SPILL FEATURE: FEELING SOME JOY – A CONVERSATION WITH TIM CHAISSON AND JAKE CHARRON (THE EAST POINTERS)

FEELING SOME JOY

A CONVERSATION WITH TIM CHAISSON AND JAKE CHARRON (THE EAST POINTERS)

In 2014, Jake Charron, Tim Chaisson and Koady Chaisson came together to form The East Pointers. Although Charron is from Barrie, Ontario, the band formed in Prince Edward Island, which continues to be their homebase. The band released their debut album, Secret Victory in 2015 and were met with success and built on their loyal PEI. audience.

Sadly, Koady Chaisson passed away in 2022, but the core duo of Tim Chaisson and Charron has continued on and recently released their fourth studio album, Schoonertown. And although the album comes from a place of loss, the duo wanted to take the album in a different direction.

“We set out to write an album that was a bit endemic in a way,” said Charron. “Almost a party soundtrack. Growing up on the East Coast, it is really all about the gatherings, the kitchen parties, the cèilidhs and music is a big part of the culture. As well as fishing and farming, we wanted to bring that into the modern day. Just all of our experiences, all the foolishness. And a lot of it really relates to our bandmate Koady Chaisson who we lost a couple of years ago. He was a bit on that journey as a young adult. We were all the same. Struggling to find our place in the world. And being from a small community and wanting to get out. But feeling like you are stuck there. The topics are a little bit of struggling, a little too much drinking but also finding your way out of that and finding yourself and realizing there is more to life than just doing the same old things”

The East Pointers managed to pay tribute to Koady with a song that he actually wrote. The song, “Sea Spirit” is a beautiful instrumental and it anchors the album, both in tone and location.

“We finished off the album with that,” said Chaisson. “It is actually an instrumental track that Koady wrote. He wrote that and we always had in our pocket as a band and not knowing what to do with it. I remember Koady writing it and we were going to write lyrics to it, and we never had a proper recording of Koady playing. So, Jake and I decided to sit down at the piano and the fiddle and have our take of it. Really, the ‘sea spirit’ title comes from Koady. We all love the sea, but Koady especially loved it and made his living on the sea as well. We thought it was an appropriate way to wrap up the album. There’s a lot of themes throughout the album, but “Sea Spirit” wraps it all up.”

“There’s an interesting moment recording that too,” added Charron, “I live right across from an elementary school and while we were recording it, the recess was on, and you couldn’t really hear it inside, and we thought, we should put a mic outside and capture some of this. It just felt that the timing was really nice because Koady had such a youthful energy too. There is melancholy to it, but a bit of hope. It turned out really nice.”

Although the band’s origins are more traditional, there was nothing traditional about the manner in which they recorded Schoonertown.

“The process of it, we wrote everything, produced it, and recorded it all in Jake’s basement studio, and Jake engineered it as well,” said Chaisson. “So, it was something we could take our time with. If you are working with a producer in a studio and you are paying for every minute, you can feel rushed. Feel that little bit of anxiety to complete the album. But I think we were so relaxed and had a chance to go through everything about it. We really sat with it and didn’t rush anything. We felt as though we put everything into this record.”

PURCHASE SCHOONERTOWN

“We took our time,” remembered Charron. “Some of the songs came pretty quickly. Because it was all set up in my basement, over the course of six months, we wrote and recorded as we went along.”

“We are both dads,” laughed Chaisson. “So, recording at home is like a couple of hours here, and a couple of hours there. But the whole process was pretty relaxed, but I think we had a pretty vision of what we wanted to accomplish.”

The album is full of wonderful stories and there are even some songs that are pure joy. “She Got Away” is such a song.

“It is a fun song. We were driving through the highlands of Cape Breton Island and, like Jake and I often do, we were driving a long drive, and we just started writing this song and it felt like it had an East Coast flair to it,” said Chaisson. “We recorded a pretty stripped-down version of it, but then we added a good kick drum on it, and some more danceable rhythms. It is probably the closest thing we have released to a sea shanty but with modern production. A bit of a love song.”

“Everything relates back to the small town,” offered Charron. “Thinking that you found your love, but she goes to the big city kind of thing. But we threw in an oyster reference, but we just wanted to write something fun. It is a bit silly lyrically. Sometimes you can overthink lyrics, but this one, we just wanted to have fun.”

The East Pointers have won numerous awards (including a Juno Award in 2017 for Traditional Roots Album of the Year for their album Secret Victory), rave reviews, and keep adding fans from around the world. They also have a connection with the famous children sensation, The Wiggles.

“We met them a while ago. We were on the same label/distributor in Australia. So, they were doing all their Wiggles stuff, and Tim had met them at some point.”

Chiasson picks up the story: “Yeah, I met their manager because he had come to Canada at some point, a random thing. Their manager told them about The East Pointers’ music, and Anthony, who is the lead Wiggle. He has been in since the get-go, he is a banjo player. So, he loved the tunes. They came out to a show and wanted to get up on stage and play, so we invited him up. We actually toured with them. We played these shows, where they had a show at 9am for 15,000 kids, then they had a show at lunch time for another 15,000 kids and then another show at supper time for 15,000 kids. And they would do this in every city. Emma, who was in The Wiggles, but isn’t anymore, is a great friend of ours. They are a great gang and hard workers.”

Although they are from and based in the East Coast, some may be surprised as to their influences. It is not as clear cut as one might assume.

Charron remarked “we definitely listened to Stan Rogers growing up. Tim is from PEI and I am from Ontario, but we listened to all the East Coast music. The Rankin Family. But also, everything else we heard on the radio. The rock and pop we have been super into as well. The East Pointers, we tried to combine everything we grew up hearing and loved along the way.”

“It is kind of neat to introduce people to traditional music,” Chaisson suggested. “Like Jake was saying, our parents, for Koady and I, are cousins, but our family has a massive amount of fiddle players and generations of it. When you grow up in that very traditional scene, you are influenced by popular culture, but it is cool to introduce people to the traditional music from the East Coast, like the Scottish and the Irish and the Acadian. We started the band more instrumental and it is kind of neat to get people into the trade. It is cool.”

With Schoonertown now finished and a lengthy tour facing the band, they do hope their music and message reaches their fans and they hope to attract new listeners to their distinct, unique and brilliant music.

“Feeling some joy. That is one thing we set out to do,“ Chaisson said. “After we lost Koady, we wrote a lot of sad stuff, and I think that was part of the process. For this record we made an effort to stick to more upbeat sounding music, even though some of the themes are a little darker. We wanted to make it a party album in a way. I think for me people feel some joy when they listen to it. We hope that people like it.”

Charron can simply say, “Well said.”

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Photo Credit: Justin Rix