Music > Interviews

Interview with Walk Off The Earth

01/04/14

35 million views in under 2 weeks. That’s the response the Canadian-based band Walk Off The Earth got to their YouTube-cover of Gotye’s ‘Somebody that I used to know’ in 2012. D’you remember it? 5 people playing the song on one guitar? For those who thought they were nothing more than a one-hit-wonder, here’s something new: the band’s currently preparing for their third tour throughout Europe after traveling around the US this month. So yes, they’re still around, and better than ever. Ha! In your face.

Where are you at the moment? We’re back in Toronto now for the Juno awards, where we were nominated in three categories. We’ve just done all the US gigs and are preparing to set off to Europe in April to continue our tour.

How do Sarah and Gianni [both band members] combine the touring with the upbringing of their son? Little Giorgio’s only two years old! He just fits in as part of the crew. Sarah is an incredible mom and just makes it work. Everybody involved in this band is one big family, so when she needs help, anybody kind of chips in and makes it happen.  

You’ve gotten very big after some amazing covers on YouTube in 2012, why did you decide to start covering? Covering music you like, and that inspires you, is always a good way to elevate your music in front of people you don’t know. It gives them something to listen to that they’ve already heard, rather than your own music. We did it that way, via YouTube to allow people to hear the style that we have, because we put a bit of Walk Off The Earth in every cover we do as well.

How would you describe that ‘Walk Off The Earth’ signature style? We get asked sometimes if we have a genre, or what style of music it is, and it’s hard to answer because we have so many different influences in there. You know, there’s five people in our band so that’s quite a lot, and they all have a great contribution in our sound. Personally I’m more of a singer-songwriter while Gianni has more reggae, hip-hop and funk [influences] and Sarah has that country and folk kind of thing. Everybody just brings in something different and I think the sound that ends up is something very organic, really roots driven, but at the same time has, like, a party feel. It’s happy and people want to listen to it.

How do you decide which songs you cover and which not? It has to be a bit different than what our sound is like. We want to bring the song, whatever it is, into a different direction and make people listen to it. Take a Taylor Swift cover for example; we like to take it away from the way it is as the original artist did it and make it sound different. But if there’s a song that any of us wants to cover he just brings it in and if everybody’s in, we just do it, you understand? It’s not that it’s a big elaborate process; we just make things. If we think it’s cool, we just do it. It’s almost a natural process.

Your latest album, R.E.V.O – from 2013 – features your cover of ‘Somebody That I Used to Know’ as well as a lot of self-written songs. Does this mean you’re done with making covers?

Oh no, we’re not done with it. We love making covers. That’s something we’ll never get away from. It’s just a different way to give the fans something to listen to. It’s fun for us to do cover songs on YouTube. We put out a two of albums out back in 2012, called ‘Volume I’ and ‘Volume II’, with a lot of covers as well as some original music, which we really love to make as well. We tend to give the fans something that’s made by Walk Off The Earth besides covers alone.

Apparently R.E.V.O stands for the band’s motto, ‘Realise Every Victory Outright’. How does the band try to live up to that motto? It’s not something that we try to preach or practice every day. It’s just kind of the feeling and the way that things work in the band. We strongly believe that if you work your butt off for something and you thrive to get there, then good things are going to happen. If you’re negative and you think it’s not going to happen, it’s probably not going to.

I picked up some influence of the Coen Brothers’ movie ‘Oh Brother Where Art Thou’ in the clip of your number ‘Gang of Rhythm’ – was I right? Yes, it was an idea that wasn’t really based around the movie. When we started shooting – a good friend of ours, Chris Stacy, was the director - we said like “okay, this kind of has that feel of the movie. Maybe we should help it grow to that direction”. It wasn’t something that was done on purpose initially. It wasn’t thought out beforehand. It just took form in the process of filming the video. We liked the idea so we kept going at it.

Are the creative concepts of the music videos down to the band? Or are there other people involved as well? We have a couple of directors that we work with. The one-shot videos, mostly the cover videos that are to be found on YouTube, are what we do entirely ourselves. Then there are also the full productions for which we worked with a couple of different directors. It’s fun working with them because you get ideas that sometimes come from outside the band, but we are always very involved in the projects, yes.

You’ll be playing at Norwich on April 4th. What can the audience expect of your gig? We try to bring the YouTube feeling to the stage. It’s not that we come on stage just to play our instruments. We really try to entertain our fans. This will be our third run now through Europe and we’ve had great responses so far. Every fan that’s been to our shows has always said like ‘wow, I didn’t expect you to be so energised’. We really get the fans involved with the show and we’ve put a lot of work into the new set. We have a new look and there’s a lot of really fun lights. I don’t want to give everything away but there’s a lot of action. There’s constantly a lot going on, on stage. The fans are really going to have a great time.

Your current tour will be finished in May. What’s after that? What will be the next step? We’re deep into our next album now. We have a bunch of songs written and as soon as we’re done in Europe we’ll be starting production and we’re hoping to get it out in the late fall of this year.

Yarreth Plysier

Walk Off The Earth will be playing at the UEA LCR on April 4th. For tickets and more info, visit www.ueaticketbookings.co.uk