After a brief hiatus to celebrate 20 years of The Zone @ 91-3’s Band of the Month program, we’re back with May’s Band of the Month. That’s right: The Zone has been encouraging, fostering and celebrating our local music scene for 20 years!
Growing up in the mountain town of Smithers BC, the songwriter, drummer, and producer Michael Wilford now calls Victoria his home. He is also May’s Band of the Month.
Michael Wilford has made a name for himself within the BC music scene as a hired-gun drummer with the likes of Old Soul Rebel and Sarah Osborne. While predominantly known as a drummer, Michael is also an acclaimed songwriter with his debut single, Scotch, receiving honourable mention at the International Songwriting Competition which was judged by Dua Lipa, Tom Waits, and Coldplay.
After our photoshoot Michael, washed off the paint we covered him with, and helped us sweep up some confetti, before chatting with Tyson Elder about his turn at The Zone’s Band of the Month.
Tyson Elder: Michael, congratulations on being May’s Band of the Month.
Michael Wilford: Thank you very much.
TE: Your single for the month is Scotch, which has been out for around for about a year now, and it’s gotten critical acclaim. It was an honourable mention at the International Songwriters Competition. How did that come about?
Michael: Yeah, when I recorded Scotch, it was in 2017. For the first time, I just didn’t feel like I was ready to put something out with my name on it. So, I sat on it until the pandemic hit and finally had the time to revisit it. We brought on Chris Lloyd. We remixed it and then I released it. But, when I joined the International Songwriting Competition, it was before we did all that. I was just sort of feeling like I was at a standstill: the world had shut down, and I needed to do something to be a musician still. So, I just entered the first mix — the original demo we had — into the competition, and then I forgot about it. Then we remixed it and as we were ramping up to release…I think it was the day before the song came out, we realized it was a semifinalist. Then it just kept going from there.
TE: Wow. And it’s placed again this year in the competition, so that’s pretty cool that it’s still rolling. Tell me a little bit about the song Scotch. Who do you feature on there? Because you don’t sing on the song; you write and you play the drums and stuff like that.
Michael: Scotch features Chelsea D.E. Johnson. Who’s the lead singer of Old Soul Rebel, which is one of the projects I play for, and it also features my friend, Joshua Litton, who is an unbelievable multi-instrumentalist. He’s been on every one of my songs, and on Scotch he’s playing guitar and bass. I think he can get up on stage and perform something like 17 different instruments.
TE: Holy Moly! That’s a feat unto itself. [Laughs]
Michael: It’s pretty cool. Ben Erickson did the production, Josh has been on every song, and Ben came back and did my newest song, Esraela. They’re just part of the family now.
TE: Great, speaking of your new single, Esraela, it comes out in a couple of weeks. It’ll be out by the time this interview is out [both laugh]. There’s something really cool with that song – you’re part of this app where you can find your song in different cities. Can you tell me a little bit about this Hidden Bands app?
Michael: Yeah, so the app is called Hidden Bands and I think it was started in Victoria and it’s kind of like Pokemon Go but for music. You pull out your phone and you’re walking around the city and it’s a virtual map and they’ve got tapes hidden throughout the city. So you can find the tape, listen to the song and for the two weeks before the song comes out…it’s anonymous [the song]. So you could be listening to my song, but have no idea it was my song. Then you can give it a rating, you can save it, you can rehide it, and you can also plant clues to help people find it, which is really cool. Once the song goes live it lets you know what song you listened to.
TE: That’s super cool. What a great way to discover music just as you’re walking around the city and exploring yourself. You can totally get a little soundtrack to everything
Michael: The cool thing is everybody who’s finding it is a music fan or they wouldn’t have the app. You’ve got to like music.
TE: Or Pokemon, whatever. [both laugh]
Michael: Or exercise. [both laugh]
TE: I want to talk to you about your songwriting process because, like I said, you’re a drummer and you’re not fronting any of your tracks. Like, Rattle My Bones features Sail Cassady as the lead on that. Esraela and Scotch all feature different people. Why aren’t you putting yourself forward? It’s called Michael Wilford but…
Michael: I’ve always been a fan of one hundred percenters. That’s somebody who can write, record, produce, release, market, and then perform their own music. I’ve always wanted to be that, but I’m not as strong in singing as I’d like to be.
TE: Fair enough.
Michael: But I can do the rest of it. I write all my stuff, I compose it, collaborate on it with a bunch of amazing musicians, bring in their ideas and then build a different band around each song. Just pulling people in who I think would really benefit one style or another style. There’s a lot of freedom in that. You don’t have five specific members with their specific tastes. You just get to be like, “I want to have an Ella Fitzgerald moment let’s find those people” or “I want to write a moody alt-folk Rattle My Bones song and let’s find that band.” I love being able to just collaborate and bring in different people. You have to listen to people like Mark Ronson I think to get it.
TE: Totally. Would you ever put a band together to play those songs live? Just have a live one-off band.
Michael: It’s a thought. It’s definitely something that’s been talked about and I think it’s going to happen. There’s a lineup we’ve chatted about it but it hasn’t happened yet.
TE: Sweet! I’m excited to hear these songs a live because the production is wonderful on all those tracks. I definitely think seeing them live would be very cool and to hear a different singers take on a song would be really cool too.
Michael: That’s sort of the fun thing finding one singer. The problem when we were discussing that was “can we find someone who can do Scotch and Rattle My Bones? Which are on different sides of the spectrum.” I think the answer would be that we can find somebody and do their version of those and I think that would be really fun.
TE: Yeah, recently I just saw Santana and you know, he’s not touring with the guy from Smooth, Rob Thomas, He doesn’t tour with him unfortunately and he has so many guests vocalists. He just has three or four guys in his band who just sing all those songs. They’re in different keys. You know it works and it’s great. You get to hear the hits. I’d love to see something like that with Michael Wilford.
Michael: I think that’s the fun thing when you get to reimagine. A song can just be a song. There’s one version on Spotify but there’s another version that you can see live.
TE: So, what’s next? You’ve got three songs out now and we’re all anxious to hear some more.
Michael: [Laughs] Well, there’s another one that’s done and it’s very different. I really love it. It’s the first one I’m not playing drums on, but I’m taking a production lead on it. The drums are all produced and mostly foley and these crazy samples. It’s got a lot of trumpets on it. The trumpets were recorded by my friend in Brazil. Then she moved to Toronto and recorded her vocals there. The producer who mixed and tidied it all up is also in Toronto. It is this very international. Right in the middle of the pandemic, we were recording everything over zoom and mailing ideas to each other.
TE: That’s crazy.
Michael: It’s very experimental and it’s very in that moment. I’ve been having trouble wrapping my head around it but I think it’s a winter song. That’ll be coming out in the winter and after that there will have an EP.
TE: Well, I’m looking forward to hearing it all. Thank you so much for taking the time to chat with us and letting us throw some paint at you earlier [both laugh]. Thanks Michael.
Michael: Thanks so much, Tyson.
Michael Wilford’s acclaimed single, Scotch, featuring Chelsea D.E. Johnson will be featured for the entirety of May 2022 on The Zone @ 91-3. Visit Michael’s Band of the Month microsite to find out more about him and listen to two more of his songs.
Rocktographers is a proud supporting sponsor of The Zone’s Band of the Month program.