Bridal Party is arguably one of Victoria’s coolest bands. Their music is filled with smooth indie-pop stylings, lovely harmonies, and a dash of those surfy west coast vibes.
The band is made up of dual vocalists and guitarists Suzannah Raudaschl and Joseph Leroux. Their lineup is rounded out by Lee Gauthier on bass, Adrian Heim on drums, and Jordan Clairmont on keys. Bridal Party is The Zone @ 91-3’s June Band of the Month.
Unfortunately, COVID-19 has once again prevented Rocktographers and Bridal Party from safely working together on a Band of the Month photo shoot. We are very thankful for the photographs they provided us from pre-pandemic times for their stint as June’s Band of the Month.
In this marvelous age of the internet, Tyson Elder was able to connect safely with Joseph Leroux to chat everything Bridal Party.
Tyson Elder: Congratulations on being The Zone @ 91-3’s June Band of the Month! It must be pretty exciting to hear your music on the radio.
Joseph Leroux: Yes, it’s exciting! We’ve actually seen huge support over the years from college radio since we began, especially from stations like Victoria’s own CFUV and CITR in Calgary. There is something about commercial radio that is novel.
TE: Can you tell me a little bit about Bridal Party? I know the band originally started as a three piece in 2015 with Suz, Joseph, and Lee.
Joseph: The chronology of Bridal Party sounds complicated if you try and pick it apart. Simply put, things began with Suz inviting me to play bass and sing harmonies on a cassette she was imagining. This concept evolved into a tape that would feature songs led by each of us, and then finally into a live band to play those songs.
Lee was invited to produce, and in the end he became the bassist as well. It wasn’t until Adrian joined us on drums that we felt like we could begin to perform live. Our first set was a house show at Adrian and Suz’s as that four-piece.
Between then and now, we’ve had three lovely keyboard players who have contributed songs and arrangement ideas. First, Liam Gibson, who recorded on Hot Daze and then Sean Kennedy, who helped shape Negative Space. Jordan Clairmont has been in the band full-time since 2017. Amazingly, we were lucky enough to be able to capture all three of these players on our debut full length Too Much, which dropped in 2019. Jordan is contributing heavily to the songs we’ll release on LP 2, which we hope to begin sharing with you this time next year.
TE: Over the past week, I’ve had the opportunity to take a deep dive into your discography. There is a lot of exploration in your sound but the band stays sonically consistent. With each listen, I found myself focusing on different parts of each song, particularly the dreamlike harmonies between you and Suz, and rich surfy guitar tones.
Joseph: We’re glad that the harmonies caught your ear! They are super fun to arrange and sing, and people seem to react to them strongly. It’s been a really interesting creative process over the years to get to sing with Suz. We’re working on the next stage of refinement of this concept on the demos for LP 2, which we’re in the midst of writing now.
What you’re saying about the guitars has me thinking about broader arrangement details and the creative process within the band. For example: both Lee and Jordan are excellent guitar players; Suz has been playing keyboard since she was a child; I was originally invited to play bass in the band. Live, we all play to our individual strengths, but in the writing room–be it online or in a studio–no one is limited to their instrument, and we’re excited to showcase the fruit of that on our next release.
TE: In August 2019, the band released your fantastic full length LP, Too Much. It has been such a treat to listen to. What was the recording process like making that record?
Joseph: We sat at Infiniti Studios three different times, over two years, for about a week each. These disjointed efforts in studio immersion resulted in a lot of time being lost while trying to get back into the headspace we were in last session, fix mistakes, or improve on what had been recorded before, largely by replacing parts outright. It was a learning process start to finish and we hope to never make a record like that again, and I say that with as much enthusiasm and positive energy as possible.
TE: The album was accompanied by an extensive two month tour that took you across both Canada and the United States. Was that your first time on a major tour like that? Any tips or tricks to surviving on the road for that long?
Joseph: We had done some cross-Canada and western seaboard stuff but never so much in one go. We also got to visit some eastern American cities we had never been to, including Boston, New York, and Chicago.
Touring as an independent band has its romantic qualities, but it isn’t glamorous. We spend three or four months before we hit the road just emailing. What really helps us do it is our network of friendships and alliances across the country and down the coast. Every day on the road we are encountering this sort of casual but immense generosity coming from folks we play with and for, as well as their greater music scenes. So we’re on the road with this mindset of: we’ve built this tour with the help of so many strangers, and we’re relying on even more strangers to come out. This was really reinforced when our van broke down in rural Ontario and we chose to rely on a GofundMe campaign to gather the funds needed to keep the dream alive. So we do our best to be kind to everyone we meet, express our gratitude without being too hokey about it, and play our best.
As for advice, it so totally depends on the personalities of you and your bandmates. After a couple of weeks you really start sharing space with each other and you have to sort out what your long-haul vibe is going to be. Aside from talking out conflict, expressing solidarity in the day-to-day nitty gritty tasks of travel, and sharing in the basic joy of adventure, a lot of what’s going on can be nonverbal and it’s all coming home with you. This can deeply inform your mental health and stability as a band. All I can say is be nice to each other, pack light, and look for opportunities to eat and sleep well.
TE: The Zone @ 91-3 will be featuring your song Fruitless as your Band of the Month Single. I couldn’t think of a better song to have cranked up loud on my stereo as I cruise around this summer. Can you tell me a little bit about the song?
Joseph: The lead riff was something I came up with and was ultimately going to garbage, ’cause I thought it was too poppy and predictable. Suz thought otherwise and so I kept playing with chord ideas that became the verse and bridge. Suz crafted all the lyrics and the vocal melody and we arranged the rest as a band. My attitude towards pop music and predictability is a little more nuanced now–infinitely grateful that one was saved from the trash can.
TE: I’ve fallen head over heels for your music videos. Especially the Clerks styled video for Fruitless and the pool party vibes of Makes Me Wanna. Each video is so visually distinct but all distinctly Bridal Party. Do you approach the filmmakers with a vision or do you give them free reign over the direction of the video?
Joseph: The video for Fruitless was completely the vision of its director, Koty Bannouvong. He and his crew did an amazing job and we can’t wait for our next opportunity to work with him.
Makes Me Wanna was a collaboration between myself and director-cinematographer Kevin Virtue. The day-of involved a lot of last-minute adjustment and a collapsed timeline, but the end results were usable by our own editing-room standards.
TE: In mid-March Bridal Party played what might go down in history as one of the last concerts in Victoria, BC… at least for the time being. The night was a send off to fellow local band, Teenage Wedding. What was the feeling in the room as potential quarantine announcements loomed around the corner? Was there an extra layer of caution in the air?
Joseph: The overall vibe at that time from the crowd and amongst the bands was “we’re glad to be doing this now, because next weekend we may not be able to.” I also book shows as Regular Occasion, and had organized that show from the ground up. I essentially lost my peace of mind about it all the night before the show. During the gig, my thinking was that if no one showed symptoms within the weeks after the show that Saturday, we had been proven lucky, not smart. In another world I cancelled that show twenty four hours before doors.
TE: My personal experience of one of the last shows I attended was a room that seemed to be radiant with terror of a thing we didn’t quite understand. Everyone had an air of watchfulness around them. It was certainly a strange place to be.
Joseph: Yes, that sounds about right.
TE: It’s hard not to ask questions about COVID-19. Everyone has been impacted in some shape or form. How has the band been? Has everyone stayed happy and healthy? Any guilty pleasures that helped you survive quarantine?
Joseph: Everyone in the band is quarantining at home, we have not been able to rehearse. It’s been a great time for us to work on our at-home demoing processes, as well as come up with an online song sharing and demo building protocol. We’re all happy and healthy in our own ways, thank you for asking. Going for runs and eating more have both helped me cope with the additional time at home. I try not to feel too guilty about my pleasures these days.
TE: What’s next for Bridal Party? Are you working on a follow-up to Too Much?
Joseph: Absolutely! We hope to be releasing singles by this time next year.
TE: Thanks for taking the time to chat with me about the band. I’m very excited to hear Bridal Party on The Zone @ 91-3 this month.
Joseph: Thanks for having us! We’d also like to mention that online music platform Bandcamp is having a sale on July 19th with their share of profits going to the NAACP. This is an easy way to support racial justice in America right now. We’ll be donating any profit we make, so 100% of the money you spend will be going to organizations supporting Black Americans. Better yet, buy music from Black artists and support them directly!
They are also having a sale this Friday, June 5th. We’ll be donating all of our profit from this revshare also.
The continued struggle for Black liberation in America is perhaps the most important story in the news cycle right now, alongside the issue of indigenous sovereignty across the globe. We stand in solidarity with Black and Indigenous people everywhere and strive to educate ourselves so that we can better use this platform of ours to stand against systemic racism. Justice for George Floyd!
Bridal Party’s ever funky single, Fruitless will be featured for the entire month of June on The Zone @ 91-3. Two more of the band’s songs can be found for your listening pleasure on their Band of the Month page. Rocktographers is proud to be a supporting sponsor of The Zone’s Band of the Month program.
Due to the ongoing COVID-19 crisis, Bridal Party’s Zone Record Store Session at Vinyl Envy has been cancelled. Stay tuned to The Zone @ 91-3 for updates about future performances.