By Will Yannacoulias
Saskatoon's Landfall rocked an enthusiastic hometown crowd at Amigos Cantina March 31st, celebrating the release of their debut single, the bouncy blues-rock jam "All Together Now". The trio of Colby Trimble, Noah Sawyer, and William JP Wallace began playing together as a high school class project in 2018, and spent the pandemic perfecting their distinct sound and style- a fusion of jazz, blues, shoegaze, punk, grunge and metal shaped by the unique arrangement of having Wallace and Sawyer trade off on guitar and bass, and drummer Trimble bringing a multi instrumental songwriter background. I chatted with Landfall about the single, the release party, and what the trio has planned for the summer.
"All Together Now" is such a great song, a fun familiar groove that showcases Landfall's diverse influences. Tell me a little about how that song came about? What were your experiences recording the single? Who did you work with in the studio?
"'All Together Now' was the first fully finished song from our band, performed at a high school concert back in January of 2019. From that point on, we gathered outside of school to continue jamming, playing, and writing new music. Later that year, we went into a neighbour’s home studio to give a trial run at recording the song. The track would continue to evolve from there, brought back to life in 2022 with an expanded sound which was taken to studio with several other tracks. With drums recorded and mastering done by Matt Stinn at Rainy Day Recording Co., the rest of the song was done at home with Jared Siebert. At the last minute, fellow local artist Aurora Bella of Little Darkness was brought in to do extra vocals, which are featured on the final track. The whole of it turned out to be greater than the sum of its parts, moving past the blues rock roots to capture some spacier, weirder textures. Will described the final product as "a drunken bar sing-along on Saturn's finest moon."
You guys decided to throw the single release party at Amigos, which is such a cool venue that's hosted over thirty years of Saskatoon indie rock. Why did you choose that venue? Chesterfield and Banastronaut opened the nights' festivities, what's your relationship with those two groups?
"Amigos was chosen partly due to familiarity and partly due to the good vibes. It’s a great place that we were fortunate enough to be able to play previously, and the opportunity to take their stage once more is more than enough for us. As for choosing to play with Chesterfield and Banastronaut - Chesterfield are friends who cut their teeth (as we did) playing open mics at The Capitol. It wasn’t till recently that we started hanging out, but their solid vibes and tight sound make them a good fit- at some point we'd like to do some collaborative work with them. As for Banastronaut, they are a relatively new band and we kinda just stumbled upon and thought they were cool. Adam told us it was their goal to play Amigos by the end of the year, and we just kinda laughed cuz its barely April. We wish big things for them going forward, they have a good thing going."
The release party was the first time Landfall played as a bonafide headliner, that must be an exciting benchmark!
"Absolutely! We aren’t the biggest band in the city right now so initially we were actually looking for someone to close the show for us. Some friendly advice from some of the more established acts in the scene led us to take the show into our own hands and I'm glad we did. It wasn't the biggest show we've ever seen at Amigos, but there was a certifiable crowd."
What's next for Landfall? Is "All Together Now" part of a forthcoming album? Any videos or exciting summer gigs in the works?
"The single is part of an EP planned to be released at the end of the year. During May we plan to take some time off gigging to focus on finishing the EP and working on some music videos related to the project. We have a lot of work ahead of us as we continue to try to do as much of our rollout independently as possible, including album art and promotion."
