Hale Hale

Mike Angus / mikeangus@vueweekly.com

When you ask a band, "So, how did you guys meet?" the answer is usually fairly unexciting—something along the lines of, "Through mutual friends," or "We needed a bass player". Yet it's always an interesting set of circumstances or sense of chemistry that makes for the real story. For Edmonton indie-rock band Hale Hale, it's the combination of four different sensibilities that serve as a creative engine as well as a set of checks and balances.
"We did meet through a mutual friend," concedes bassist Cody McLauchlin.

"We were jamming in a garage," continues drummer Trevor Neary, "and I invited Scott [Steele, guitarist/vocalist] to join. Then Evan [Tardif, guitarist] joined and brought a dimension, this wall of sound. Our sound changed, so we recorded our new demo at Beta Sound."
The new demo is being released as a self-titled EP that the band will be celebrating at New City Likwid Lounge this Friday. The group's energetic blend of indie/garage rock and alt-rock sensibilities, combined with a directive to get your ass on the dance floor, makes for an addictive mix of heady, honest pop.

As for the writing process, the members of Hale Hale generally like to start with a guitar idea, then let their collective influences take over.
"We're not really trying to sound like anything—it just happens. It's all of our influences," explains Neary. "Sometimes Scott will come up with a riff, and then I'll have an idea of what I want the song to sound like. I'll use a song that already exists as an example, but then we'll end up with something that doesn't sound anything like that at all. We just keep stacking ideas on top of each other, and hopefully it meshes."

"I'm surprised how well it works," notes Steele.

McLauchlin agrees, before adding, "We'll bounce ideas back and forth, like any other band, but I think we're more critical about what direction we want to go, because we want to make sure we're not doing anything too cheesy, or taking the easy way out. [Instead of] getting formulaic, we've been anything but. We have our own take on our influences." V

http://vueweekly.com/article.php?id=13745 - Vue Weekly, Edmonton, AB

kay, you guys, I know there’s a seventeen foot wall of snow outside right now, and all anybody’s thinking about is how the hell they’re going to get home from work without getting stuck in some nightmare bottleneck of traffic. But let’s set aside the Winter Wonderland for a minute. I would like to challenge the conventional “go home and hide under your bed in a bathing suit pretending it’s still summer” mentality, and suggest that you put on your dancing Sorels and hit the town tonight. Because it’s going to be a very, very good night over at New City.

Local band Hale Hale is launching their spanky new EP this evening, and they are definitely worth braving walls of snow to see. I first heard of them about a few months ago, when a couple of the members turned up at a friend’s house to play some music. I only met them once or twice, but even just messing around, they were so good, and such nice guys to boot, that I had no choice but to go home, dig a hole in my front yard, put my guitar in it, and light it on fire. Now let us never speak of this again.

Anyway, I talked to the Hale Hale crew about their new record via the ‘lectronic mail yesterday.

SALLY: How did you guys get together?

HALE HALE: We’re not really sure how everything fell together. Everything just kind of did. A mish mash of previous projects and jam friends who eventually started playing together and it stuck.

SALLY: Who would be your guys’ top 5 influences?

HALE HALE: All four members influences vary greatly. That’s one thing that keeps the music interesting. It was never “I love this band” , “I love that band too, let’s play together!”. Cody originally comes from indie roots, Trevor is a post-grunge 90’s kid, Scott grew up with NOFX, the misfits and a skateboard, and Evan, from classic rock, grindcore and black metal to dance music.

SALLY: How has your reception been in the Edmonton music community? What’s your experience been like playing here?

HALE HALE: We’ve been received well, we think. We’ve been told we have a fresh sound. As for playing in Edmonton, it is hard to get anywhere with the lack of venues, but we’re making do with what we got and staying positive for sure. Playing is playing, regardless of where it is, as long as we are getting our music out and growing together as a band.

SALLY: Can you give me a brief description of the EP? What do you hope people take away from it ?

HALE HALE: We just want people to put it on, have a good time, and shake their ass to it. F*ck we are deep.

And finally, if you dig Hale Hale but can’t make it out tonight, you can get a copy of the EP by emailing halehalemusic@gmail.com.

http://theedmontonian.com/2009/12/04/all-hail-hale-hale-sorry/ - Sally Poulsen, The Edmontonian,

Rock ’n’ roll’s greatest strength is its power to unite. Take local rockers Hale Hale: four musicians with wildly divergent influences, ranging from punk and indie to classic rock and post ’90s grunge. So even though they probably wouldn’t rub shoulders browsing a record store, they now spend their free time together — writing, playing, and loving rock ’n’ roll music.

Drummer Trevor Neary sees the different musical backgrounds as building blocks, not stumbling blocks. “We just kind of amalgamate it,” says Neary. “It’s like putting Lego and Duplo together, sometimes you can make something really good.”

And just like kids fusing their building sets together, they hope to create something fresh and new out of conventional and separate styles.

But like some kind of unholy Lego-Duplo eyesore, all this haphazard melding of styles has the potential to result in a discordant mess. Thankfully, Hale Hale has found the common ground. They make music in the true rock ’n’ roll tradition: catchy as a cold, totally rump-shakeable, and just loud and sloppy enough to be dangerous.

“It’s stupid to say and kind of pretentious, but I don’t think there’s anything else out there that sounds quite like us,” Neary said. “It’s like Queens of the Stone Age, a little bit of Muse, and then out of nowhere: Mastodon.”

With Scott Steele on guitar and vocals, and Evan “Too-Loud” Tardiff on lead-guitar, Hale Hale has developed a live wall of sound intense enough to blow the roofs off of local venues.

“We played Likwid Lounge and we were just way too loud,” laughs Neary. “We thought it went terribly, but then like 20 people came up to us after the show to tell us how they loved us, and how they’d never heard anything like that before.”

Hale Hale has the initiative to match their creativity: they’re planning to shoot a music video in March and do their first tour in June.

And while the boys all have rock ’n’ roll dreams, they’re smart enough to respect the hard work that goes into creating a career.

“It’s like that Pavement song: you’ve got to pay your dues before you pay the rent,” Mack says. “There’s nothing truer than that.”

http://www.seemagazine.com/article/music/music-feature/hale-0225/ - Josh Marcellin, See Magazine, Edmonton, AB