Review Fix Exclusive: Bad Western’s Wyatt Fine-Gagné Talks ‘Sainte Something’ And More

Review Fix chats with Bad Western’s Wyatt Fine-Gagné, who discusses the band’s origin, goals, creative process and upcoming EP.

Review Fix: How did the band get together?

Wyatt Fine-Gagné: I grew up across the street from Ben and we started playing music together pretty early on in our friendship. Ben and I both ended up in Montreal for university, which is where we met Landen. I was in residence with Landen, and that’s actually where we started writing and rehearsing together.

Review Fix: How did you get involved in music?

Fine-Gagné: I’ve taken music lessons or been in music classes for as long as I can remember, and the same is true for Landen and Ben.  We each grew up with a strong interest in playing and performing, so I think starting to write our own stuff just kind of felt like a natural extension of that.

Review Fix: What are your influences?

Fine-Gagné: There’s a whole range of artists I’d consider to be influential for us, and it’s a list that’s always changing. I remember bonding with both Ben and Landen over a shared love of Death Cab For Cutie and Sufjan Stevens, and those artists definitely informed our musical sensibilities. Lately we’ve each been digging a lot of Alvvays, Soccer Mommy, and Bahamas, to name a few.

Review Fix: What is special about the Canadian music scene?

Fine-Gagné: It’s always felt to me like the Canadian music scene offers a decent amount of room for smaller acts to exist and thrive, which is something I really value. Canadian content laws really help in that regard. It’s important to keep in mind though that there’s still work to do on issues such as diversity, the lack of space for indigenous artists, and in ensuring that all artists in Canada get the support (financial and otherwise) that they need to in order to succeed.

Review Fix: What makes your brand of music special?

Fine-Gagné: I think we write songs that can be immediately impactful, while still containing elements that only reveal themselves over time.  I don’t know if that makes us particularly special, but it’s certainly something that I value in our work.

Review Fix: How was your standout song written?

Fine-Gagné: A friend of ours asked us to contribute a song to a short film about Montreal that he was producing and “Sainte Something” was what we came up with. I wrote it during my last semester of school in Montreal, which meant I was thinking a lot about endings and their significance (or lack thereof). The song is ultimately about valuing the time you have rather than worrying about its inevitable end.

Review Fix: What is your biggest strength as a musician?

Fine-Gagné: We each have different strengths, but those strengths complement each other well. I do most of the songwriting, Ben does most of the production work, and Landen writes all of the drum parts and helps to arrange songs. Writing is a pretty collaborative process, but I think it works because our individual strengths help to fill in one another’s blind spots.

Review Fix: Why do you think people should enjoy it?

Fine-Gagné: Because at their core most of our songs are pop songs. That doesn’t mean that they’re simple or trying to appeal to some kind of lowest-common-denominator; for us it just means that we strive to make music that we find enjoyable.

Review Fix: How do you want your music to affect people?

Fine-Gagné: My hope is that people are able to see some of themselves in the music, and that it helps them a bit in processing parts of their own lives. These songs are all very personal, but the themes that we explore on this EP are pretty universal: Love, loss, and how we move on from both people and places.

Review Fix: What makes this album different from your previous work?

Fine-Gagné: This is our first release as Bad Western, so there’s nothing else in our catalogue to really weigh this EP against, but I think as musicians we’ve sort of gravitated away from our folk-rock roots and moved more toward guitar-driven, alternative music. Some folk elements remain, but the scope of our creative influences has certainly broadened beyond just that genre.

Review Fix: What are your goals for the rest of 2018?

Fine-Gagné: Mostly just to play a lot of live dates. It’d be nice to be able to release more music as well, but there’s no firm timeline on that at the moment, so I guess we’ll just have to see.

Review Fix: What’s next?

Fine-Gagné: We’ll be announcing a number of live dates around southern Ontario for the fall, which should be a lot of fun. You can head to our website to stay in the loop about that. We’re also writing and recording a bunch of new material, so we’re excited to keep working on that.

Review Fix: Anything else you’d like to add?

Fine-Gagné: Here’s how to find us online:

Website: www.badwestern.com
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/badwestern/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/badwestern
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/BadWesternMusic/

You can stream or buy our new EP here:
song.link/BadWesternEP