When Danny Hacking of local rock quartet The Hoots calls me, he’s apologetic.

“I was supposed to call you 20 minutes ago, but I forgot,” the 21-year-old says. This is something that happens when a band is busy releasing a record and has multiple interviews in the same day. “We’re doing this CKUW thing and ... yeah.”

Joined in The Hoots by Kyle Loewen (20), Scott Loewen (21) and Jesse Christie (21), the band is one of the few on the new I’m Trying Records label, which is celebrating its first anniversary this month.

After releasing an EP last year, the band set down in the studio with Mitch Braun of The Liptonians in November. The result is the nine-track Best Wishes, a simple, no-frills rock record with elements of surf and garage with a fuller production sound.

“It was a lot faster,” Hacking says with a laugh of the recording process with Braun. “When you record it yourself there are a lot of things that can distract you. Like, you can get drunk and try to do vocals and then you just end up going to the bar because you’re just wasted and you want to do something else.

“You actually get to focus when you’re working with someone else. When you’re paying him to record you, you don’t want to waste your money or your time.”

Not unlike The Liptonians, The Hoots also dwell and record in a home together.

“We recorded (the EP) when we moved into our house in the basement,” he says. “We’ve been jamming (the new songs) for a year before we recorded them so we had them pretty down.”

Recorded live off the floor with vocal overdubs in two afternoon sessions, the process went quickly.

“(Braun) made sure we had all our pauses. There were some songs we had to do 10 times. All the songs are short though so it doesn’t take that much time to do that.”

Winnipeg’s music scene is crazy with bands starting up each and every day. So is it just about making music with your friends as John Lennon once said, or is there a larger goal?

“We don’t want to be famous,” he says, emphasizing that the goal is to just keep recording and playing with friendly bands. Hacking and Loewen split their time in The Hoots between a commitment with shoegaze revivalists The Blisters.

“Daniel (Monkman, Blisters mastermind), he’s my best friend actually,” Hacking says. “He’s a pretty remarkable guy, that guy. Very passionate.”

With a slew of new, young bands being influenced by artists who have come around generations before them, it’s not surprising that these newbies are passionate about music.

“It’s easier to learn about these bands because so many new bands come out and say they’re inspired by The Jesus and Mary Chain, Bad Brains and the Gun Club,” he says. “It’s easier to find that better music now.

“I think the older bands we end up playing with are really nice. They don’t mind booking us if they like our music. I guess they don’t really know how old we are.

Published in Volume 66, Number 24 of The Uniter (March 21, 2012)