The Wilderness of Manitoba coming to Ottawa June 26

The Wilderness of Manitoba // Provided

The Wilderness of Manitoba may be a little deceiving with their name. This folky band has never actually been to Manitoba as a group — though they’ll be heading out there in July as part of their first cross-Canada tour.

The name was inspired by an art installation created by Noam Gonick and Luis Jacob called "Wildflowers of Manitoba." The piece depicts an actor lying inside a dome that displays films representing the actor’s fantasies from the shores of Lake Winnipeg.

When the project headed to Toronto’s Nuit Blanche festival in 2008, band members Scott Bouwmeester and Will Whitwham were asked to portray the “hippie” inside the dome, according to Bouwmeester.

“We kind of chuckled and laughed and said no,” Bouwmeester said, adding that he had misheard the title as the Wilderness of Manitoba, and thought that would make for a good band name. “It wasn't until a couple months later I realized I made a mistake,” he said, but by then the name had stuck with the band.

The group released their second album on June 22, titled When You Left the Fire. It was recorded in the basement of the house on Delaware Avenue in Toronto where Bouwmeester, Whitwham and Banjevic all live.

Bouwmeester described the music as very honest with the feeling of yearning. “There's an emotional weight to the songs and I think it's not contrived in any way,” he said. “It's all coming from an honest place.”

The album’s cover art is the work of Melissa Barton, who provides the female vocals in the band.

“Our last record had a very striking simple drawing. It was very eye-catching but it was also black and white,” Bouwmeester said. “[This time,] we wanted something with a lot more colour.”

And colour is something the album's artwork definitely possesses, made with a variety of media, including fabric, quilt, and paint so as to depict a serene landscape.

When You Left the Fire brought some changes in the composing process, creating a more collaborative effort than their previous release, Hymns of Love and Spirits, according to Bouwmeester.

“With the EP that we did, Will sang the songs he wrote, I sang the songs I wrote,” Bouwmeester said. “That was just the way it was.”

But this album has band members bringing their songs to the table before completion, and giving input on each other’s pieces. Bouwmeester said the songwriting often involved writing for a specific person’s vocal talents.

“It just sort of falls into place,” he said. “There are certain voices that just work in different situations [because] we all have different characters in our voices.”

The band often brings these characters together, singing in unison in four-part harmonies. They also each play several instruments, allowing for more variety during live shows. “We definitely toss the guitars back and forth,” Bouwmeester said of the band’s performances, adding that Stefan Banjevic tends to switch the most of them all, jumping back and forth between guitar, banjo and cello.

Bouwmeester said every show is unique, and their performance really ranges, sometimes playing with a drummer and sometimes without. When they want the drumbeats, they call on Sean Lancaric for percussion.

They’ve performed in Ottawa previously at the Raw Sugar Café on Somerset Street, which Bouwmeester described as “one of the best places in the entire world.”

“It's an amazing vibe, with great tea, great coffee, organic squares and organic beers on tap,” he said.

The Wilderness of Manitoba brings their live show to the Irving Greenberg Theatre Centre in Ottawa June 26.

Originally published in The Charlatan, Carleton University's independent student newspaper.