Guelph’s The Coywolves are releasing their debut EP A Call For Celebration midnight tonight and they're ready for people to have a good time listening to the music they've worked on for the last couple of years.
The Coywolves is comprised of frontman Johnny Brousseau, bassist Ben Gray and drummer Adam Inrig.
The band started working on the EP during the pandemic “when I had nothing to do except just work and then come home and play music,” said Brousseau.
To kick off the EP the band will be performing at Tabu this Saturday at 8:30 p.m. There are tickets available online and at the door for the 19-plus event.
“We've always been really vocal about our message, just being about trying to make songs that are fun that people relate to, and that people enjoy,” said Brousseau.
“Whenever we play live shows beforehand we always get together. We say the goal is to have people leave and their lives are better in some way, shape, or form, whether just from them having a good night, or having a different perspective, because the music. And the songs are just all about just being happy, appreciating the people around you and just general positivity,” he said.
Throughout the last couple of years The Coywolves have been playing live shows in Guelph, Kitchener, Hamilton, and Toronto.
When they’re not performing at Royal City Studios you can find The Coywolves rocking out at a house party.
House party shows are “absolutely in the DNA of the band,” said Brousseau. The best show they’ve ever played was in a friend’s backyard that backed onto Cutten Fields golf course, he said.
“When we were sound checking earlier in the day, we were getting reports from the golf course that they were able to hear us,” Brousseau said.
The band didn’t know how many people were going to turn out for the show.
“The whole town showed up. We had to have like 100, 150 people packed into these guys’ backyard. And luckily we were able to finish off the show before the cops showed up,” Brousseau said.
The last song on the EP called Royal City Summertime is an ode to Guelph. It’s about Brousseau and his friends moving away for school or work and “a reflection on our upbringing here in this city with each other,” he said.
When Brousseau started making music on his own at 15-years-old he and his family moved to Puslinch. There was a pond in the woods near his house and in the winter he would check to see if it froze over so he could play hockey.
“We’d always see the eyes in the forest of these coyotes or wolves,” said Brousseau. After speaking with neighbours rumour had it there were coywolves living in the woods.
“That’s where I got the name. I thought it was kind of just a cool name for a rock and roll band and also a bit of an ode to where I’d grown up,” he said.
Brosseau said his musical talent has evolved. Once he had a good handle playing guitar his singing started to improve too. "I was not a trained singer at all. And some people are born with a natural ability to sing, but that was not me at all, in any case. So it just took a lot of discipline, and learning and self study and just repetition, repetition, to kind of get that aspect of music together," he said.
One of Brousseau's favourite tracks on the album is As You Were Meant To. He said "it was one of those rare times when you're writing and the music and the lyrics just connects perfectly, like this is gonna be a powerful, really good song."
“This is all for the people who've been behind us since day one, all of our friends and family that we appreciate and love them and this one’s for them,” said Brousseau.
