Click here to check out a video of Hey Rosetta! at the 2007 EMCAs!
Video clip of Hey Rosetta! show, 07 October 2006, Junctions, St. John’s Newfoundland and at NXNE in Toronto, June 7, 2007 @Rivoli
Ah, Junctions, I spent many a night watching bands playing there back in my University days….
In the words of lead singer Tim Baker…
In early 2005, I came home from a long trip. I’d been to California and back in my father’s car and, prior to that, I’d been living as a student in Montreal. I’d been writing and writing but performing very little, so I brought home with me a briefcase full of poems and tunes and this strange, powerful need to share them. So, I banged and squawked my stuff out solo in the warm and wily barrooms of St. John’s for as long as I could. But the movement and meaning of the songs began demanding more; more power and timbre and grit and grace than I could muster alone. So a search began, and finally ended with the addition of five like-minded visionaries and with the drums, bass, cello, violin, and guitars they expertly played. Finally the songs began to grow sated and strong and right.
So, essentially Hey Rosetta! was born and grew out of songs. And this is our modus operandi still�I have a song and it moves in a particular way and it means a particular thing, and then we try to let it develop in its own direction. I guess this explains why many of our songs are distinct from one another and eclectic. They can be jarring or saccharine or danceable or solemn, all depending on what is called for. But they all seem to be lyric-driven and emotive, and none stray too far from what we consider rock n’ roll.
The songs, these days, can almost seem dwarfed by the big, rolling mass that has grown around them. While myself and Josh, Adam, Phil, Jessie and Kinley have been busy writing and recording and playing throughout Eastern and Central Canada, a large and learned family has arisen to steer us, label us, book us, advocate for us, distribute us, publicize us, and create with us. What a dream we rush around inside of.
Our first full length record, Plan Your Escape, received four Music Newfoundland and Labrador awards in 2006 (Album of the Year, Group of the Year, Pop/Rock Group of the Year, & Rising Star of the Year) as well as an East Coast Music nomination (Rock Recording of the Year). This album has since been remixed, remastered, redesigned and re-released nationwide as an EP under Sonic Records.
And we’ve been working on videos to accompany and illustrate our songs. We just finished cutting together some live footage from a concert we put off in the spring with our friends and own personal backup slew of instrumentalists, The Brightsun Orchestra, which should be available on our website shortly. And we’ve just finished self producing our first music video for the song “Yes! Yes! Yes!” with our gifted friend Jordan Canning. And we are, at this very moment, furiously working on treatments for more to come.
All in all, it’s kind of surreal I guess… tours, festivals, showcases, radio shows, satellite radio shows, mailing lists, interviews. We have videos, stickers, buttons, websites, posters, t-shirts… all this beautiful art. There’s so much stuff that has grown from an old briefcase full of crumpled, illegible sheets.
Today though, we are still huddled around scrawled and scattered pages, readying tunes for the next full length album, to be recorded this fall. And in the meantime, we tour and we share our songs with the rest of the country. We sit in the van and hum. We dream chords on motel floors. We write and play and laugh and seem to grow and grow and grow.
Thanks so much for reading this.
For all the latest developments, please come our own little place at www.heyrosetta.com
Tim Baker, Hey Rosetta!
Kelowna Live Music Blog 