A Rossland musician has been nominated for two Kootenay Music Awards.
Brett Wildeman has been working on recording his upcoming album since moving to Rossland in May, and now one of the tracks off the album has earned him two Kootenay Music Awards nominations — Song of the Year 2016 and Best Breakthrough Artist.
Wildeman submitted “Kate’s Song” for consideration to the awards and was surprised to receive two nominations.
“[Kate’s Song] is a song I wrote about Kate who is my girlfriend and that was just kind of a working title, but now I guess it has become an official title, as it’s been nominated for something,” he said. “It was a song written from my perspective of the first night that me and Kate met on the Sunshine Coast.”
The tentative title of Wildeman’s forthcoming album is The Tools We Possess. He wrote most of the songs while on a bike trip.
“It was mostly composed during a big bike tour that I did in 2015. I cycled from Victoria down to Portland and then through to Montana and then up to Fernie,” he explains. “I think it was like 2800 kilometers over two months and I wrote a bunch over that trip.”
Since moving to Rossland he’s been working on tweaking the songs and recording the album in his basement.
“I’ve never recorded so much music by myself, like alone, which is a sometimes soul-sucking and never-ending process, because you can always go back and change things,” said Wildeman. “So it feels good to have other people kind of acknowledge it and say, ‘Oh that’s actually a nice song.’”
Wildeman previously recorded one full-length album and a couple of EPs, but has always worked in a recording studio.
“Before I would always go into the studio with like a defined amount of time, and different players, like different musicians, and you’d kind of have a week to assemble something or two weeks to assemble something, or a handful of days. Whereas this recording process is all being done at home, pretty much all by myself — which has resulted in a lot more kind of exploration and creativity, and not having one [eye] on your guitar and your other eye on the clock.”
Wildeman is hoping to hold a release party for the album in Rossland this summer.
To listen to “Kate’s Song” visit mynameisbrettwildeman.bandcamp.com. To vote for Wildeman in the Kootenay Music Awards, visit surveymonkey.com/r/SPTJQYH.