
Despite not being familiar with the Waterloo region, Gavin Gardiner, the lead singer of Canadian folk band The Wooden Sky, has much in common with the average Laurier student.
โI spent a lot of time [in Waterloo] when I first moved to [Toronto], I had some friends here โฆ so I spent a lot of time running back and forth โฆ I liked the pizza.โ
Thankfully, The Wooden Sky will be reunited with their beloved pizza on Saturday Sept. 14, as they will be playing this yearโs KOI Music Festival.
KOI Music Festival, now in its third year, aims to put Kitchener-Waterloo on the music map boasting headliners such as Cute is What We Aim For and Treble Charger.ย The brainchild of brothers Cory and Curt Crossman, KOI Music Festival is quickly becoming a well-respected festival to play at.
The Wooden Sky first began as a school project when Gardiner, a student at Ryerson University, began writing songs.
โI used to think the only way to play music was to have a band, so I ended up moving to Toronto [and going to Ryerson University] โฆ I kind of had this dream that I would be sleeping on the floor of a grungy venue โฆ that didnโt happen.โ
Instead, Gardiner went on to meet the future members of The Wooden Sky. However they did not define themselves as a band for about โfive yearsโ after playing together.
โIt took about five years to find the right peopleย โฆ [and we thought] maybe we have some good ideas now, that means we can take it on the road from there.โ
Despite their confusing beginnings, The Wooden Sky is becoming more well-defined. This past year, The Wooden Sky has recently won an Indie award for Folk/Roots Artist Or Group Of The Year and were nominated for a Juno award for their most recent album Every Child a Daughter, Every Moon a Sun.
โWeโve been loving everyday so it doesnโt feel so crazy because it doesnโt feel like it came out of nowhere. We put in a lot of work. When all this stuff started happening at the same time, we were like โHuh! People are noticing the amount of work that weโre doing.โ
โ[Being nominated for a Juno award] was neat โฆ it was nice for [all our loved ones] to see that people recognize the amount of work that we do. I never had my grandma call me to congratulate me on something [on this large of a scale] before.โ
This year, The Wooden Sky saw themselves putting on a mobile concert which was subsequently broadcast by Indie88.
โWe were approached by the SummerWorks Performance Festival โฆ I got together with the director and we started talking about the relationship between the audience and the performer and how to play with that relationship.โ
โWeโve had a lot of unique venues โฆ like parks, houses, canoes and in gondolas โฆ we just decided to take all those ideas and roll them into one long four hour show.โ
A mobile concert is exactly how it sounds: a concert on the run. However it created a much more emotional effect on both audience and performers alike than anyone originally thought.
As the audience moved with the band, who played in four to six locations over four hours, Gardiner described it as โ[the audience] becoming part of the show.โ
Join the Wooden Sky for a more traditional show at KOI Music Festival this weekend.
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