THUNDER BAY -- It’s been nearly four years since Fake Shark’s last full release and while the process that went into recording the latest album was very different, audiences can still expect the same high energy on stage.
“I think this is just the evolution of us realizing what the most fun songs are to play live and writing a whole record of them,” said Fake Shark frontman Kevin ‘Kevvy Mental’ Maher.
“The set we are playing on the tour now is pretty bullet proof, so I feel like we did a good job with it, but I still have a few ideas with what we could do next time, too.”
Fake Shark will be stopping in Thunder Bay as part of the 20-date cross-Canada I Am Not Myself tour with Hotel Mira. The tour comes on the heels of their third studio album, Afterglow, released in early January.
Singles from the album have already been getting a lot of airplay, as well as being featured in cult classic movie sequels and Canada’s national pass time.
The single Bummer Summer is included in the film Festival of the Living Dead, sequel to Night of the Living Dead, and Exactly What I Thought You Were, currently No. 21 on Alternative Radio, was used during a Hockey Night in Canada broadcast.
What is even more exciting for Maher on this particular album is the guest artists joining the band on several tracks.
Densil McFarlane, lead singer of The OBGMs, a Toronto-based punk band and Polaris Music Prize Finalist, sang backup vocals on the track Kind of Like It, while the singer of the Australian band Vows sings backup on Middle of the Night.
“So my two favourite bands right now sang on our album,” Maher said. “It’s really cool and they are great people and everyone should check them out as well.”
The band also took a unique approach when it came to the writing and recording of Afterglow.
“Usually I’ll write a song by myself and the other guys will come into the studio and add their different parts,” Maher said.
“For this one, our amazing record label let us rent a mansion and turn it into a studio and we went and just started writing songs all together. Those ended up being the first few songs for the record.”
Maher added that the decision to approach Afterglow in this way was just to see if they could do it. He and his fellow band members were prepared for the possibility that they could enter the studio and leave with nothing.
“But we are all pretty prolific and have been writing songs for a long time, so I figured we would come up with something,” Maher said, adding that he also did something else unique when it came to his writing process.
“I didn’t finalize all the lyrics until I took the almost finished songs with placeholder lyrics and I went backpacking around southeast Asia and finished them in Vietnam.”
Maher said he thought it would be interesting to go to a place where there isn’t such a focus on the entertainment industry, and he wouldn’t encounter North American tours or acts.
Given the success of recording Afterglow, Maher said he would like to try the same recording process for future releases.
“We have already starting working on the next album and I have two songs written that I think will make it on to it,” he said.
“I started to feel like it was stagnant the way I was doing it, where I just write alone, so I thought it would be fun to mix it up a little bit, and it totally was.”
Maher said he and the band are looking forward to returning to Thunder Bay and he expects he will have the audience’s undivided attention on stage.
“We have a lot of little tricks we pull on the crowd they won’t expect,” he said. “So it’s going to be fun. It’s not going to be just a typical band where five dudes get on stage and just play their songs. We do lots of things that are crowd interactions and surprises. It’s really fun.”
Fake Shark and Hotel Mira will be on the Cinema 5 Skatepark stage on Sunday, Feb. 4. Doors open at 7 p.m. Tickets are $20 in advance and open to all ages.
