In conversation with Run Coyote
On Nov. 7, Run Coyote put on a show at eBar in downtown Guelph. The group is a folk-rock band from London, and being friends with Guelph artists such as Alanna Gurr; they are very familiar with Guelph’s music scene. Fortunately, I had the opportunity to sit down with Amanda Grant (vocals, bass, piano), and Sam Allen (vocals, guitar, bass, percussion) before the show to talk about the bands latest album, Youth Haunts, future plans, and what they love about Guelph.
Danielle: Where’d you get the name Run Coyote?
Sam: We were trying to think of something that would fit with a rock n roll sound, and also a folk sound, and in a way tie together a lot of the landscape and natural imagery that we use in our songs. At the same time I wanted something a little bit spooky. Run Coyote seemed to fit for us in that way. When I was a kid, my grandma used to always tell me a story about how she’d be asleep in bed, and she’d always hear the coyotes out on the barn bridge. As a kid I’d always want to go out and visit her and see or hear the coyotes, and I never did, but it was always an exciting childhood memory, like “grandma, said there were coyotes, cool!”
D: A lot of your songs on your album Youth Haunts, like “Jump in the River,” “Stranger,” and “Meadow Boy,” they all seem to be very dark, reflecting heartbreak and despair. What sort of things influenced the song writing for this album? Why did it come out that way?
S: I think it’s kind of inspiring when songs come from a dark place, when you’re feeling kind of a dark mood I find myself inspired to write about it. I think the songs in general are, like you say, kind of dark, but that doesn’t mean that we’re always in a dark place. It’s interesting on stage to play a darker song, and then smile, and then play a darker song.
Amanda: I find that when you explore the moodiness, or the mysterious, or the dark side of things, it tends to be more interesting. Obviously happy songs are great, but I think there’s a little bit more layer because there’s more questions like “where does this come from?” a little bit more depth to it. And, I think it also plays with this idea of walking through the haunted woods, and I think in darkness you can find a lot of peace, too.
S: I’ve always been interested in darker songs and the spookiness and eerie qualities that music can have. I think it can come from a dark place you’re feeling emotionally, but it can also come from something we’re interested in exploring. We’re pretty happy people [laughs]. On the drive over we can listen to a fun and happy song on the drive over, like a Motown song or something. It’s just when we play our instruments we’re drawn to that slightly more moody environment or atmosphere.
D: I want to talk about two songs that stood out to me the most: “Never Wanted To,” and “Wreck of a Man.” These songs didn’t fit in with the rest of the album – “Never Wanted To” was more of a piano ballad, and “Wreck of a Man” was very rocked out and out there. What are the significance of these tracks?
S: I’ll start with “Never Wanted To.” I’m not much of a piano player, but I’m very drawn to the piano, it’s very nostalgic for me. Just thinking as a kid my grandpa used to play the piano, so whenever I’m around a piano I always kind of sit down and figure something out. So it kind of started from there, and I had at the time that I wrote this song, a lot of our friends who were in relationships were breaking up. So I sat down and was kind of writing the song inspired by that. For a long time it was just me playing the piano as best I could, and singing, and when it gets to the trumpet part I just sing the trumpet part. It’s neat, my uncle, Joe, plays the trumpet on the album, and I’ve never heard that part on a trumpet until he came into the studio and I sang in the part and he played it and I was like, sounds good, awesome.
It’s definitely different because it’s a piano ballad, but I think it also has that same emotion to it that the other songs do.
A: The first time Sam showed me the song, we were at my family cottage and we have a piano in our basement. He’s sitting there and he’s playing a little clunkily on this out-of-tune piano, and it actually made it me cry. It is a really emotional song and you kind of want to know where it comes from.
S: And then “Wreck of a Man,” it was one of those things where I was upstairs in the attic, playing my guitar, and I was messing around with the capo placements and I put the capo on twelve and just started playing that opening riff. I thought “this sounds neat,” and I wanted to keep exploring that. I just figured out a structure based on that guitar part, and then had this kind of idea for the chorus in my head. We brought it into the studio and it was the only song that wasn’t finished when we went into the studio to record, and we spent one night – our old drummer, Andrew, who plays on the album- he and I were just hashing it out for a few hours with our producer, Matt, and had to work the song out from there. When I got the words and I had the idea for that, it was just feeling down on myself, like “am I doing enough?” and you feel like nothing’s working. It’s just that kind of inspiration. You know, we can of feel like crap today but let’s just play really loud and get it out of our system.
D: What was your goal with Youth Haunts and what were you trying to communicate to your fans with this album?
S: When I was writing the songs and when we were arranging them, I was thinking more about myself and less about what other people were gonna think about it. So it kind of starts off as a labour of love for yourself. Once you’re in the final recording stages and the final mixing stages, you start to think about what other people are gonna think of it. So, in a way, it sounds silly but you obviously want to make it good.
A: I feel like this record – Jake and I and Sam have been playing together for some time- and it had always been under Sam Allen, and so for us I felt like this album was a…
S: A band-statement.
A: Yeah, it’s kind of like people can look at us in a different way. Sam certainly came from very Folksy roots, and I feel like we’ve really progressed into a rock n’ roll band, and I think this kind of shows that progression. So we really wanted it to be cohesive and have a lot of energy behind it, but also really be something that’s emblematic of a band-sound, not of a solo musician. Even though Sam directs the way the music goes – he does all the song writing and he certainly spear-heads all the arranging – I think we wanted to sound like a band and like a progression. You see Sam through and through in this album, but it also is now Run Coyote. This is something we wanted to accomplish with our record.
D: How do you guys stay together as a band? How do you keep the dynamic going?
S: It’s like a family band, we’re so close, so that’s something that adds to it and makes it easy and enjoyable. We just love to play together, and love to perform – that’s my favourite thing, playing in a band, is being in front of people and getting to act out all of those things that you wrote down on a piece of paper. It’s just the motivation to play and share music with each other, but also the audience.
A: There are a lot of challenges facing musicians nowadays, and certainly a lot of challenges in making it feasible. But if you are truly passionate about what you’re doing, it makes it a lot easier, and you have the luxury of everybody being really committed. We’re really lucky, in that regard, to have people who really love what they’re doing.
D: And any future plans?
S: This is kind of the end of a tour for us. We just went through Ontario, Quebec, and out east through the Maritimes, and now we’re just playing a few shows here and there when we can before the holidays. In the New Year, we’ll be doing more touring and hopefully in February and May we’ll do big tours, and we’ll just play as many shows in between as we can. We’ll be writing new songs next year.
D: And what do you love about the Guelph music scene?
S: I think it’s great. Guelph’s, in a way, like a little secret in Ontario, but in another way it’s a huge music community that everybody knows about. There’s Toronto, there’s Montreal, and then there’s Guelph. And that’s super cool for a smaller community to be recognized like that. I find that a lot of people move to Guelph just for that arts community. It’s super supportive of the arts, it’s super supportive of music, and very cool cultural events. There’s lots of interesting festivals. I think it really embodies the idea of a music community. We have so many friends here, it’s crazy.
A: It’s incredibly welcoming. It’s amazing to me, every time I come, I meet more people and they’re people that remember you the next time you see each other. They take an interest in what you’re doing, and you can have that mutual respect for each other. Like Sam was saying, it’s an incredibly supportive community and there are really talented people here. I mean, from something like Kazoo! Fest, to Hillside, to amazing spaces like Silence, there’s so much to offer, and we feel really lucky to be connected to this community.