In February, instrumental folk music quartet The Fretless released its sophomore self-titled album, the follow-up to its 2012 Western Canadian Music Award/Canadian Folk Music Award-winning debut Waterbound.

The band, comprised of cellist Eric Wright and fiddlers Karrnnel Sawitsky, Ivonne Hernandez and Trent Freeman, came together in 2011 despite being from different cities in the U.S. and Canada.

“I’m originally from Saskatoon, but I moved to Toronto last March,” says Sawitsky, 31. “I grew up playing fiddle music since I was four and I grew up playing in a family band so it’s been there for my whole life.

“We basically just got together because we grew up playing in fiddle competitions against each other. The other three also went to Berklee College of Music in Boston and that’s how we met our cello player Eric.”

Just like Waterbound, the album was recorded in Victoria, B.C. with Joby Baker, who produced the covers and original compositions which appear on this release.

“I think with this album we definitely knew who we were as a band,” Sawitsky says. “Waterbound was just the start and our ideas have definitely grown since then. Now we know what we really can do and tried to push that as much as we could.

“With a lot of people they probably think there’s only so many things we can do with these instruments [fiddle and cello] and it’s fun for us to try and push those ideas people have and make some sounds where they can’t even tell that it’s just our four instruments.”

One of the ways the band tried to push the envelope was by covering “Airbag,” a song from Radiohead’s 1997 masterpiece, OK Computer.

The song features guest vocals from Wailin’ Jennys member Ruth Moody, who also sang on the band’s previous record.

“The original track is very airy and spacey so we definitely wanted to touch on that, but we didn’t want to bring in outside elements like electric guitar or extra effects,” Sawitsky says. “All we did was just play around with the acoustic properties of our instruments to try and create our own spacey sound. It’s really fun to do a cover of a mainstream song and hopefully turn heads a little bit.”

The word “rad trad” is sometimes used to describe The Fretless’ approach to its music.

“I’m not sure if it was us or one of the publicists we were working with at the time that came up with that term, but especially with the fiddle tradition we try and make new sounds with a lot of the older tunes,” Sawitsky says. 

“We want to keep the people who are already interested in fiddle music interested, while also trying to get a new audience of people who right now might not consider themselves fans of the instrument.”

Published in Volume 68, Number 22 of The Uniter (March 5, 2014)