The Wooden Sky don't want to Come Home

Still running off of the fumes from their month-long North American tour with Elliott Brood, Toronto's The Wooden Sky are planning on hitting the road again, bringing the exceptional folk-rock songs from their sophomore album, If I Don't Come Home You'll Know I'm Gone, to places across Ontario, with a stop in at St. Catharines' Merchant Ale House on Nov. 15.
The Wooden Sky's Gavin Gardiner explained that the group formed together in stages over the last couple of years. Their first album, When Lost At Sea, was actually released under the moniker Friday Morning's Regret, and then in 2007, the band decided to change their name to The Wooden Sky.
With their latest album - a collection of 13 lush, eloquent songs - Gardiner revealed that the process of working on the writing and recording of the album was unquestionably one of his most rewarding experiences of the past year.
"We rented a cottage in northern Ontario, just a couple hours north of Toronto. The four of us just went up there and took all the beds and put them over the windows and spent a week just hanging out, playing music, and workshopping our songs. It was really special," said Gardiner.
"Then when we actually took those songs and made the record, it was pretty fantastic. It was really exciting to be in Montreal and to see everyone really focused and working so hard."
The album, which was released on Aug. 25 through Ontario's BlackBox Recordings, was recorded at Montreal's famed Hotel2Tango with producer and engineer Howard Bilerman (Arcade Fire, The Dears). The album has a distinctly Canadian sound to it, even though it borrows influences from both Americana and indie-rock alike.
Prior to the release of If I Don't Come Home, the band took their van on the road for their "Bedrooms and Backstreets" tour, which was video documented for their Myspace page. Then, in October, they left for a month with Elliott Brood, which took them across Canada and into the United States for two weeks, where Gardiner ultimately found himself staying in a hospital in Portland.
"The shows in Canada were insane because they were all sold out. Every night, everyone was partying, and everything was taken care of. By the time we got to Victoria I was feeling a bit wheezy on stage, and I couldn't breathe. I thought it was the altitude change, and I woke up in Seattle and thought I had a collapsed lung, so I had to go to the emergency room in Portland," said Gardiner.
"It turned out I had pneumonia and fluid in my lungs, so I spent the next five days sleeping in the back of the van. The next day we had to play San Francisco, so we drove through the night and I just slept in the back of the van. It was a little crazy. It was interesting to see what a United States hospital is like. I had health insurance so I was lucky, but everything was really fast and efficient."
After a brief break from the long and tiring road through North America, Gardiner explained that "we all have to kind of get these jobs that come and go", but luckily the group gets to head out to Quebéc on their first headlining tour at the end of the month and see if they've picked up any new fans along the way.
"We've done co-billing tours before, but we haven't really done a headlining tour. We've played most of these places on one-offs as a headlining band, but this will be our first run of shows. Elliott Brood definitely felt like they [gave off the impression that they] were a headlining band, watching them every night was really great and inspiring to see," said Gardiner.
"We really enjoy touring. It's an important part of what we do, because it allows us to come back and write more music. At this point, all this touring we are doing is in support of this record, but there is a lot of touring to go for the next year or so. I really wanted to make another record in January, but unfortunately it's not going to happen. It's not too much fun touring in the winter, so I always try to avoid it at all costs.