Plenty of musicians from Winnipeg’s roots community have made their way to Texas to perform and record. Hell, Twilight Hotel is moving there.

But ask The Western States why they recorded their latest CD down south and you won’t get any wide-eyed stories about wanting to record in Townes Van Zandt’s home state.

Nope, singer/guitarist Sean Buchanan’s answer is far more practical: Austin simply had a studio that could capture the sound he and his bandmates were after.

Bye and Bye was recorded in August 2008 at Premium Recording Studio, the same place as one of Buchanan’s favourite albums of the past few years: Bill Callahan’s Woke on a Whaleheart.

“It sounded so good to my ears – in two seconds you could tell it was a great sounding record,” Buchanan said of Whaleheart over drinks at Stella’s at the beginning of this month.

In an effort to replicate Whaleheart’s warm sounds, the 27-year-old and his bandmates – Jerrod Falk, Nicole Marion, Ashley Roch and Chris Carmichael – recorded live to two-inch tape, without any digital technology or effects.

“ Now I know what happens when you do nothing to promote a record: nothing happens.

Sean Buchanan, The Western States

The simple approach of just pushing the ‘record’ button and playing stemmed from Buchanan’s frustration with the “annoyingly long” recording process that produced the band’s 2007 self-titled CD.

“It dragged on and on, and by the end of it, I was so bored I barely could care less,” Buchanan said of tracking each instrument separately for the debut disc. Instead of six months, Bye and Bye was recorded and mixed in six days.

Recording wasn’t the only thing Buchanan learned about when putting out the band’s debut. The University of Manitoba business student also learned something about marketing.

“Now I know what happens when you do nothing to promote a record: nothing happens.”

While the band has built up an impressive performance resume, opening for Feist, Julie Doiron and The Weakerthans, to name a few, Buchanan hopes even more people will hear The Western States’ music with the release of Bye and Bye.
The band’s sound hasn’t changed significantly over the past two years. But whereas the debut was a handful of some of the songs Buchanan had written up to that point, he says, Bye and Bye is his first attempt at writing a cohesive album people can listen to front to back.

The 11-track disc was released in stores May 5. The quintet will play a belated CD release show at the newly-reopened West End Cultural Centre on June 12. Buchanan is looking forward to releasing the CD at the revamped venue.
He’s also looking forward to visiting Austin again at some point. Recording was great – “It was absolutely the best experience it could have been” – but other than the studio, a few restaurants and the Super 8 Motel the band stayed at, he and his bandmates didn’t get to see much of the city.

“I still feel like I haven’t really been there.”

Published in Volume 63, Number 27 of The Uniter (May 20, 2009)