IN CONCERT
What: Half Moon Run with Taylor Janzen
Where: Royal Theatre
When: Tuesday, Jan. 14, 8 p.m.
Tickets: $36.75-$51.75 from the Royal Theatre box office (250-386-6121) or rmts.bc.ca
Half Moon Run was looking at a commitment-free December following a two months of solid touring that closed out their 2019 tour dates, but that plan quickly went sideways. The indie rock band was back in the studio working on new material after just four days, though member Isaac Symonds stopped short of calling it real work.
“We were only doing 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., so it wasn’t too much of a killer. We still had a life.”
The band has earned its breaks, even though those are few and far between. Half Moon Run maintains a strong following overseas, which necessitates frequent tours of the area. The band was in England, Netherlands, Germany, Austria and Switzerland through November, and will return for tour dates in Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Poland, Germany and the Czech Republic in February. In between, they will tour North America with a run of 14 dates that includes an appearance Tuesday in Victoria at the Royal Theatre.
The band, which includes multi-instrumentalists Devon Portielje, Dylan Phillips and Conner Molander — the latter two, like Symonds, born and raised in the Comox Valley — now call Montreal home, though they are only there on occasion. Touring has become such a commonplace occurrence, Symonds said, that even if he wasn’t paying attention, and couldn’t name the country he was in by local landmarks, he would be able to pinpoint one specific location solely by the band’s setlist.
“If we’re in Germany, we always incorporate Consider Yourself into the setlist. Aside from that, our setlist pretty much stays the same. There’s an arc to the show, and after playing hundreds of shows, there’s certain songs that work really well at certain spots in the set. She Wants to Know is always at the end, and we’ll usually open with 21 Gun Salute. We have learned the ebbs and flows of a setlist, whether we’re in the States or Canada or Europe.”
Symonds, whose wide circle of family and friends still resides in the Comox Valley area, says he only makes it home once or twice a year, “if I’m lucky.” But he loves Comox nonetheless, and is looking to see familiar faces when Half Moon Run returns to Vancouver Island next week. Symonds and the rest of the band have become entrenched in their adopted home of Montreal, where the core of the band came together in 2009 (Symonds joined in 2012). Symonds said he might move home one day should he have children or retire, whichever comes first. “I’m 28 years old, and while it’s fun to go there and I love my hometown, after two weeks, I’m like: ‘I should probably get back to work.’ ”
A Blemish in the Great Light, the band’s third album, was released Nov. 1, and has Half Moon Run committed to spending the majority of 2020 on the road. That will take them to several cities they have already visited in the past year alone, even for brief moments. Their home away from home is Australia, Symonds said, one of the few places where they aren’t constantly asleep on a rolling bus between shows. “When we’re going through Europe, we’ll wake up in a city, play a show, and then be asleep right after when the bus is rolling. There’s never that much time for anything.”
A Blemish in the Great Light was produced and engineered by Joe Chiccarelli, an established producer with a track record that includes credits on everything from Frank Zappa, Journey and Pat Benatar albums to recordings by the Strokes, My Morning Jacket and the White Stripes. He was a valuable resource when the band couldn’t come to an agreement on certain songs being recorded for A Blemish in the Great Light, Symonds said.
“We have tried to record Favourite Boy three times without Joe, but we ended up going down a rabbit hole. One person loves the snare-drum tone, while the other person totally hates it and is going to quit the band,” he said with a laugh. “To finally have a producer who handled that aspect really does help. There were still heated battles, but working with a guy who has done hundreds and hundreds of records helped us back down a bit.”
