funk Hunters’ long list of accomplishments — official remixes of U2, Selena Gomez and Imagine Dragons, 10 million-plus Spotify streams and more than 600 performances in 16 countries, including stops at the Coachella and Burning Man festivals — it’s almost inconceivable that this cutting-edge group got its start on Galiano Island.
But that’s what makes it so unique. Nick Middleton and Duncan Smith, the heads and hearts of the group, like to work in relative isolation, often eschewing the spotlight in favour of the underground. Theirs is a hardworking existence, soundtracked by a mixture of funk, hip-hop and dance music.
The Funk Hunters now split their time between Vancouver and Victoria, cities that have played significant roles in breaking the electronic music duo to the masses. Vancouver is where Middleton and Smith took the first steps into North America’s crowded dance-music community, and Victoria is where much of their most recent music has been made.
They will play both cities over the next week as part of their fifth-annual Funk the Halls tour to celebrate the holiday season.
Middleton oversees the studio and production side of the group, while Smith handles the audio-visual component of their concerts. The lines are often blurred, Middleton said, which is partly why the group is so successful. “Weirdly, doing a little bit of everything keeps me inspired,” he said with a laugh. “If I was doing just any one of those things, I would be missing the others. It gives me balance. I just need to figure out how to have some non-work balance.”
In addition to his steady pace of writing, producing and performing with the Funk Hunters, Middleton has a number of his own projects. He runs a record label, Westwood Recordings, and manages a handful of artists signed to the label, which he founded in 2013.
He also runs a recording studio through which much of his music is made. The studio in Saanich, housed in the former location of Baker Studios, has been renovated to suit Middleton’s tech-savvy needs.
He uses the facility to produce an array of music, both with the Funk Hunters and without.
Middleton said he and Smith will have Christmas hats and screenprinted reflective jackets to wear at Funk the Halls (their matching Christmas-themed suits, once a tradition of Funk the Halls, have been retired, Middleton said.)
None of it is cheap to produce, he added — yet fans always want new visuals.
“It’s difficult, especially once you set the expectation that there will be big production at the shows, because you can’t go backwards. To compete today, it’s really challenging for any artist, because festivals are such a big part of the culture in the summer.
“There is a certain level of production at the events, with crazy lights and lasers and custom visuals, so we have to invest in that stuff with a level of quality.”
Middleton was born in Nanaimo, but spent a considerable amount of time on Galiano Island, where Smith was born and raised. The two met through a connection to Galiano Island’s Gulf Islands Film and Television School, which led to nascent musicalexplorations.
The Funk Hunters came into shape once the pair moved to Vancouver. “Basically, for the majority of our career, we lived a block away from each other,” Middleton said.
That changed in 2018, when Middleton relocated to Victoria, in search of a change of pace. Knowing he would rarely be at home in East Vancouver, due to the band’s touring commitments, he decided to move his things to Victoria, where his girlfriend had just finished her nursing degree.
“I was going through the Groundhog Day of coming home from tour and sitting in a taxi from the airport back to my house in East Van, and one day I thought: ‘What am I even here for?’ All the great reasons for living in Vancouver that helped boost our career were less and less important. I was either in my studio, at home or away. I could have lived anywhere.”
The move changed how he looked at his career, Middleton said. That he could go from a Halloween house party near Elk Lake in 2008 — the official debut of the Funk Hunters — to venues such as Colorado’s legendary Red Rocks Amphitheatre, where everyone from the Beatles and U2 to Neil Young have performed, is an accomplishment worth celebrating, he said.
The move to Victoria didn’t change the dynamic of the group, because Middleton refuses to get complacent.
“It hasn’t changed much,” Middleton said. “I just have an extra flight every time we go away.”
