By Regina Sienra

A good mix between folk and rock is always welcome, but Edmonton’s Our Good Wolf  has taken this formula to a new level. The five-piece released their third LP, The Last We Heard of Him on September 9. The 10 songs on this new album have a rich roots foundation but distinctive and incredibly executed classic and contemporary rock elements.

This was the band’s first time they took to a professional studio to record their music. “Our first two albums were very much homemade/hand-stitched/held-together-with-glue and we recorded them ourselves in garages and basement,” bassist Kevin Holowack told OurBasement. The Last We Heard of Him was engineered, mixed and mastered by the WCMA nominated producer Spencer Cheyne at OCL Studios in Calgary. “I think we’d all agree that it’s a completion of the kind of intimate, layered, earthy vision we were after the whole time, but far more professional,” added Holowack.

Our Good Wolf has been playing together since 2012. Holowack –who also plays the mandolin– met guitarist René Schumacher and keyboardist Andrew Romero in school. Jordana Hon, the soulful vocalist, was introduced to the band by Schumacher’s girlfriend. Drummer Josh Lehman joined the band after he posted an ad on Kijiji offering his percussive abilities to Edmonton bands.

“Nowadays, our music hovers around this question of place and identity”, said Holowack. He pointed out that most of the songs on The Last We Heard of Him are either directly or vaguely grounded in Albertan landscape and German folktales. All the five members live around Edmonton now but Lehman is originally from Red Deer and Schumacher moved there from Germany when he was only a boy.

Holowack describes the recording process as “Stressful but loads of fun”. The band’s plan was to record the whole album live off the floor in one day with a handful of overdubs. “Apparently, this is pretty ambitious because we sensed some immediate skepticism from the producers”, said the bassist. Still, the band managed to pull it off due to all the time they had spent rehearsing the songs. “Otherwise, the experience was grand; none of us had been around that much expensive equipment before, so we had our five minutes of feeling famous.”

Our Good Wolf will be hitting the road later this week to promote The Last We Heard of Him across Alberta and British Columbia. Check out their new album via Spotify below or get it on iTunes.

SEPTEMBER 2016 TOUR DATES

09.14. Live City. Beaumont, AB
09.16. Sweet Lou’s. Hinton, AB
09.17. Milkcrate Records. Kelowna, BC
09.18. The Royal on Baker. Nelson, BC
09.19. Distortion. Calgary, AB
09.14. Whyte Ave (TBA). Edmonton, AB