The Rebel Year

Rebel by Name, Rebel by Fame
Wednesday February 27, 2008

Kris Ward is seated at a table in the Carleton Tavern, perusing a biography of The Beatles. And in the process, furthering his musical education.
"What have I learned from it?" he asks as he sets the book down and prepares to discuss his own musical ambitions. "Never give up. They had to work really hard to be heard."

To date, Ward has been no slouch in that regard. His former band The Wellwishers maintained a high profile locally during their brief time on the scene. When that group disbanded, Ward played many a solo show and presented us with a full-length album, Why is Everybody, Anybody? before hightailing it to Montreal for a year.

There, Ward indulged his enduring "teenage delusions of big rock stardom" as a member of a band called Acrobat. He returned to Capital City eight months ago after reaching an important conclusion about his adopted hometown.
"I was trying to become a rock star in a scene that is completely overrated," Ward reflects. "You really have to plug into that scene to get anywhere; you have to fit the mould. Well, I don't play music like The Arcade Fire and I don't play music like The Stills."

Montreal had its pluses, he concedes. For one thing, the U.S. border was easily accessible, as were shows south of it. For another, Ward wrote a number of songs and formulated a plan for the next chapter of his rock-star story: The Rebel Year.

"It's a band," Ward says of the project whose EP Pins, Needles and Lights will be officially unveiled this week. "It's a band, but it's still my project. I made a lot of good strides here when I was solo; I don't want to lose that momentum. So I'm going to run this as if it's still a solo project."

This is not news to Rebel Year bandmates Jon Ward, Max Figueredo, Dan Seguin and Dave Farquharson, the latter two of whom have been at Ward's side since his Wellwishers days.

"I'll front the money. I'll book the shows. I'll host the practices at my house. Just show up and play. My solo project taught me a lot about the dynamics of a band. I played every role ... and I think I like it that way."
The arrangement allows Ward to perform The Rebel Year shows regardless of which members are available. Something that should serve him well come May, when he relocates to the next logical indie-music hotbed -- Toronto.

BOOSTED FORTUNES

All part of continuing to pursue that rock star dream. And justified by the four bona fide anthems The Rebel Year submit for our approval on Pins, Needles and Lights, a four-song sampler co-produced by Ward and Dave Draves.
Of course, a lot has changed since The Beatles' manager boosted the fortunes of his boys' first single by ordering an excess of copies for his music store. In fact, you won't find even one copy of Pins, Needles and Lights at your local indie-rock retailer. The EP is an online-only release.

"It's something we decided when we were recording last August," Ward says. "Come to the show, pay $2 or $3 and get a business card with a download code. If you want to burn your own, you can. We thought it was pretty innovative. Then Radiohead did it and the floodgates opened."
Radiohead. Now there's a band that did its homework. Much like The Rebel Year.
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SCENE SETTER: THE REBEL YEAR WITH THE HOTS AND SCARLETT FEVER
- Where: Live Lounge, 126 1/2 York St.
- When: Friday, 8 p.m., $8

- Alan Wigney - Ottawa Sun

Kris Ward has christened his new band The Rebel Year. With a new name comes a new philosophy -- getting the group's music into headphones as quickly as possible.

The band is holding an EP release party tomorrow, but there is no physical disc. Instead, the five-piece, led by Ward, is going direct to digital. Bring your change to the merch table. Three bucks will get you a download card with a password, or else bring your own USB stick and get the four tunes for a toonie. In addition to espousing the no-plastic greenview that CD-less bands preach, there's the benefit of less manufacturing time and the boon that Radiohead provided when it skipped the middleman and offered its disc on a pay-what-you-can basis.

The Rebel Year's four-song EP is called Pins, Needles and Lights and documents Ward's wanderlust. The Ottawa banker released a solo album in 2005, and then took off for Montreal. He found that scene insular with an Arcade Fire hangover. If you weren't an eight-piece band with handclapping choruses you were ousted, he says. Some clubs had smarmy pay-to-play policies, too.

"If you don't have four keyboards and a girl playing an off-tune mandolin, you're not popular."

From that experience, Ward, 25, penned the tune Indifferent Cities, which is on the EP. Union Station is another city song, tracking his new fixation: Toronto.

After a run of Ottawa shows, Ward plans to join his girlfriend in Hogtown and re-form a band with the goal of touring Canada, coast to coast, at least once.

He'll also expand on the singer-songwriter sounds of his first album, bypassing the trendy indie stuff in favour of a good rock sound. "This is big, loud and raw," he says.

The Rebel Year plays The Live Lounge, 1261/2 York St., tomorrow with The Hots and Scarlett Fever. 9p.m., $8.

- Fateema Sayani

- The Ottawa Citizen