Evil Creek’s powerful new EP RUST forges music honouring multiple musical traditions and appealing to a wide audience.
In their triumphant new 4k video for Like a Ghost, Evil Creek confronts the harsh realities of the mental health epidemic ripping through families and communities everywhere around us.
At the onset of COVID-19, Evil Creek retreated to their respective corners and has been been focusing on writing more great music and doing outreach. We look forward to getting back out and doing live shows and new recordings as restrictions come to an end.
In this interview spotlight, I chat with the band about the music, the challenges, the technology and more.
Full Q&A along with links and music below.
Where are you from and what style of music do you create?
As individuals, we all grew up in smaller towns and rural areas around Ottawa, Canada’s capital city. Although we didn’t grow up together, we shared very common interests and backgrounds, and we definitely liked and were influenced by a lot of the same bands; Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath, Judas Priest, Metallica, Megadeth, and the likes. Most of our influences are on the heavier side of rock, and most of the bands that we each played in before we formed Evil Creek were heavy rock or heavy metal. We got to know each other as friends as we crossed paths often in these circles.
We like to think of the style of music that Evil Creek creates as Alternative Acoustic Rock – forging multiple musical traditions together to make something quite unique and new. Our songs feature a heavy groove behind energetic acoustic guitar riffs and eerie melodic vocals that tell an emotional story that each audience member can easily interpret and make their own. We often hear from audience members that they thought we were speaking right to them, and they had not witnessed that kind of energy before.
What led you down this path of music and what motivates you to keep going?
Each of us has always had a love of music, from when we were very young children, and we were lucky enough to have all picked up instruments at a early age and continued to learn new things. We all put in the time to become accomplished musicians.
As we all got a little older, more experienced and perhaps a little (but not much!) wiser, and as the music scene in Ottawa had less and less opportunities available for heavy music, we each found ourselves gravitating towards additional musical tastes that were accessible to more people – never losing our personal tastes for the harder edged music, but exploring other those avenues as well. Its pretty fun working in heavy rock together with very different things – a little bit of country, bluegrass, some humour, and just good old hard driving rock music. We don’t take it too seriously.
I think what motivates us to continue is knowing that people like what we do. Every time we play a festival or a smaller gig, people are up on their feet, cheering, yelling and singing along, and we constantly hear how they can’t believe the energy we can deliver with just acoustic guitars. It kind of gives us that assurance they we’re doing something worthwhile!
How is this new release different than previous ones? Were you trying to accomplish anything specific?
Our previous release “Dirt Road” was a set of songs Mark had written over the years. He put that EP together when he was learning how to record, and he did a great job with it. We all still love to listen to that EP, and fans definitely want us to keep playing those songs, which we love to do.
We wanted the new “Rust” EP to capture the breadth of musical traditions that we’re working into our music. Heart-pounder “Cry of an Angel” delivers an epic hook, “I Stand Alone” is light and zippy for anyone to enjoy, while songs “Like a Ghost” and “January Sky” take us into the deep dark woods and live to tell the tale. Then Bluegrass-inspired rock ragers like “Highway 69” remind us that, no matter how dark it gets, there’s a hell of a party on the other side!
We also wanted to enable the contribution and creativity of each member of the band, so we all had an important part in writing, arranging, and bringing it all together on this EP. We worked with accomplished producer Jon Rioux, who provided backing vocals on tracks Cry of an Angel and I Stand Alone, and helped to realize the band’s overall vision for the Rust EP.
Name one or two challenges you face as an indie musician in this oversaturated, digital music age? How has technology helped you (since we know it does help)?
Obviously, COVID-19 has become the biggest challenge to playing live at all, which is why we make music in the first place. Like all bands at every level of the music game, we are stopped in our tracks – unable to interact or attract new fans at live venues. Its especially heartbreaking having just completed and released a new EP. We were chomping at the bit to play all the festivals and shows we had lined up for the summer, which is where we gain the most new listeners and long term fans. Just practicing has become a challenge too, but we’ve found ways to keep that up and continue to write and record music that we can distribute electronically. Technology has certainly helped with remote recording and mixing, but there’s not much it can offer as far as remote live playing from multiple locations.
Beyond that, we have the same challenge many independent bands do – getting plays and follows on social media and music streaming technologies, which are certainly an amazing set of tools for artists but there are so many other bands trying to make their way there at the same time. We’re still learning some new tricks in those circles tho, and we have a great following on facebook to build from, so we’re looking forward to continuing to get music out there to attract new listeners.
What was the last song you listened to?
Rusty Cage by the man in black. Its just an awesome tune by one of the very greatest of all time, and it happens to be on our practice list AND our Evil Creek Radio playlist on Spotify ;-)
Which do you prefer? Vinyl? CDs? MP3s?
I mean we loved records for their warm crackling ambience and tactile sleeves and covers. We loved CDs for their ability to capture and distribute super high quality music. However, we have to be thankful for the technology of being able to distribute music ubiquitously online and on streaming platforms like Apple Music and Spotify. These have really opened the doors of a kinda closed system, and made the world a lot more accessible to indie artists like us.
How about this one…. Do you prefer Spotify? Apple Music? Bandcamp? Or something else? Why?
We love them all and we use them all, and a few more, both as musicians and as music fans. For artists, they each have their unique offerings and opportunities. For reach, you can’t beat Apple and Spotify, but we are finding more ways to leverage and capture opportunities using Spotify than any other platform. We’re also learning to adapt and improve our distribution and marketing plans to optimize for Spotify because of the huge potential to gain new listeners, fans and followers by getting placed on a new spotlight or other very popular playlist. We haven’t mastered that yet but it awaits our next releases in the near future.
Where is the best place to connect with you online and discover more music?
Like most indie bands, we spend a lot of energy connecting with fans and potential listeners online. Our facebook page is sort of a hub that links to everything else. It even has the Spotify player for our EP embedded in a tab, as well as our new music video for “Like A Ghost” on youtube. So check out www.Facebook.com/evilcreekband as a starting point, or just search us up on Instagram. We also have our website www.evilcreek.live and we have a contact page there as well.
Anything else before we sign off?
We’re really stoked about the video we shot and released recently for the song “Like A Ghost” off our latest EP. Dark Moon Productions did a great job realizing our vision for that video. Its a very fitting song and visual for these times – confronting the harsh realities of mental health issues like depression and anxiety. It’s especially important to recognize that isolation can be a trigger for depression, so reach out to those you love and make sure they’re ok.
